Christmas pages in my art journal

About a month ago, I shared a random ink and paint background on a journal spread

When I was working on my latest project, I cleaned off some gold paint/stencil on the left and tried out a different version of Effy's ink and rubbing alcohol technique on the right

And suddenly I knew how I wanted to finish these pages. I handmade some candle masks and added turquoise glaze around them

Added outlining with gold pen and adding some extra metallic purple paint to help define the candles

Some meaningful found words

And then I had to have a think about what else the page needed....taking a photo often helps

It just needs a little more in the background I think - to deepen it and make the candles burn brighter ♥ But I'm in New Zealand and it's Summer Solstice time, so didn't want to go too dark. The answer = a darker cerulean blue glaze around and between the candles and some lovely Pebeo iridescent bleu noir through that stencil in several of the brighter background spaces

It's amazing how small touches can make a big difference to this feeling finished. I find it REALLY hard sometimes to use glazes to cover beautiful backgrounds but I am happy with how this turned out in the end. 

To the other side : 

this is obviously going to be a galaxy painting along the lines of the one Effy Wild released with her FREE To See Us Through : A Cosy Winter Workshop this year. 

Next steps in how mine developed : 

Effy's demo above uses watercolours, I used inks with water to help them move. The blue below is Goldens transparent high flow acrylic spritzed with water - when all dry I added the stars

That's my final art before Christmas. Wishing you peace, joy, hope, love and magic ♥