Each Day is a Gift ~ Rick St. Dennis inspired art journal page

Hi everyone. I had a bit of a play the other day experimenting with both Brushos Crystals and Dylusions paints and created a bunch of backgrounds. Totally mindless and completely for fun. I decided that one of the Brusho backgrounds would be awesome to star Rick St. Dennis' image called You're a Gift.

I coloured her with a mix of Prismacolor and Polychromos pencils keeping the colours in the same palette as the Brusho Crystal background. She was then fussy cut leaving a narrow white border and matted with black cardstock. This was trimmed out again and foam tape was applied to the back.

The background started as a 6 x 8 inch rectangle of mixed media paper. Ultramarine and Lime Green Brusho crystals were sprinkled onto the paper and then water was spritzed over that. The results are so cool and unpredictable. The page was tipped to create lovely drips and the TH Spritzer tool was used to create the tiny drips off of the main ones. Once completely dry, white embossing paste was scraped through TCW's Tiny Circles stencil with a palette knife. Jet Black Archival ink was used to stamp Hero Arts Painted Circle in several places. White Dylusions paint was added to a bottle lid and used to stamp the smaller circles.

To give this sweet woman a place to stand, two colours of washi tape were cut into flags and overlapped under her feet. The computer generated sentiment was printed on white paper. The word Unopened was matted with green spritzed cardstock and then all tthe segments were matted with black. They were then popped up on foam tape. A SSS star die was used to cut out a green and a black sketchy star, both of which were layered and offset. White pen was used to accent the star on the background. To finish off the page, a black border was doodled around the edges, black Big Brush pen was brushed against the white edge, and a black mat was added to the background.

Thanks for stopping by today. That in itself is a gift! To see more of Rick's fabulous images, check out his Zibbet shop. To be inspired by other fabulous creations, pop by Rick's Fans & Friends page on Facebook. And remember the Part One of the Progressive Challenge is ongoing until the end of this month so you still have time to play along and earn yourself the free image for Part Two next month.

Life is good; so is art.
Bonnie