Love and Fear

What's this?  Two posts in two days?!!  Shocking!
I thought it might be nice to share a little bit of journal art that I have been experimenting with.  I was looking to try something new to me when I saw THIS tutorial on Pinterest by Nine Scrap.  Her awesome blog is in French, which I don't speak, but her work is GORGEOUS.  Fortunately for me, her photography broke through the language barrier and I was able to follow along.  Here's what I came up with.

I don't own spray ink (yes, dear husband, there are art supplies that I DON'T own), so I just watered down some Golden liquid acrylics as a substitute.  I actually love using liquid acrylics in place of inks because they are permanent and won't move around when I add subsequent layers.  Layers moving around when I don't want them to is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, you know.

After following along for the first few layers, I sort of started down my own path and used gel medium to attach a heart torn from a Japanese book.  I added color to the heart with Gelatos and then blended it all together with gesso and my finger.  When the heart was totally dry, I sanded it a bit to reveal the layers.  After the whole thing was dry, I used an Inktense pencil and a waterbrush, to shade the heart and the letters, because, apparently, I just can't help myself. 

While I was finishing up the page, the neighbor girl was looking over my shoulder. She said that it was "so cool".  I thought so too.  So thank you Nine Scrap for the inspiration.  Both myself and the neighbor girl are impressed with your skills!