Art Journal Adventure Week 8 ~ Lettering

Hi there. Yesterday I spent some time playing in my art journal and responding to Barb's Week 8 prompt from Joggles' Art Journal Adventure, This prompt involved lettering on a painted background where the lettering was the focal. I rarely do this although I always admire when others do. One of the things I really like about the Art Journal Adventure is that the weekly prompts often take me out of my comfort zone with that little nudge that I need from time to time.

With a baby wipe, I applied the same three colours of Liquitex paint which Barb used: Light Aqua Green. Light Blue Permanent, and Titanium White. And no surprise here...my colours are more intense and the background far brighter than Barb's softer more pastel one. I think it's cool that we can use the exact same method and paints and come up with different versions. I still had left over Titanium White on my craft sheet (again, no surprise) so I applied it with my finger to the bottom of a rubber flip-flop sole and used that to stamp the cross-hatching texture onto the background. It makes lines in one direction so I overlap in the opposite to get that pattern.

I traced the Dylusions stamp block's curvy edge to make lines on the background with pencil and then went over the top of them freehand with a Pitt pen. I did two lines close together for the doodled borders and then two farther apart for the lettering. The lettering was pencilled in first to get the spacing correct and then traced over and fattened up with a Pitt pen. The doodling was done with the Pitt pen and then white paint pen was used to accent parts of each design.

I had the leftover off-cut from a heart die cut so I trimmed around it to make an open heart and traced the center so I could letter the word BRAVE inside. It was adhered after the lettering was done and a sweet butterfly from the Joggles Collage Sheet - Watercolor Butterflies IV was fussy cut, matted, and adhered overlapping the top part. Flat black pearls were added for the spots and antennae tips and an Idea-ology pen nib for the body. At this point, the design looked unbalanced and disjointed with the heavy words and all that doodling on one side and only the heart and butterfly on the other. I decided to continue the wavy doodle pattern around the left side of the page to tie both sides together...much happier with that.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by today. I appreciate you doing that. Barb's Art Journal Adventure Week 9 is up on the Joggles Blog today and you can also check out her original version of Week 8 here. We would love to have you play along and show your creations on the AJA Facebook group. Tons of inspiration and friendship there!