Art Recipe: Breathe, Live, Shine - art journal pages

Hi again, my sweet visitors!
Inspiration indeed comes in all shapes and sizes.
Yesterday I learnt from my dear friend that 15th September is World Lymphoma Awareness Day - and when looking online I realised, there aren't many supporting badges, banners, uplifting pictures dedicated to this problem - at least comparing to many other important causes.
Feeling a bit disappointed and not satisfied with the selection - I decided my best friend (and a brave fighter) needs to get a proper greeting card, tailored to our needs, taste and attitude. That's how the short story started.

First of all - what message should I put? This is one of the hardest decisions and as I knew wonderful Empathy Cards by Emily McDowell I decided to go more this direction. If you don't know them by now - check them out - you may feel it is "your sentiment exactly".
I've decided to go nice, soft, but to the point.

In my eyes, the whole page scrams in capital letters about the situation my friend is in. It is my interpretation, my way of discussing the problem and our way of talking about it.
No place for negativity. Eyes set on the goal. Breathe. Live. Shine.
Fighting - but gracefully and with dignity.

Colours I've decided to use are a custom mix of my favourite homemade tea stain and Primary Elements Pigments in shade of Wild Plum purple (colour for Hodgkins Lymphoma) applied on Art Basics White Heavy Gesso. I've also added a bit of Black Indian Ink for extra contrast and texture.

There are tons of Art Ingredients Glass Beads and Micro Beads added - I used only Art Basics Soft Gel to keep them in place and it worked perfectly, as always.
What is interesting - I tried to be a bit more minimalistic this time - and again, it simply didn't happen! Not only the journal is a bit oversized but also the layers got a bit out of control...

I'm pretty pleased with the result - and I hope you will forgive me you had to wait longer than usual for my next tutorial. My travels, designing and simply - life - took over and I couldn't go any faster. Feel free to pin it, share it with your friends - sharing is caring ;)

So here's my brand new Art Recipe - enjoy! 

 And now the whole process, step-by-step
(photos enlarge if you click on them):

1. I've started with cutting some paper scraps into smaller pieces. I chose some printed Ephemera cards, some tags and random pieces of paper with hand-written notes on them. I started layering them and gluing them down on my art journal pages using Art Basics Soft Gel to create multi layered look. When I was happy with the result I covered my scraps with extra coat of Soft Gel - to make it easier to apply a very thin coat of Gesso in places I'd like to keep more visible. I dreid the pages with heating gun.

2. When the pages were dry I took Art Basics Heavy White Gesso and applied a thin coat over them - palette knife was perfect for that. I dried the surface, checked how much of the pattern is visible and repeated the step in selected places. I dried again - and this time I added some stains and splatters in beautiful brown colour - I used my home-made tea stain of course!

3. When the surface was dry I continued the proces of colouring the background by sprinkling a bit of Primary Elements Pigments (Wild Plum) and spraying it with water. After drying I applied couple more coats of Art Basics Heavy White Gesso in the selected places and again a bit of tea stain... and again gesso - until I was happy with the results! When the background looked the way I expected I picked a photo from my "Vintage Collectibles" Ephemera pack, some text cut outs, lace and more paper scraps including elements from "Melange" Ephemera set.

4. I started to layer my scraps of lace, papers and some paper leaves. when I was happy with the composition I added couple of buttons - and finally decorated everything with loads of Art Ingredients Glass Beads and Micro Beads: I applied Art Basics Soft Gel with a brush and sprinkled the beads in selected places. When Soft Gel was dry I added a little more of Primary Elements Pigments and Tea Stain on the top of them  to give them a bit of colour too.

5. I dried all the composition with heating gun and added some finishing touches: I wrote the sentiment with a soft pencil, I splattered a bit of Black Indian Ink and finally, when the pages were dry I used 3D foam tapes to mount my photo in the middle of the composition.

And here it is, finished!I hope you like it :)

Finally  - here is the list of the product I used - all of them are available in our Mixed Media Place Store:

I wish you all a great week - I'm off to the Netherlands in a couple of hours where i expect to meet a bunch of wonderful people:) In the meantime I can tell you a secret: new Creative Team Memebers will be announced  soon...
Sending warm hugs