Artsy tile - She was a dreamer

Hi everyone,

hope you all had a good and creative start into 2021. I'm happy to continue working in the VLVS design team for another year to share more stamped art with you. Let's start with the first project for this year.

 I started creating "artsy tiles", which is just watercolor paper cut to a size of 4 x 4 inch and with rounded edges - a little detail that really makes a difference for me. I'm a fan of quick projects (not always, but sometimes you just want to get something creative done without investing much time, right?) and this format sparks my creativity.

When I started working on the tile, I already knew the focal image I wanted to use. So stamping the woman, coloring her and cutting her out was my first step. I used ZIG brush pens for the coloring just because it's one of the easiest methods for me.

As my background highlight I stamped and heat embossed the twilight zone swirl in white. Then I sprayed some Lindy's Gang starburst sprays on top and used the resistance effect I got from the embossing I did before. I went with some complimentary colors to the womans dress to create a harmonious contrast. During the last few weeks I started using my color wheel a lot for inspiration and although I never thought that this is a necessary tool I'm finding it really helpful now.

I added a quote as well as some stars to my tile. They blend nicely into the background. Do you like such subtle details as much as I do? Also, I inked the edges with the same ink pad that I used for the stars.
All that was left to do now was glueing the woman to the background and then I called this project done.

Stamps used:
Beautiful Lady Retro Looking Up (8280)
Twilight Zone Swirl (20506)
Stars (19291)
She Was A Dreamer (19635)

Other material:
- Canson watercolor paper
- Versaclaire ink (nocturne)
- Versamark ink
- Archival ink (paradise teal)
- Starburst sprays (tibetan poppy teal, shabby turbine teal)
- ZIG real brush pens
- WOW! embossing powder (white, ultrafine)

See you soon with another project.

Fortune favors the bold

Hello everyone,

I have a cool art journal page to share along with a little tutorial.

I created my spread in an old book - the same one that I used for my last project here on the blog. I prepped it by glueing a few pages together but didn't used gesso this time. Instead I chose three Distress Oxide Sprays and sprayed them over the whole spread directly. I dried between each color to avoid them fading into each other. 

Then I added some stamping. In the first layer I stamped the Twilight Zone Spiral with water instead of ink. It reacts with the sprays underneath, but not too much so you get a very subtle effect here. I also used the same stamp with Oxide Ink in Iced Spruce, so it matches with one of the colors from my background. And as I just felt like my page needed a little more contrasting element, I added the Waybill Invoice Background stamp with black ink.

To create my little scene, I stamped and watercolored the girl and the mouse. Then did a little fussy cutting and colored the edges with a black marker to make them blend better into the background.

I wanted some kind of table for the adorable mouse to run over and save its cheese, so I took a piece of design paper with that laths pattern, trimmed it to size (in fact I ripped it over the edge of a ruler to make the edge a little grungy) and blended some Oxide Inks over the edges. 

When I started to put everything together I found that my background was missing something, so I added a few stamped Chevrons and some white splatters and that helped a lot. 

I glued the girl and the "table" directly to the page and used foam tape behind the mouse. To make everything look a little more connected, I added a little shadow under my two protagonists.
For my quote I stamped both text stamps on the same design paper that I used earlier and also glued them in place. Behind the #FOODIE snippet I added some black thread as it was kinda floating in the middle of nowhere.

These are the stamps I used:
#Foodie (20010)
Surprise Girl (5544)
Waybill / invoice background (19416)
Writing Chevron (19824)
Twilight Zone Swirl (20506)
Fortune favors the bold (19949)
Mouse running with cheese (12653)

Other materials:
- Old book (or other journal) 
- Versafine Clair Ink (Nocturne)
- Distress Oxide Spray (Dried Marigold, Faded Jeans, Iced Spruce)
- Distress Oxide Inks (Iced Spruce, Ground Espresso, Black Soot)
- Watercolor
- White acrylic paint
- Design Paper with wood pattern
- Canson Watercolor Paper
- Black thread


That's it for my project. See you soon!