Bookworms Rule ~ inspired by a Vera Lane Studio image

Hi everyone. I am a huge bookworm like my dad was...have been since I was little. Reading has always been a great source of enjoyment and I love to hang out in bookstores and libraries. Most of all, I love curling up on the couch in the den with my current book in hand. When I saw this fabulous image from Vera Lane Studio called Book Lover, I knew just what saying I wanted to pair with her. This one makes me laugh because quite often reading one more chapter postpones whatever action I fleetingly thought of taking. You know what I mean! You've probably played that "Just 10 more minutes" game :)

I coloured Book Lover, the book she's reading, and the stack waiting to be read using a mix of Prismacolor and Polychromos pencils. Her dress dots were created with a Posca paint pen. The images were fussy cut leaving a white border, matted in black, and trimmed out again to leave a narrow black border to help everything stand out against my usual busy background.

The journal I'm working in has 6 x 6 inch watercolour paper which stands up so well against anything I throw at it...or on it. I began by gessoing the page and, once dry, I adhered torn pieces of vintage text in overlapping layers with gel medium, leaving lots of white space. Gesso was brushed over the text to make it blend into the page. Next I fingerpainted  different areas with Dina Wakley Blackberry Violet, Ruby, Lapis, and Lemon Media Paint as well as Liquitex Brilliant Green acrylic paint to pull colours from my colouring into the background. I also added the green lines here and there with the edge of a gift card.

Stamping was applied using a Kaisercraft Texture Plate and Jet Black Archival Ink and circles were added with a bottle cap and Black Media paint.Texture Paste was scraped through a piece of drywall mesh in three places and left white to add some brightness to the paint. Once dry, a couple more skinny torn strips of text were adhered to the page to give Book Lover a place to rest and bring some of that embedded text pattern to the surface again. A doodled border, Jet Black Archival Ink, and Black Big Brush Pen were added around the page to frame it.

The wording was printed onto white cardstock, cut into segments, and matted with black cardstock. Three black gems were used to create the pause dots after Bookworms rule the world. The final step to finishing the page was to add those three black semi circles to the left side of the page. It seemed to create better balance and to better draw the eye to Book Lover's sweet face.

Thanks for popping by today. Book Lover and I appreciate it...so much so that she even looked up from what she was reading...at least for a moment. LOL

Life is good; so is art.

Bonnie