Journal Page with Portfolio oil pastels

Hi, thanks for all the good wishes with our new venture...quite excited!.....anyway I've been playing with my Portfolio Oil Pastels again and this is the journal page I've created with them.

It's a variation of the bleaching technique from Lin Brown. I started by laying down some random blocks of colour over the whole page and then blended them with my finger. I used JOFY stencil PS009 and a just damp babywipe to wipe away and bleach out the colour.

I then used the Lin Brown stencil PS001 stencil for the dots and the stalks from the Lin Brown PS004 stencil.

I've used one of the white pages from the Finnabair Vintage Vanity Journal as a base. At this stage I added some white sketched lines and black dots and lines with Posca pens. I also applied some shading around the petals and stalks with a pencil.

I just felt there wasn't enough contrast, so I used Distress markers in a variety of colours to add more depth and used a damp paintbrush to blend them.

I also used some treasure gold to highlight the centres of the flowers.

I'm quite taken with these pastels which aren't very expensive to have a play with...sorry ..explore your creativity with!

Not entering in any challenges, just thought I'd share. Thanks as always for stopping by.

Exciting news!!

Hi everyone, I've been wanting to share some exciting news with you and today I finally can! There is a new Mixed Media Challenge blog starting Thursday Oct 2nd over here and I've been lucky enough to be picked to be part of the Design Team! I feel really honoured and thrilled to be part of such a talented team. Anyone whose followed me will know I love mixed media and that I may have occasionally mentioned attending classes at The Artists Trading Post and in particular Sue Carringtons classes....so I'm in crafty heaven!

In the run up to the first challenge the Design Team are being revealed this week.... so it would be lovely if you would pop over each day and meet the team.....and on Thursday I will be sharing my first DT project with you so don't forget to pop back to see what I've created....as always thanks for stopping by Ruth x

Autumn Colours

Some things just aren't meant to be..I thought I had  a great idea for the current CC3C challenge Effect powders, but it's now sitting in the corner of the work desk waiting to be altered in another way. Then I thought I'd have a go at the September Tim tag, however after several attempts I just can't get the alternative faded layers technique right....but there are a few more days yet so I may have another attempt.
So what shall I share? Well these are 2 more journal pages from my holiday but they were not an easy road either, however I'm fairly happy with them now so the moral is...if at first you don't succeed, put it down and come back to it later!

Autumn always makes me think of the beautiful colours of falling leaves. I used some portfolio oil pastels for the background as well as stencilling on some texture paste and using torn strips of paper. For 3 of the leaves I've used a CW stencil and stamped a CI text stamp through the skeleton stencil first, then watercoloured with distress markers in a variety of colours before clear embossing and fussy cutting them out. I've further shaded on some areas with DI. For the remaining leaf I've used the same stencil and smoothed some texture paste through. For those who read my previous post you'll know I took minimal supplies so I made some texture paste from a recipe I'd remembered reading about....cornflour, gel medium and PVA...but I forgot to add some white paint and although it worked well enough for the project it didn't have the same 'tooth' or grip as grunge paste. I then shaded in with portfolio oil pastels again.

 I finished the pages yesterday by gluing in some text stamped on to tissue paper in potting soil archival. I'm entering this in the Artistic Stamper September challenge as the theme is Autumn Colours. I'm also entering it in the September challenge at Our Creative Corner which has a picture inspiration. The picture of the leaves and bark inspired me and although the leaves are green in the photo, I just had to make them a variety of Autumnal shades, the bark also inspires the stripped away areas and distressed background. Finally I'm entering it in the current challenge chosen by Astrid at A Vintage Journey which is 'The Colours of Autumn'. I hadn't seen Anna-Karins post till after but the journal pages are very much influenced by Tims grungy style and colour palette.

As always thanks so much for stopping by.