Sunshine in my heart

This spring, we had an Echo Park week over at Scrap-Perras blog.

I really wanted to show the nice papers, so I thought: Why not use a technique called "Paper piercing"? It's a technique where you cut out pieces of your girl, in different patterned papers, and the glue the girl back together.

On this page I was inspired by Junelle Jacobsen, a really talented american woman that makes lovely Art Journals with a base of a sketch of her idea. :)

Here is a video tutorial that I made while I created the Art Journal. Hope you enjoy it! :)

I used some of the papers from Echo Park "Bundle of Joy - Boy". And I created the background with them. :) Maybe they don't show that much on the finished page, but they still create a depth and layer on layer. For me it's important that they are there, and I love it. :)

This is a technique that I started my Art Journal adventure with, back in February 2012. To layer paper up on paper, creating several layers on the background - this is a technique I first saw Christy Tomlinson do. And I was sooo inspired. :) So this page is kind of going "back to basic" for me. Fun! Fun! Fun! :)

Ah, this photo is just pure joy! :)

Sometimes people ask me why I use those papers on the background, if they don't show... but here you can see why. The papers are shining through, and it creates more layers. :)

On this page I worked with Golden Fluid Acrylics, and they are really great to work with. They give kind of a different shine to them, then other acrylic paints, and their impression is kind of airy with the transparency of the paint. I like them, but they are quite expensive.  

A close up of the lovely patterned papers from Echo Park. They are so colorful and the pattern is great, I think.

As you can see on this close up, I grunged them up slightly with rub ons, stamps, paint and some doodling. Love it! :)

This was the hard part with the page - painting her hair. Gah! I don't know how many times I repainted it.... It was so hard to get the bun to stand out from the rest of her hair... finally I painted a silvery contour around the bun. Maybe sheeting.... this is something I need to practice more with.

Arn't the singing birds adorable? :)

It is really fun to sit and paint with a brush and acrylic paint for artists. It makes you feel like a real artist yourself. :)