Summer is coming... but not today

We've had some wonderful weather already but today is overcast and windy. A bit miserable. But here is another art journal page I've completed.

This is decoupaged napkins again and the dragonfly is a rub-on transfer. I'm doing this in my pregnancy book. No, I'm not about to have a baby at 60! I have repurposed a second-hand book from the SPCA shop. It's a really weird book on pregnancy with old wives tales, recipes, strange bits of prose and the most unusual 50s style drawings. Think of it like Buzzfeed. It's just a whole load of different things flung together. On this page I decided to leave a bit of a drawing exposed. The top of the page is the original book page.

I've been playing around making some texture plates for my gel plate. These are cardboard letters that I bought somewhere, probably Warehouse Stationery, and then mounted on to foam core board. I love the look of text in mixed media art works but I'm too cheap to buy stencils. I figured that this would work on the gel plate since they are the right way round which when stamped into the gel plate and then lifted in a print will end up the right way round again. I picked out "happy birthday" first, reckoning on that being useful. Then I filled a board the same size as my gel plate with random letters, numbers and punctuation. Looking at the letters I had left, I could make "bacon", "cove, "zone" and many more but I thought "sun" would be more useful. Here's a fun game; add any other words you can see in the comments, just from the ones that are not on the happy birthday or the big mat.

Well, "sun" ended up being useful on the page above. Of course, if I had stamped it, it would have ended up the wrong way round. I had to ink up half my gel plate, press the stamp into the paint and then stamp it on the other half of the gel plate. Then I printed it on to the white layer of napkin I had pulled off the flower napkins. I cut as close to the letters as I could and then glued it in the book. The white of the napkin disappears when it dries.  I have small letter stamps which I found in the bargain bin at Spotlight. I used them to print "here it comes" in purple ink but I forgot to let it dry and I ended up with most of it on my hand. I went over it with a fine Sharpie instead. I've gone around the words with a glitter gel pen and added lines to the "sun" words. It doesn't show in the photo but nice in real life. I hope you enjoy my page and ramblings. I'll make a video next time - maybe!