My First Royal Talens DT Piece

I was most excited to be asked to create some art work for the Royal Talens shows on Hochanda by the amazing Lou Withers of Junk Journal Junkies and Mindful Art.  I have been a member of the Facebook group since early in 2017 and there are now over 3000 members.  I admire Lou's art work tremendously, so to be asked to become a member of her Design Team was a great honour.  I have been building up my stash of Royal Talens products; Ecoline pens, Van Gogh Oil Pastels, Clear and Black Amsterdam Gessos and various paint mediums and auxilliaries.  I also have a full selection of Sakura pens as well as some of the amazing rice paper which Lou brought to Hochanda some time ago.  For my first piece, I used the Ecoline pens in different ways on watercolour card to build up an art journal page.  Thanks to Jane Telford who also inspired me to make this piece.

I cut a piece of A4 watercolour card in half and used one half to create the background and the other to make the 'strips'.  For the background, I used the Ecoline pens directly onto a stamp (Stamper's Anonymous Perspective, designed by Tim Holtz) and covered the whole page.

To create the strips, I scribbled Ecoline pens onto my glass mat, spritzed the colour with water and dabbed watercolour card into it.  I built up a layer of blues, then greens, drying between layers until I was happy.

  I stamped various images from the Mixed Media, School Desk and Ledger Script stamp sets (Tim Holtz/Stamper's Anonymous) over the page using green and blue Archival inks.

The page was then cut into strips of various widths and lengths with one larger piece left intact.

These pieces were edged all round with Ecoline pens then added to the background to build up a collage.

One of the sentiments from the Perspective stamp set was stamped and heat embossed (Cosmic Shimmer Bright White) onto the large panel and the word 'Discovering' coloured with an Ecoline pen directly onto the page.

To finish, the butterfly from the same stamp set was also stamped and heat embossed in white, coloured using Ecoline pens directly onto the card, fussy cut and added to the page.  I love the Ecoline pens as they are so versatile for stamping, water colouring, creating backgrounds, blending and using both neat and with a water brush.