Journal52 Last prompt of 2014 #Journal52 #ArtJournal #ArtJournaling

The last Journal52 prompt for 2014 was Circles (fear not--the Journal52 workshop continues on into 2015 and it's still free!  If you are new, and want to join in, check out the newbie page.  If you've been journaling along, check out the What's New page.  If you just want to start journaling--the first prompt for 2015 is Pathways).

There was a bit of synchronicity for me.  A friend, who was in the process of closing her wineshop forever, gave me a sackful of foil winecaps.  I had been debating ways to use the caps when I saw Prompt 52--foil winecaps are round!

The theme for my 2014 Journal52 prompt has been 'simple', as in KISS, 'Keep it Simple, Stupid' (and I intend to carry through with the for 2015).  So my plan was to flatten the foil caps, glue them down and add something for more texture.  The steps to my process are below, for those who are interested.


1.  I dug through my bag of foil caps, looking shiny, one-color ones to provide the base of my page, and more interesting two-color caps for the ones on top.

2.  I cut around the edge of each cap 10-12 times, so that I could flatten them out easily.  It gave them a rather steampunk floral look.


3. I used a Shock Dark Blue Montana Acrylic Paint Marker to color the background.  Any dark blue acrylic paint would have done--but the Montana Marker is super quick to use, and provides nice, even coverage with little texture or slickness, making it easy to glue and mark on.


4. I lay down bottlecaps, moving them around until I had a general idea of the layout I wanted.

5. Using, Alene's Tacky Glue, I glue down the bottom layer of foil caps, using the shiny one-color ones.  A good portion of this layer gets covered up, so I mainly wanted shine and texture to show through, and didn't want to waste more interesting caps in this layer.

6.  Golden's Clear Tar Gel is a medium similar to gel medium (Mod Podge, Decoupage mediums, etc.).  Like most decoupage mediums it comes out of the bottle white, but dries clear.  The Clear Tar Gel has a different texture than most decoupage medium.  You can dribble it onto the page in thin lines--strings--to get a ropy look to your texture.  It's also very tacky, so it's like adding an additional layer of glue.

I dribbled ropes of the Clear Tar Gel over a good portion of the page,


7.  At first, I considered switching to a different mediums for my last step, but decided to stay with the Clear Tar Gel.  What I did, though, was mix it with some Acrylic paint to add color.  Since I had a dark blue background, I went with Claudine Helmouth's Alternate Orange.  The tar gel dilutes the color somewhat turning it more into a salmon-color, but still--orange against blue.  That's always going to POP!

8. I used a popsicle stick (see the pun there? Hmmm?  Popsicle stick to add paint that will pop? Oh, okay, so it's not that funny.  But it tickled my funny bone, anyway) to drizzle the colored tar gel onto the page.

9.  I got too enthusiastic, and added too much tar gel, so that it was running together and losing its textured look.  I took the popsicle stick and drew swirls, lifting away some of the gel.  In other areas, I blotted with a paper towel to give it a different texture.  It was New Year's Eve, so there may have been Tequila involved in my decision making.


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