Joggles Art Journal Adventure ~ Week 40 Response

It's a good thing that there is no pressure to keep up with or follow the exact order of the Art Journal Adventure prompts on the Joggles blog because fallen behind and working out of order are where I'm at right now. I skipped a few which I will definitely return to and have leaped into Week 40's prompt, Insects, with inky glee. Barb featured gorgeous butterflies on her page but I have such an affinity for dragonflies that I went in that direction instead.

I spritzed an un-gessoed page in my art journal with Lindy's Stamp Gang Marigold Yellow Orange, California Poppy Gold, and Yellow Rose of Texas Starburst Sprays and dried the page with a heat tool. Next, I set Joggles Global #1 stencil over half of the page and spritzed with Lindy's Sassy Sapphire Starburst spray through the openings. I lifted the stencil off, moved it to cover the second half of the page, and repeated. The leftover spray on the stencil was cleaned off on a blank page in my journal so as not to waste it.

The flight of dragonflies always reminds me of nature's ballet with wonderful choreography and graceful movement. I wanted to add swirls to the page to create visual movement but I also wanted them to be textured swirls. I traced the swirls from TCW's Swirly Qs stencil onto black card stock and fussy cut them. Versamark ink was used to stamp a distressed dot stamp from 7 Gypsies repeatedly over the swirls. Fine white embossing powder was then sprinkled over the Versamark and heat set. The embossed dots are shiny and contrast beautifully with the black background creating awesome texture. Different size punches were used to create the plain black circles at the top of each curlicue. A brown Inktense pencil activated with a waterbrush was used to shade the inside edges of each curlicue.

White Texture Paste was scraped through Dylusions Bubble stencil in several places using a palette knife. Once this was dry, a white Sharpie paint pen was used to brighten some of the circles. Black pen was used to outline the bottom of a few in each grouping. The dragonflies, fussy cut from a collage sheet purchased from an Etsy shop, were matted with black card stock and trimmed out leaving a narrow black border. The wings were given shimmer with Clear Wink of Stella and the eyes were given shine and dimension with Glossy Accents. Foam tape was used to adhere them in place. Vintage Photo Distress ink was applied to the outside edges of the page before they were edged with Black Big Brush pen. A simple doodled border was added to three sides of the page. The final touch was to add the word Ballet using Idea-ology Alpha Parts letters. White paint pen dots repeated the dots from the swirls and tied the letters to the rest of the page.

Thanks for stopping by today. I hope you enjoyed the dragonflies' performance :)  If you haven't already been following along with the Joggles Art Journal Adventure and Barb's weekly Monday prompts, it's never too late. You can join in at any point, catch up or not, and we'd love to have you join our wonderful AJA Facebook group as well. It's an awesome group filled with creative, friendly, and supportive people who share the same enthusiasm for this fun adventure.

Life is good; so is art.
Bonnie