Journal pages

Just a quick post in between doing other things, but I promised to show you the finished Mermaid Journal page, so here she is.... hope you like her. I kept the page very soft by using hardly any penwork at all. All the colouring is done with pencil crayons and the outlining is plain lead pencil. I did use a black fineliner pen on the eyes to bring them more to life and I also used a white pen to add one or two highlights. I'd wanted to add some gold leaf highlights too but, typically, couldn't find where I had last put my leaf metal sheets! I did find some home decor stickers that I got from a car boot sale years ago - they are clear, sticky backed panels with random gold areas on them. So, I cut out a few teeny tiny pieces and adhered them to the Mermaid's tail and some of the fish! They took forever, being so fiddly, so I decided to leave things as they are and will add some more gold when my leaf sheets turn up!
I bought an old book called "Aeronautical Engineering" from a charity shop a few weeks ago...it has lots of diagrams that I thought had a steampunky look. I took a couple of pages that caught my eye and, after tearing them down a bit, stuck them into my journal with plain old glue stick. I used a Ranger Snow Cap paint dabber to work over the pages, leaving some areas exposed. When I'd seen these headings in the book I knew that I wanted to use them as they were really appropriate to how I have been feeling! In case you can't zoom in, the headings are "Overhaul", "Inertia Starter" and "Overhaul Carried Out"! I used my Neocolour Watersoluble crayons to scribble black and two shades of red lightly over the surface before using a damp brush to blend them together. This technique let me keep the words as visible as I wanted. It's surprising how little actual colour you need to apply to be able to wash a nice background over a two page spread. So, here's the finished page...I don't feel like the overhaul has been carried out yet, so I wrote "Must Have" above it and drew a sign underneath stating "Urgent!". I drew the robot with a fineliner black pen and added some shading with grey Promarkers and used a red for some of the loose wires and the buttons. I drew in the cogs and nuts that are falling out of "my" ear with the fine pen, again, shaded with grey. I added the random border with a Sharpie black pen and finally used a white pen to add a few highlights here and there. I don't feel rebooted yet, but creating this spread did make me smile inside!
I'll be sure to bring my Journal with me on Saturday, so if you are coming along to Card-io, in Wigan, feel free to have a closer look!