Red, Black, Grey, Magic!

This art journal page is in response to challenge 33 from Junk Journals Junkies and Mindful Art: Red, black, grey, magic.  I had a look for a quote which inspired me and found 'Love is the closest thing we have to magic.'

I started with a piece of Sheena's stamping card 18.5cm x 19.5cm and gave it a coat of Slate Grey Dylusions paint with a foam blending tool.

I then used a natural sponge with some watered down Payne's Grey Reeves acrylic paint to add a mottled effect over the whole page.  I forgot to take a picture before adding the prompt word 'magic' which was heat embossed in metallic red embossing powder, having been stamped using Versamark ink.  I actually used the word 'Magical' from Word Chain 7 by Claritystamp, but I masked off the end of the word when inking it up.

The rest of the quote was then added from the Chit Chat sticker book by Tim Holtz; only the word 'closest' had to be printed out using my Dymo Letratag.

The largest wedding couple from the Paper Dolls Ancestors pack was added; the whole page sealed with Distress Collage Medium and, once dry, a Faber-Castell Big Brush Marker in Cool Grey VI was used to add shading around the image and to ground the couple.

Next, the romantic couple from Wee Folk 1 by Claritystamp were stamped in Versamark ink and heat embossed in black detail embossing powder.  The hearts from Wee Folk 6 were added in the same way as the word Magic.

In the end, I decided to add the couple on the bench (Wee Folk 1) over the top set of hearts in black, as well as another set of the hearts in red.

The final job was to go round the word Magic with a 0.1 black micron pen to make it stand out a little more from the background.