Art Journal Prompts Challenge 19: Take 5

I made this page for the Art Journal Prompts challenge on Facebook.  The process is one inspired by Shannon Green, but I did not follow the five minute part, only the five steps: Add colour, add collage elements, add stamps and stencils, add words/focal image, add finishing touches.  It was a most liberating page to complete, as I didn't know exactly where I was going to start with.

Add colour

I had some birds cut out from a piece of scrapbooking paper by K & Co, which I wanted to use as my collage elements.  I kept one back to use as the focal point and also found a couple of Spellbinders feathers in my stash which I had previously die cut and embossed.  I decided to go with a blue background for the first step, so once I had given the page a coat of gesso and it had dried, I added Tumbled Glass and Broken China distress paint to the page and blended it with my fingers.

Add collage elements

The next step was to add four of the birds and the feathers to the page, using distress collage medium both to glue down and seal the collage elements.

Add stamps and stencils

For the third step, I kept the colour palette simple; Watering Can archival ink for the stamping and white gesso through stencils using a blending tool.  I started with the stamping, going all over the page with stamps from various sets designed by Tim Holtz for Stamper's Anonymous; Documented, Ledger Script, Slight Alterations, Classics #6, Urban Tapestry and also from the Art of Brett Weldele; Drips and Dirt.  Once the stamped layer was complete, I went over the whole page again with sections of the mini layering stencils by Tim Holtz; Bubble, Dot Fade, Splatters and Tracks, as well as the large 'Speckles' layering stencil.  This succeeded in both adding texture and interest, and knocking the collage elements into the background ready to add the focal point.

Add words/focal image

For the focal point, I used the final bird which had been cut out of the scrapbook paper and also a die cut (one of the large XCut bird cages) from black card.  I also chose three quote snippets from the Chit Chat idea-ology sticker book by Tim Holtz, which seemed to fit both the theme and my feelings about the process of creating this page. 

The final step was to add finishing touches.  I added a white border all round the bird cage and the quote blocks with my Stabilo uni-ball pen and also went all round the caged bird with my black Neocolor II crayon which was then blended out with water. This allowed the items to stand out even further from the background.

I would definitely try this method of creating a page again.  It wasn't as scary as I thought, starting a page with no definite end result in mind.