Art Journal Prompts 18: Monochrome

This week's challenge in Art Journal Prompts was 'Monochrome'; usually I would go with blue as it is my favourite background colour, but as I wanted to use some dies and stamps from the Time Traveller Collection by Sheena Douglass, I went with brown instead.  I am exceedingly pleased with the end result but the photo really doesn't do it justice.  The pipes look far better in real life and have a patina to them.

First I gessoed the kraft card page, dried it, then blended Vintage Photo and Walnut Stain distress oxides all over it.  When I came to seal the page with Pebeo Matte Gel Medium the Oxides moved around producing a wood grain effect (happy accident and mental note made).







Next I dry brushed Raw Umber acrylic paint over the page keeping to an up/down then left/right movement.










 

The next step was to add stamping using Ground Espresso Archival Ink and Coffee Archival ink.  The stamps come from three sets designed by Tim Holtz for Stampers Anonymous; Documented, Ledger Script and Slight Alterations.










For additional texture, I dragged Metallic Copper Dreamweaver embossing paste through the Typo layering stencil by Tim Holtz (THS040) in several places.










To lighten the background in places I tipped some of the Golden Sand embossing powder by Stampendous down the page and, where it clung, I set the powder using my heat gun.  This not only added further texture and lightened the background a little, but also gives the impression of water bursting from the pipes that I added later.

In the mean time, I die cut all the elements from the 'In the Pipeline' set from the Time Traveller Collection by Sheena Douglass along with an additional 3 lots of the long straight pipe.  These were all stamped using the matching stamp set in Ground Espresso, gone over in places in both Cast Bronze and then Patina Gilding Wax and the edges highlighted with Black Soot Archival ink. The valves were added using small copper coloured brads and then the pipes were built up using a mixture of foam pads and Cosmic Shimmer acrylic glue.  Each pipe was curved slightly before being added to the page.
As I felt that the page still lacked a little something, I added some bronzed Mica Fran-tage Fragments by Stampendous in the top right and bottom left hand corner with the same acrylic glue.  The final step was to add the sentiment 'Follow your dreams.  Go with the flow of your ideas and imagination' from the same stamp set as the pipes.  This was stamped onto kraft card using a Versamark ink pad and heat embossed using Ancient Copper embossing powder by Cosmic Shimmer, trimmed and edged with Black Soot Archival ink.  It was added using foam pads for dimension.