2020 #9 Pirate Dreams with ESC {by Carol Fox}

2020 Topic 9: Collage It

Carol has made a marvellous albeit moody page with some hidden collaged tags. The beautiful themed journal page with an adorable pirate has so many textured layers but I still can't find what Carol calls her 'bodged stamping'! 
~ Keren, Leandra

Hi everyone, it's Carol with you today, and I'd like to share with you a page in my A4 Journal.

I am normally a planner when it comes to journaling, I think this comes from when I used to run regular journaling classes as I always had to know exactly where it was going to be, to be able to teach it. I have found it very hard to get out of this habit, but this page is a "suck it and see page" no planning just play, a few  "oops' that was a mistake moments" a lot of moaning in my head at myself... and the cat who sat there the whole time watching me and batting the end of my paintbrush, but it worked out in the end and it was fun.

The finished page and the tags that pop into pockets behind the page.

My only bit of real planning; finding colours that would go well with my collage image. I used this image as it looks like a pirate and worked well with the stamps on ESC11. These were the only colours I used apart from Cloud 9.

I did a bit of stamping and then added some collage elements. I realised at this point I should have added my main image and then stamped, but I saved this mistake and I show you how in the next image.

I stamped my image onto tissue paper and glued it over the stuck down collage image, it actually looked better that if I had just stamped it as the tissue made it darker and blended the image in better.

I now got to this point and realised I had got so carried away I had forgotten any photos. But all I did was dry brush on my paint colours  using them to blend the smaller collage elements into the background before add the compass from ESC11 and colouring it with pencils to make it pop a little bit.

Here I have used PS100 and Cloud 9 paint to fill gaps.

I used a different element from the same stencil with Bougainvillea paint. My image has quite a lot of pink on it and I felt it needed this to gel it all together a little bit.

I also lightly sprinked on some Rusty Car Infusions, spritzed them with water and quickly dried it before too much of the rust element was activated as I wanted the orange and pink shades to be the strongest.

It looked a bit gappy round the edges so I used Grunge Paste and stencil PS036 to add texture, when dry I overstamped it using the text element from HP1304 and black archival ink.

I added pockets behind my page, by drawing round my tags on the back of the page and then gluing this and the next page together leaving gaps where my tags would go. My tags would extend beyond the edge of the page. I love things to stick out or dangle from the sides and top of my journals.

For my tags I used my Gelli plate to add a bit of colour. I only used Glacier Ice but this pulled some of the dried paint off my Gelli plate so it was a ready made background.

I used stamps from ESC11 from all my images adding a quote from ESC17 to one of my tags and the stencil PS074 which has the lovely diamond element on it.

I am glad I made the mistake with my collage image as I think re-stamping the stamped element onto tissue paper and adding over the top really grounds my image and gives a lovely gloomy darkness to my page.

I realised when I had finished my page that I had used no black paint (a first ever for me) all my edging and blending is done with a couple of Gelatos. Any blendable pencil or stick will work the same, just a soft element that you can smudge with your finger. I also used this around the edges of my printed collage elements as it softened the cut edges and blended them into the page a little bit.

I did end up with a couple of gappy bits on this (especially on the tags) that I just filled with black text stamping I did have a bit of a thing with one of the tags, my image just kept going wrong and three tags later I just thought " no I am going to bodge this" so I did and it looks ok, and no I am not going to tell you which tag it was, that is for you to try and suss out.

Have a happy day, Carol xx

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