Art Journal Prompts Week 20: Water Soluble

This page was created on water colour card for a change and later stuck into my kraft card journal.  The only non water soluble elements were the heat embossed letters and the Archival ink used for stamping the focal image.  Otherwise, every aspect of the background used water soluble media.

As I love layers, I decided to follow a similar method to the one Nina Ribena used for her page on Art Journal Prompts.  I started with a piece of water colour card from Crafter's Companion trimmed to 18.6cm x 19.6cm to fit in my journal.  For the first layer I used distress sprays; firstly Mustard Seed and Fossilized Amber, then a light mist of water, dabbed with some kitchen towel and dried.  I then did the same again; the second layer was Dried Marigold and Carved Pumpkin and the third layer Worn Lipstick and Picked Raspberry.
I switched to Distress ink pads in Picked Raspberry, Carved Pumpkin and Fossilized Amber and added a further layer of colour through three stencils by That Special Touch; Wavy, Droplets and Every Which Way.












As I was intending to add stamping in Distress Oxides, I first used white gesso and a round piece of natural sponge to knock back the colour ready for that stage.

I added a stamped layer all over the background using Fossilized Amber, Spiced Marmalade and Worn Lipstick Distress Oxides.  The stamps are all from Stamper's Anonymous; Documented, Ledger Script, the Marble stamp from the Marble & Doily set, Slight Alterations (designed by Tim Holtz) and also from the Art of Brett Weldele; Drips and Dirt.  I then finished off the background with a quick spritz from each of the distress sprays used earlier, to create some splatters.
For the focal point, I die cut three of the smaller test tubes and the test tube rack from the Experiment die set by Sheena Douglass (Alchemy) out of Sheena's stamping card. I then stamped them using the matching stamps from the Something's Brewing stamp set.  For this I used Archival ink (Jet Black and Coffee), as I was going to use distress markers to add colour to the images.  Vintage Photo was used for the test tube rack and Picked Raspberry, Fossilized Amber and Carved Pumpkin for the contents of the test tubes.  The test tubes themselves were coloured with Tumbled Glass.  Before adding the focal image to the page I went round the edge in Vintage Photo, then Black Soot distress ink.
Finally I added the lettering using Versamark ink, my favourite Word Chain Alphabet (Claritystamp) and Champagne embossing powder from the Pearlustre Embossable Dream kit by Stampendous.  I went round each letter with a black fine liner.  
I also got a great mop up sheet  from all the left over spray and ink, which I'm sure I'll be able to find a use for in a future project.