You Are My Sunshine

Oh my...three posts in one week and check out what I've been working on!  Seriously, so out of my comfort zone but I am IN LOVE with this art form!  It finally dawned on my last week that the wonderful pages of my Dylusions journal can be just that...a journal!  Not one where I necessarily write down all of the events in a day but where I can record broad thoughts and emotions.  Once that idea struck, I spent hours over the weekend creating background pages, sketching (hello...me sketching?  Just who I am??!), and planning page after page.  I have so many ideas that I wish there were more hours in the day to just create.  (Is it the weekend yet??)

This project is my second full page (still working on finishing the first one) and it was inspired by an art piece that is in my children's bedroom that says, "You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy when skies are grey..."  That song has special significance for me as my mom used to sing it and my strongest memory of her singing it was when she was battling cancer.  She lost the battle when she was just 37...I was 14 so I've carried the "tradition" of singing it to my husband and now my children.  The art piece in my children's room has a sun in the middle of it and I decided that I'd like to create something that was similar that would remind me of my precious boys...who really do make me so darn happy!

I started by using Dylusions Ink Sprays to color the background pages.  What, you don't have Dylusions Ink Sprays?  You need them...like now.  They are amazing!  I used Lemon Zest, Vibrant Turquoise, and and London Blue on these pages.  Once the inks were dry, I went back with the Dotted Flowers stencil and added a few gold polka dots with the a paint dabber.

I used a dinner plate to draw the face outline and then I free handed the face and sun beams with a pencil.  Once I was happy with the drawing, I outlined everything in black sharpie.  To color the face I used a paint brush and the Dylusions Ink sprays.  (Dyan uses a water brush filled with the ink and I'll move to this method of applying the ink as it no doubts works better.)  However, the paint brush worked well and I love that the colors kind of ran together (the ink sprays react with water, like Distress Inks) as it gave a great patina look to the face.  And since I'm no ar-teest, this free form method works better for me.  I colored the sun beams with a Picket Fence Distress Marker (love that thing!)  Then I got busy with a white gel pen and my Sharpie to add highlights and a bit of design elements to the beams and face.

Next...a space for my text and I think adding this curvy text is my favorite thing!  I started by free hand drawing the lines and then using a stamp from the Further Around the Edge stamp set.  Since the stamp is thin I was able to easily bend it along my curved lines for a border.  Added my words and then got to work on more decorating.

I used dictionary paper and decorative paper from Echo Park's Documented paper pad to add birds and the leaves are from a Papertreyink set; they're stamped in Pine Needles Distress Ink (I don't use this color enough and it's beautiful...note to self, use Pine Needles more often!).

And that, my friends, is the completion of my first two-page journaling page...What do you think?  Interested in this type of art?  It's so much fun...the skies the limit, there are no boundries to what you can create! 

PS - My one painful moment and I share this so you don't make the same mistake, is that the ink does bleed through the seam of the journal.  Normally this would be fine but because I used such a light color for the sun, the red from my next page really bled through in the middle of the sun.  I was a wee bit sick about it when I realized my mistake but it's all good, right?  You could also create on every other page to try and cut down on the bleeding.

Enjoy and thanks for hanging in for this very lengthy post!!  Now go out and get inky!