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Hi guys ! I am submitting to be part of the Design Team of a brand I love and you have seen me use over and over: ColourArte. A good thing I am an early bird and wake up early on the weekend because I have only today to create and share this project.

I went to my happy place: my art journal. This is where I explore and experiment and record where I am, where I kind of check in within myself.

For this project, I used my small Dylusions journal because it is almost finished, only a few spreads left. And tried to go with my flow. Meaning minutes of me staring at it… wondering and pondering about the next step. But it is more than okay, it happens. I made a video AND a picture step by step for you (don’t get used to it lol)

I have a list of the supplies I used at the end of this blogpost so scroll down to get to it 😉

I began by tearing some book pages into different sizes pieces and glued them with gel matte medium. I covered the criss with some tape to make it a bit stronger. I know some of you will cringe at the idea of destroying a book, I was at first a few years ago but bought some for like 50 cents at our local library, dedicated to this purpose.

Once completely dry, I covered with gesso but the paper and text showing through in some areas. I used a fluffy brush and went in all directions possible to create some beautiful, yet not overwhelming, texture.
I am not the patient kind so much, so I used my heat gun to dry it faster.

The next step was playing with some Silks glazes. I love that they are not opaque, so the first layer was still visible underneath. I wanted something giving me a fresh feeling and painted patches of colors, once after the other. It’s okay to have them overlap now and then. Let it dry.

When dry to the touch, I picked a stencil that brought me the idea of thinking outside of a box, taped it on my page, and applied a thin layer of matte gel medium on top. I wanted that layer to be fairly thin so the drying time would not be too extended (remember… I was working on a clock for this project ;)). My heat gun was a real friend today !

In order to bring everything together, I decided to mist over the entire spread (scary !). For that, I mixed two colors of Primary Elements (the shimmery pigment powder) with water, in a Mini Mist bottle. Oh my… I loved how it turned out ! I used a baby wipe to wipe over the stenciled shape, to make it pop more. It is still subtle but I like it like that.

With a foam applicator, I went over the edges with a darker brown.

Once again… dry.

I liked it as is and just needed one last step, my message. I used a very fine brush and the Black Ice silk to write it.

I hope you enjoyed it. Had so much fun making it for you <3

Here is the list of the supplies I used for this project:

Soft Gel	Catalyst Mini-Blade #02	Liquitex Acrylic Gesso	Dina Wakeley paintbrushes	Caribbean Mist-Silk Glaze
Lemondrop silk	Evening Primrose silk	Bolivian Blue-Silk Glaze	Plum Blossom silk	Byzantine stencil
Mini Mister	Autumn Butternut PEAutumn Butternut PE	Ginger Peach PE	Blending Tool	Chestnut Butternut
Black Ice – Silk Glaze

InLinkz.com

When I don’t know anymore, I usually have a few options:

• I take an existing ugly painting and completely rework it (remember my Operation Cover Up ?).
• Or I sketch with no intent (Nixies and Sprixies that will unfortunately never make it to the canvas).
• Or I play with what i do know.

For this Nixie, Nymphea, I took a rather big canvas (18×24”), set it up on my easel (which does not happen often, when I think about it. I mostly work on my Studio table…) and started to play with textures. Because this is what I know. Because this is what makes me happy. 

She is very very heavily textured. Modeling paste, gesso, crackle medium, gel medium… all my favorites are on the first layer. The hardest part in using them is having to wait for them to be 100% dry. 
Of course, i also had to play with stencils, because I always do. I tried to apply crackle medium through one and it did not come out the best but I like how it went (you can see on one of the pic below).

I currently have an obsession with blending colors together, so this is what I did for her hair. I love when two colors come together to make a new one,  but that we can still see there differences (if that makes sense ?), I love the feeling of the paint on the surface, even when I have to be careful not to break any of the texture created in the previous layer(s).

Nymphea went through many stages, many many layers to have her look like this eventually. Ugly stages happened, as everytime. But I knew she was important. I knew she needed my devotion to her. I knew she would be amazing (to me). She will be the Water Element card in my Oracle deck in the work.

I had to let her be.

A few more pictures:

It’s been quite some time since my last {In Motion} video, that’s true. But I had a blast during the Vlog Everyday in February project, to be honest.

I did not want to play in my art journal for this video, so I just grabbed what is familiar: an 8×10″ canvas board, some happy colors of acrylic paint (out of my comfort zone, though) and off I went.

What I love about Rayna is that I did not struggle much about bringing her to life, about seeing her (I actually went from the crown-ish thing on her). I loved playing with embossing powders (using my favorite brand, Lindy Stamp Gang) for her head piece thingy, keeping it on the abstract side of the spectrum.

Covering (almost) everything in the background with thick white paint (and this time a bit of grey added to it) can be scary, and I don’t know if I can say that it becomes less and less scary with time, but there is a lot of freedom that is associated to it, that I am sure. And I really like that we can still see some of the beautiful layers peaking through underneath.

Here are a few pictures:

I love Sundays.

I usually wake up before everyone, except Kalyani (we seem to have an internal clock in sync… weird !) so I go in the Studio for quiet creative time. Today, I finished a Nixie I really really like, she does not have a name yet but she symbolizes the Element of Air for my Oracle Deck in the Making (titled Soul Deck for now). I like the peace happening on my weekend mornings in the Studio that does not seem to exist on week days, even if I go early. Wondering how come is that. Funny how paintings have a mind of their own, no matter how you try to pull it into a specific direction, if it is not the one intended by (whatever you want to call… I say The Universe, The Divine, but you might say Greater Spirit or even God…) The Universe, then it does not matter what I truly want.
The only thing I don’t like about Sundays is that it means back to work for my husband the day after and it makes it hard on my Soul to be apart from him.

This morning was the usual calls with the family in France, bits of errands… I helped Antho finish my bath caddy but we now have to way for the varnish to dry as it needs like six different coats (!). Excited for my bath next week 😉 We needed a shelf for our garage but Costco did not have the one like we already have so we came home with fruits instead (ahah).

Girls played with friends outside for a few hours, so good not to have to wait for Summer for that, can not believe we had our first barbecue of the year today ! I hope we won’t jinx the beautiful sunny days because gosh, we need vitamin D !

so yay… nothing excited today either but it was overall a good day and I take them as amazing so I can hold on to them when bad days strike.

How was your weekend ? What are you planning for the week ahead ?

xo

While I am still figuring out how to set up my shop on my website, I listed two new Nixies in my Etsy shop.

Meet Lisa:

And Madison (who was inspired by Mindy’s latest online class, Primitive Portraits 3)

I have also been having tons of fun creating and flying custom Soul Whispers to help people honour their One Little Word/Guiding word for 2015. And did you know you can contact me so we can work together to create a beautiful one of a kind painting ? I love doing that, so don’t be afraid and shoot me a message <3