Warning! This project is grungy.  Perfection need not apply.  It took about 45 minutes of actual crafting time (not counting letting ink sprays dry overnight) and most of that was taken up drawing the patterns. All that beautiful color took about 10 minutes!

Dylusions Creative Blank Journal

Dylusions Ink Sprays-Lemon Zest, Pure Sunshine, Squeezed Orange, Melted Chocolate

CraftersWorkshop 6×6 Stencils- Mini Cubist and Mini Harlequin

StazOn Inkpad-Jet black

Pentel White Gel pen

Pilot FriXion Color-Pencil-Like Gel Pen-Sky Blue, Rose Pink, Gray

Micron Pigma Pen .05-Black, Sepia

Roll of Paper Towels

Water Mister

Heat gun (optional)

Wet Coffee Cup (optional)

The Dylusions journal has a mix of white and manila cardstock pages and I wanted to test both so I did a two-page spread where the left side was the white paper and the right was the manila (the results were about the same on both sides).

The ink sprays:

1. I sprayed both pages with the ink, using these techniques:

• inks were sprayed lightest to darkest

• the distance from which I sprayed was varied
• the length of time of time I sprayed was varied–I did short, barely there bursts of color and long saturated close ups of color.

–all common sense techniques, but you do get different effects by doing them.

2. The paper towel (the whole roll) was swiped across the page to soak up excess. I keep the paper towels to use in other projects because they are so pretty.

3. I let it dry overnight:. The pages were thoroughly drenched, so I wanted to make sure they were completely dry.

The Stencils:

4. I laid my stencils down randomly on the page and used one or more of these techniques each time:

• Misted with water, rolled paper towels over stencil to pick up color.

• Sprayed through stencil with ink spray; flipped stencil over and rubbed off color somewhere else on page

I didn’t worry about using the entire stencil.  It’s cooler if you just get bits of them.

I happened to be drinking coffee and the bottom of my cup had a little condensation on it–I stamped it on the page to get a few coffee ring shapes!

5. I let the pages dry for a few hours, but I could have used a heat gun.

I’d seen the outline of the elephant, and that determined what I wanted to stamp and draw.

The Pens and stamps:

6. I drew the elephant’s eye and colored it with the Microns.  This is the only place where I used the sepia Micron.

7. I outlined the elephant’s shape.

8. I stamped the Elephant images– the interior cover of the sketchbook flexed when I stamped the Elephant & Mountain, and the elephant’s head was lost!  I just scribbled a tree, so now the image is an elephant standing behind a tree and mountain! It don’t matter when you’re having fun!

9. I added zentangle-ispired patterns in some places and just picked out shapes that the ink and water had made in others.  My choices throughout were driven by the shapes of the color.

11. Color-Pencil-Like Gel pens were used to color the stamped images, and to add a bit of pink and gray here and there around the page where I thought an area needed to be brightened or dulled down.

12. The white gel pen was used to add highlights and make the stamped images pop.

I borrowed heavily from Dyan Reavely’s ink spray and stenciling techniques for this project.  You can find many of her video tutorials online.

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