Joggles 2018 AJA Week 2 - A is for...

Hi everyone! The Joggles 2018 Art Journal Adventure began on the Facebook group last week. This week, it's my turn to choose the prompt and I am picking the Letter A.  That means that to play along, you can feature a colour or colours which start with A (Acid Green, Air Force Blue, Alizarin Crimson), or maybe a feeling/emotion (affection, acceptance, afraid), a medium which begins with A like acrylic paint or a technique like abstract art or alphabet stencilling...anything you want as long as it begins with A. You could even create a fancy letter A as the focal...it's wide open. I chose to feature the word affirmation, plus I used Aqua coloured pencils and acrylic paint so I've got it covered...LOL.

The background is a 6 x 6 inch watercolour page from one of the Joggles disc bound journals. I spread the Aqua Acrylic paint onto my 5 x 7 inch gel plate and then removed some of the paint with Carabelle Studio Art Printing Rubber Texture - In Uppercase ('cause alphabet begins with A). I then printed onto the page in a few places. Next I added some Cerulean Blue Hue Liquitex paint to the gel plate and pulled it off in a few places. Finally, I brayered black onto the gel plate in order to load Joggles One Ringy Dingy Creative Art Texture so I could stamp it onto the page. Texture Paste was added through TCW Tiny Circles stencil and allowed to dry completely.

Because of the affirmation I knew I was going to write, I chose one of the Santoro Gorjuss girls stamps called Sweetheart as the focal image. She was coloured with a mix of Prismacolor and Polychromos pencils and then fussy cut leaving a narrow white border. She was then matted with black cardstock and fussy cut again leaving a narrow black border to help her stand out against the busy background. Foam tape was placed on the back of the image to pop her up and create a natural shadow. To ground her and give her a place to stand, three different lengths of washi tape were adhered to white cardstock and trimmed out. I like doing this because it takes away the translucency and allows the pattern to really show. Cheesecloth was placed behind her to help diffuse the background so she didn't have to compete with it.

The affirmation and sentiment were printed onto white cardstock, cut into sentences, and matted with black. Foam tape was used to pop them up and adhere them to the page. To balance the design, another cluster of the same washi was placed in the top right corner. Enamel dots were used to embellish both sets of washi. I also added some touches of watered down black gesso using the edge of a plastic gift card for some mark making. You know me...I like my touches of black. Black Big Brush Pen was used to darken the edges of the page which helps frame it.

Last week I showed how I was constructing this AJA journal using the different sized disc bound watercolour papers. I also mentioned that the black cardstock covers have a pocket on the inside. This week, just for fun, I decorated that pocket with a few collage pieces like I do in my junk journals and then stuffed it with a postcard featuring a Bo Bunny Postale flag, a map piece, and a bingo card. I figure I can write any notes I want about the AJA on the back of these pieces of ephemera or use them to jot down the challenge themes.

Thanks for visiting today. The little Sweetheart and I appreciate that. I hope you will join our 2018 Art Journal Adventure and play along with our weekly challenges. It's great fun and the people who have joined our Facebook group are amazingly supportive, creative, and fun to hang out with :)

Life is good; so is art.

Bonnie