Allure {Art Journal Spread}

Today I am sharing a double page spread in a traveling art journal. I participated in a journal swap a few months back and I sort of dropped the ball on a couple of spreads... well I'm playing catch up and trying to make it up to those lovely artists... so here is one spread I finished up and mailed out this AM. 

The shape of the journal was a neat change in my routine.. curvy delicious sort of butterfly shaped pages. Each journal was themed, and this one said Madame X on the front.. it had a really gorgeous sort of corset stitch closer and some heart dangle beads. Add that to the few who had worked in the journal before me which gave me this sort of pink stripe in the binding.. and I knew the direction I was headed.  I promise you there is A LOT of beauty in these pages.. and the closeups show you tons of texture, layering, and lots of really great techniques have been utilized to complete this spread. SO... Here they are! 

The Left Page

The Right Page

The background is made up of vintage ledger pieces and old book pages that I had previous diecut for other projects. Never throw out anything right? I love the ledger paper with the vintage #s in this photograph. It's such a beautiful piece.

Here is more of that delicious ledger paper... YUM! I also layered up some drywall tape which has quickly become an absolutely favorite of mine. I adore the little perforation it has and the circles it adds to the background. All the background pieces were put down with Golden's Fluid Acrylic. Then I used Blick gesso to swipe and highlight areas of the background. It also camouflaged some of the hard edges from my papers. A bit of glazing was done with some gray paint and glazing medium.

I drew the lines and circles with a fineliner, golden fluid acrylic in carbon black and airbrush medium. There are drops and some hand drawn doodles, circles, and dots with a Sakura of America Micron pen. I also did a bit of lovely hand stitching using some super thick hemp cord in this beautiful charcoal color. Picked this up at Hobby Lobby. SO glad I did! The pink is from Tim Holtz's Distress Stain in worn lipstick. LOVE the sweet pink against the neutral background.

The flair (or button) is from a newer set at UmWowStudio called Noel. The colors fit perfectly with a brand new christmas lined I designed for 7 Dots Studio --- BUT it can be used out of context just as well. I loved the stitching that was it and it was perfect to mimic on the page. I also did some stamping in Gray Flannel by Memento with the new Numbers Set I designed for Viva Las VegaStamps!.

I ended up tearing out my pages, cutting off the scraggly binding part and then doing a bit of machine stitching to add more texture. I sewed in white to keep the contrast low. And finally.. this little bit of goodness that finishes off the page.. I recently got a stack of beautiful vintage dictionary pages and found this one quite relevant to the theme of this journal! The tone of it was very.. alluring! haha. First I used matte medium to put down some muslin, and then the dictionary page.. and finally all the machine stitching.