February Calendar Journal Page

Hi everyone - sorry for the delay in doing the blog for this month calendar journal page but life seems to be speeding along and there never seems to be enough time for everything!

I did get this months page done but as always it was late but only 5 days lol!! 

OK here's what I did.

I gessoed a page and let it dry the I dripped some Dylusions ink, and some Opalite pigment ink onto the surface and spread it around with a scrapper.  I then sprayed a bit more on and splattered and dripped, sprayed some more and splattered and... well you get the idea!!

I left the centre pale and just let the shimmer of the Opalite ink show!!

Then I did a little bit of ghosting through a Dylusions stencil and splatter it with water to lift off some of the ink.

Next I stamped the day squares round the edge and dried them with the heat tool because the gesso delays the time it takes for the ink to dry.  Next I put a green line of liquid pearls paint round each square to give it some dimension.

At that point I went to bed as it was late and I had absolutely now idea as to what I was going to do next!! 

I was running out of time to get the page done but I really couldn't decide what to do in the centre.  I came back to it several times during the next day but no inspiration struck!!!  Don't you just hate that!!

Late on in the afternoon I saw a picture a friend of mine had drawn of a face and I realised it had been awhile since I had done one and I could fit one in lovely to that space.  So I dug out my favourite Inktense pencils and Neocolour 2 waxed pastels and got started planning on colouring it in with the pencils and putting highlights on with the pastels.  Well as always with me it didn't quite work out that way!

Having pencilled in the basic outline I realised that the background colour made rather a nice face colour so I thought I wouldn't bother colouring that bit in.  So I started drawing in the hair with the pencils which are water soluble and when I wet them to pull the colour out I remembered that the Dylusions ink I had used is reactive to water and it was moving along with the pencil and created a rather nice effect.  So out came the waterbrushes which I have filled with some of the Dylusions inks and I started to paint with them instead.  It worked lovely.  Much quicker than it would have been with the pencils!! Quick is good when you dont have much time!!

So with the addition of some gesso to whiten the eyes and some of the pencils to add details and highlights she started to appear!!! 

I realised that there was something wrong with the proportion of the face but I couldn't figure out what it was.  So a quick trip to the bathroom to have a look at the page in the mirror and it clearly showed that one of her cheeks was way bigger than the other and at a very strange angle.

So back to the waterbrushes and the addition of some more hair on that side and problem solved.  She is still not in proportion but she looks better and as I'm not aiming for perfect (just as well because I could be waiting for a very long time if I was) I decided that I was happy with her.

Then It was just a case of the finishing touches.  I used some Tim Holtz stamps to add FEB and 2015 which I stamped in an archival ink in a matching tone to the background and I stamped lines of numbers all over the background.  Last touch was using a blending tool to add some Distress ink round the edge of the page!!!

Job done!!

Have any of you managed to find time to do the Calendar Journal challenge?  Its a great way to make you find time for yourself each month and to get creating!!

Bye for now!!

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