Art Journal Spread Tutorial by Kate Palmer

Today I’m creating a heavily textured, high-octane sparkle journal page!   For me this one was about playing with layering and collage materials and using ideas I’ve seen on the internet from our own gorgeous Marta Lapkowska and Finnabair aka Anna Dabrowska (ie: gesso over collage) and layered journal pages and building on this, to create something with my own flavour – which as you know is sparkly!  I think this page turned out with a total Christmas or Winter feel to it, and boy is it sparkly!!!

Lindy’s Products

• Starburst Sprays: Delphinium Turquoise, Time Travel Teal, Gag Me With A Spoon Grey & Silent Night Silver.

Other Products

• Mat Medium or Mixed Media Adhesive (Matt)
• Gelatos: Snow Cone, Aqua Dolce, Earl Grey & Squid Ink
• Texture Paste: Platinum Crackle
• Texture Paste (Matt White)
• Black Gesso
• Stencils or Masks
• Collage items

Instructions:

Gather supplies with interesting texture and use a matt adhesive to glue these onto your page.  Leave to dry, then coat entire page with gesso, let dry.

Rub assorted Gelatos over surface of page (this was fun, I basically scribbled – artistically of course!), spritz with water and use a wet paint brush to activate and blend colour.  Leave to dry.

Add texture paste through stencil and let dry.  Then thinly add Platinum crackle paste around textural elements (on the bottom of page only).

Spray Gag Me With A Spoon Grey Starburst sparingly over background and dry with heat gun.

Add second colour of Starburst (Delphinium Turquoise) and dry with heat gun.  Again I am spraying this in patches/pools so I get an uneven colour.  Dry with heat gun.

Begin adding darker colours – start with Time Travel Teal, this background is about building layers of colour and keeping it uneven.  It’s the only time you will find me spraying colour close to the page to create pools on purpose!  Dry each layer with a heat gun before continuing.

Now for the final layer of Starburst spray – Silent Night Silver.  I’ve added this mostly around the edges to create a visual frame or border for the page.

Once the background is completely dry, use deer mask – lay it over your page (pick somewhere with interesting colour patterns) and use a dry brush to add black gesso around the image.  I also added it to other areas and dry brushed the black gesso over some of the textured areas to highlight the patterns.

Once the first layer of gesso is dry, use additional stencils and more black gesso to add patterns and interest to the background.

Finish with journaling, text or embellishment – I couldn’t resist once I found this word embellishment!

And the deer needed silver eyes…

And the whole page looks like this..

I hope this gives you a few ideas for using ideas you’ve seen and putting a twist on them to make them your own!