Art Journal Page Progression...

Hi there everyone!  I hope you are staying warm!  It's really cold and super snowy here, and I have a heater going on my feet as I type this.  To give you an idea of the amount of snow we have right now, here's a pic of Michael shoveling our deck today...

And last week we had no snow at all!  Amazing.

Anyhoo, back to the crafting world...  I have an art journal page to share with you today, and I actually remembered to take some photos of the process, which I hope you enjoy!

Here's my Book of Days page for November 30...

And here's how I got there...

This is how the page looked when I started - pretty much.  The image of the sunset on the yellow scrapbook paper was already there; part of the book when I made it a long time ago.  The left side was the collage of plaid and pink papers.  My first thought was -  I wanted to make the two pages flow together better, so I added a light coat of gesso to the left side and started smearing some yellow paint....

I decided to cover up the photo with some cardstock; and then I could just play to my hearts content; without worrying about ruining the image...

 Here you can see the first three layers:  1. Yellow paint smeared with a credit card; 2. Some of Julie Balzer's border stencils and some bubblegum pink dylusions spray; and then 3. Stenciling on top of that with gesso.  Wonderful fun...

 At this point I was done spraying, so I uncovered the photo.  I just started adding collage bits, stamping and tape here and there, with a little bit of neocolor II crayon to pull the purple color over into the left side.  I loved how the bright colors tied in with the photo, but the neon felt a little too in your face, so I started adding some brown to tone it down...

and here's the finished page again.  I covered most of the spread with the brown transparent paint, but left bits of the bright colors to show through here and there.  I also added some more crayon, gesso and stamping, before finishing the page with my journaling.

 I had no idea how this page was going to turn out when I started. I am learning more and more to be intuitive and playful, and not overthink things, and I love that.

I've also been working to finish my "One Little Word" minibook before the year is over, and I'm excited to share it with you!  Have you picked a word for 2013?  I have - it's "Balance."  More on that to come...

Thanks so much for visiting me, and for your kind comments!  They truly make my day!  See you again soon!