Water Color on Vintage Book Page- A Vintage Journey

Hello friends and visitors! It's time for our newest challenge at A Vintage Journey which is 'Watercolor' chosen by the lovely and talented Amanda! I have always wanted to paint on vintage book pages, and Amanda's challenge was just the nudge I needed to check this off my crafty list! So I picked out my oldest, most falling apart book and got to work!

Amanda says: There is so much versatility in watercolour making it possible to create art that can be gentle, washy and light, or bold, full of colour and with definite lines. And it comes in a variety of guises: pans, tubes, sticks, inks, markers. So for this challenge we would like your projects to include some form of watercoloring or watercoloring techniques and be in keeping with our favoured styles: vintage; shabby; mixed media; art journaling; industrial, timeworn or steampunk.

Not much to write about here; it's just basically Distress inks, a water pen and some stamps. A complete list of products used is listed at the end of this post.

I played around with the inks and stamps in my book while I was away on vacation, but I only brought brushes with me, and it didn't go very well. I have a little more control over the  amount of water used with the pen vs. the brushes, and I like my results better.

The technique is pretty straight forward. Glue a few pages together to give them strength, then paint the pages with clear gesso. This will give a grainy appearance, but the text shows through nicely and your paper won't fall apart from the water.

I splattered my gessoed pages with frisket, a liquid water color mask, which oh, my GOSH, stinks!!!! I've never used it before, and it may just be old. But it smells to high heaven! I digress...Allow this to dry and give the page a wash with yellow and blue Distress inks.

While the paper is still wet, stamp butterfly image that has been inked in Walnut Stain Distress ink. Next, drop in some color- oranges and purple. It's challenging to get just the right amount of moisture so that the ink bleeds, but not too much. You can tell in some of my photos I overwatered! I guess that's both the challenge and the beauty of water color.

 I did some additional stamping around the edges-foliage and off-the-edge butterflies. By this time, the water had dried enough, and I stamped over with a freshly inked butterfly images, offsetting a bit. In some cases, I had to do this more than once, when the paper was not dry enough. I even added some sketchy lines to the big butterfly, because I'd already stamped him twice and it seemed to lack definition. I would not have done that in hindsight.

I splattered on some watered down Dusty Concord and Walnut Stain inks and rubbed off the frisket when the pages were completely dry. A little Sepia Archival ink blended around the edges and a Tim Holtz quote inked in Jet Black Archival finishes it off.

 

That's all for today! I hope you've been inspired to get out your watercolors and join our 'Watercolor' challenge!

Our sponsor this month is Craft Obsessions, and the prize to one lucky winner is a £20 Voucher to the shop! The Creative Guides also pick three Pinworthies who have their work pinned in our PINTEREST gallery. Before you get started, I hope you'll stop by A Vintage Journey to see all the wonderful inspiration from my talented teammates!

Challenges I am entering:

Country View Challenges - August 2017 - Blues and Greens My background uses these colors;  I hope that complies with the theme.

Mixed Media Monthly Challenge #39 - Inspiration Photo Inspired by the vines and the brown in the shingles and the summer garden feeling this photos inspires.

Happy Little Stampers-HLS August Watercolour Challenge

Noor! Designs - August Challenge - Anything Goes

Word Art Wednesday - Anything Goes Challenge #294-#295

Thank you for stopping in today and for your lovely comments!

Hugs and Blessings!

Sara Emily

 Products used:

Stamps: Martha Stewart, Tim Holtz and Emerald Creek

Distress inks: Dried Marigold, Dusty Concord, Fossilized Amber, Mowed Lawn, Mustard Seed,Peeled Paint, Spiced Marmalade, Squeezed Lemonade, Tumbled Glass, and Walnut Stain

Water pen

Clear gesso

Frisket Windsor and Newton