Until you spread your wings,
you’ll never know how far you can fly.

The last few months seem to have been full of activity in our house so I’ve been sharing bits & pieces on my Instagram feed. If you aren’t sure where to find me – look here. I’d love you to pop by and say hello.

Every year I start with great plans for participating in various challenges and online classes only to peter off after a few weeks/months. I decided to be a bit gentler on myself this year – I will intend to participate but if it doesn’t happen then all is good & I’ll go back to them if/when I can or feel like it.

Today I’d like to share a page I did for week 12 of the LuLu Art Colour Me Positive challenge. I’ve loved watching this challenge group evolve and grow, there is currently over 2500 positive art journalers in the Facebook group – isn’t that fabulous? I am sure it will grow from strength to strength.

This time around the extra journaling prompt was to add wings so that is where I started – butterfly wings and a corset from Darkroom Door stamps. Of course you can’t have a torso without a skirt of some kind, so I created a textured & collaged one using dictionary paper, handmade paper and a paper doyley. Layers of colour and texture gave it some form.

I wish I had photographed the background before I started but it was one of those pages that I use for scrapes of left over paint and spray. I’d kept them to greens and blues so that the page would match the opposite side. I added some stencilling and collage (Kaisercraft have some great collage papers!) before I started so that the page had an interesting base.

The corset and wings were fun to layer with some pretty lace – it was well stuck down with gel medium! Once everything was stuck down and coloured with the new Ranger Distress Crayons, I painted just the wings with some clear crackle paste. I decided to experiment with colour a little and dripped Dylusions spray ink over the wings to give a mottled effect. It was so hard to just let it dry so I could check how well the effect worked.

While that was drying I carefully added some gold touches with gold Texture paste – I love to smear this stuff around a page a little to give a swipe of gold.

As a final step I added the quote, gradually thickening the lettering until I was happy with how it stood out from the background.

A flutter of sequins finished off the page and added a nice touch of bling to the skirt.

Supplies:

• Darkroom Door stamps – Collage Butterfly, Corsetry set
• Stencil Girl stencils – Rembrant’s words, Honeycomb, Transform
• Ranger Distress Crayons
• Dina Wakley paints – Ocean, Lemon, Turquoise
• Golden Gel Medium
• Faber Castel – Whipped Spackle, Texture Luxe gold
• Prima Crackle Paste – clear
• Ranger Dylusions spray – Pink Bubblegum
• Ranger Liquid Pearls
• Kaisercraft paper
• Black permanent pen
• Sequins, lace, dictionary paper, handmade paper, paper doyley

One tip that I’d like to share is about texture paste – too much of it will weigh a page down but I have found that if you use the Faber Castell Whipped Spackle there isn’t a lot of extra weight. Which means I can stencil away with texture to my hearts content! Don’t forget to clean the texture paste out of your stencils right away – it can set hard and ruin them if you aren’t careful.

Have you been playing along with the challenge? I’d love to see if you would like to post me a link in the comments.