Week 19 : DLP 2015

Information about the FREE Documented Life Project is HERE. 

Really happy to see this week's challenge - I LOVE to combine paper and stitch in my art journal as you will know if you're at all familiar with my blog. In fact, I have a label so you can see all the posts that I've combined Paper and Stitch.
This week's guest artist is Ruth Rae - her page for this challenge is very cool. I have been a fan since I discovered her, I own both her books, and have made a few projects inspired by her work. One of the techniques I've used in the past is that of stitching organza over paper, and thought that would be fun to do again. Started with no idea of what my page would be, but decided flowers would be a great start :

If you click on the photo you can better see the gleam of the organza. I also wanted to try Linda Vincent's technique for making "shabby leaves". Started with a piece of inky newsprint

Free motion stitched leaves upon it

Then you tear them out - I did some double stitching over a couple thinking that might be less rough, but in the end they all came out ragged and imperfect and I LOVE them like this! Will definitely be trying to remember to use this technique again.

Now for the background. A family member visited the other day and asked me what my favourite mixed media piece was that I've made in recent times. It's a hard choice, but I really love this envelope that I did in August last year : 

It combines most of the elements I love - molding paste, stencils, spray, found text, stitch, paper serviettes, combining fabric/paper/stitch together. I used this piece as inspiration for my background for my journal page

I used dylusions sprays over the modeling paste. Delicious. Then it was just a matter of arranging my elements on the page, and as I wrote the word "Laugh", the rest of the words came to me. They make perfect sense on the page and they make me smile ;-)

Click on the photo to enjoy it larger or see it in the Flickr album I've created for all my Documented Life 2015 spreads HERE. 
Here's a close-up so you can better see the scrummy texture

You can see all my posts about this project HERE.