LB2016 : Patch it up - make it shine!

Ivy Newport created this next bonus lesson for Life Book 2016 featuring collage and shining metallics. Go HERE for her blogpost sharing other student work from this lesson.
I started by writing out what I want to leave behind from 2015 - I used walnut ink as she did in her demonstration, and tried a dip pen that I've had for a while but not used

I had difficulty loading it - should have googled first cos I found some instructions afterwards that said to load it using your brush tip loaded with paint/ink. Anyway - it produced a nice thin line and I would like to try using it another time. I also used a small paintbrush and like the variety of lines in my background - and I did a bit of splatter too

I know from the demo that this will probably blur once I start gluing my collage images, but the point is to write out all the negative stuff, and then to cover it with shining beauty. Next up was to gather possible collage items. First was words from magazines - I have a nice variety which I've gathered and stored over time

and imagery - of course I will be including butterflies as well but will add them later

I just gathered what I liked and it's interesting to me to see the circular unfolding elements. I tried this arrangement first - liking the unfurling and that it's a fern

but I had also gathered large flowers because I remembered a couple of journal pages I made for my Full Tilt Boogie journal that I thought could inspire this page :

Left blogged HERE and right blogged HERE

I liked the pen work I did on top of the flowers, the remembered serenity of the woman on the right, and the way the couple on the left came up out of the flower. 

I played about a bit with other arrangements, and decided I really wanted her coming up out of the centre of the flower. Cut that with a scalpel on glass so I could slide her into place

Here's my initial collage - they are mainly images from calendars or shiny magazine paper, so before I did anything else I brushed them all with clear gesso to help future layers grip.

I started by blocking in acrylic colour - the turquoise is iridescent and the coppery colour for her hair is metallic. I've also added acrylics and watercolour pencil details to her face, and smudged charcoal to outline her face and hand. Click on any photo to see it larger.

I enjoyed adding the metallic pen work to the flower 

To be honest, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with the hair, but next step was to add stencils and as I added some background stenciling, I suddenly knew what to do - gold metallic paint and 2 different sizings of the same stencil design

and here's what I did with background and a couple of feature stencils - using iridescent turquoise, gold and copper metallic paints

I decided that using found words from an old large print book were a more suitable size and would better convey what I wanted to say on this page about my hopes for 2016

This photo was taken to better show you some of the "Shine" on the page

and then I decided I needed to add more in the form of a trail of gold mica - fun :-)

Here's my spread complete - the sparkle definitely enhances the positive messages :-)

Click on the photo to see it larger, or go HERE to see my Flickr album of all my Life Book 2016 projects. You can see all my posts about Life Book this year HERE.