September Art Journaling

The idea is to blog about life, but life keeps getting in the way of blogging! I blame it on the rain. Its been a big time suck in so many ways and continued this weekend, wreaking havoc on soccer schedules and yardwork. Always something.
So once again, I'm playing catch up with my art journaling. October will be here in less than a week, and I'm finally sharing some September pages.
One of the problems with not sharing weekly, is that I can't quite remember how I did some of these.

September Week 1

Awaiting my Julie stencil order, I pulled out some CWS stencils that I already had, and played with a couple, using Adirondack wash, Perfect Pearls Mist and Glimmer Mist. Maya Road Things To Do list, AC Date sticker, and some decorative paper tape by Cavallini & Co.I didn't spend much time on these pages. This was our first full week back home and we had a lot to do as a result of being away for so long.

September Week 2

This background really evolved. I started out spraying some Adirondack wash and Perfect Pearls. I then sprayed water to create the drips. That also muted the colours. I gessoed the raindrops through my brand new JFFB stencil. Love these!

Now this is a place to play and learn and I learned that a sponge brush isn't the best applicator for my purpose. Between that and the curve in the pages, some of my raindrops lost their shape. Oh well! I used the stencil to trace the raindrop shapes from some of the week's photos, and included them. Journaled in the remaining teardrops using FC Pitt markers.

Forgot to mention that both of these were built on gessoed pages.

September Week 3

With all of the France business mostly behind us, I was able to spend a little more time on these pages. While the gessoed base was still wet, I added strips of a polka dotted fabricky paper that was in the box with sneakers I purchased a couple of months ago. I tore them, so there's no consistency. I used gel medium to make them stick. The gesso alone wasn't quite cutting it.

I signed up for Julie's Stenciling 101 and this page made me realize I need to visit it and learn how to build more brilliant and defined layers. I also need to develop patience. The background might look better had I let it dry, rather than dabbing at it with a paper towel. Couldn't help myself!!

I used Julie's chevron stencil on the right, with a heavy bodied acrylic. Same with the punchinella dots on the left, but there I went over it again with a different color and ultimately covered it with jockey stamps! I also used a home made stencil -- the packaging from a 6 pack of Trader Joe's yogurt. With my fingers, I applied a white acrylic to those 6 holes in the yogurt pack. I patiently waited  before adding any journaling and doodles. I added the 3 Australian stamps, layering one of them on a blank Lisa Leonard tag that I had been hanging on to. A little distress ink around the edges of that tag and those stamps. Done.