Just playing

This morning I decided that I would just play at making backgrounds in my journal.  I haven't started any of my Take Me Deeper pages for May so I thought if I could do the backgrounds that might motivate me.

Do you collect ideas and pictures on Pinterest?  I do

Do you ever do anything with what you've pinned?  Me neither!

However, I did see this technique - without instructions - and thought I'd give it a go.  But first I needed to buy Bleeding Tissue.  Bearing in mind that bleeding is often used as a swear word it was with trepidation that I googled it.  Fortunately Amazon came to my rescue and I was able to order some from Sell Lounge UK which I rather assumed was a UK Amazon Marketplace vendor.   When I was notified that the tissue had been dispatched on May 22nd it said the parcel would be delivered sometime between May 30th and June 19th. This sent me scurrying back to Amazon to find out why.  Turns out it was coming from New Jersey, USA.  Good news though!  It arrived on May 27th.  So today was play day!

I cut some of the tissue into hexagons.  I lightly wet the journal page with water and put the tissue hexagons on to the page.  I didn't worry about what colour I was picking up and putting on the page.  I sprayed the tissue with more water.

Being impatient! I dried the page with my heat gun and as the tissue dried it popped off the page leaving the dye behind.

With these pages I decided to make more of a colour choice.

And with the tissue removed.

On these pages I experimented with all the pieces I had left from cutting the hexagons.  I put the pieces on the page so they were overlapping and then I wet the other page and put it down on top of the bits.

I peeled the pages apart and it looked like this.

I sprayed more water and pressed the pages together again.  And then peeled the pages apart again.

I dried the pages using the heat gun again.

The dried hexagons that came off the first two sets of pages had been dyed by the process.

I glued them to the pages with Soft Gel Medium.

For the final play, I cut the tissue into strips of varying lengths and into squares.

Wetting the page I put the strips and squares onto the wetness and then sprayed with water again.

This time I left the pages to dry rather than speeding up the process.   I wanted to see whether if it dried on its own the tissue had more time to bleed.

 The dry pages.

I love playing with backgrounds where you have no idea what you are going to get.  It's serendipity.

Don't you just love the word serendipity?

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

The Viaduct

Earlier Mary W left a comment about the viaduct photo so today I am putting the rest of my photos of it.

As you walk towards it, it just looks like an ordinary viaduct.

And then when you get underneath you get these amazing shapes.

Mary suggested the photos should be used to inspire some art.  I agree but have no idea what!

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Thankful and excited!

My blogging seems to have fallen by the wayside a bit.  Last week we went away for a few days to celebrate our wedding anniversary.     We did a bit of a detour so that I could get a photo of this amazing viaduct.

I've been really busy leading a book study on His Kingdom Come and planning new classes.
And that's what I am excited about.  I am working on a new altered book class called The Promised Land.

The class will have sections on how to alter a book and then a whole section on how to use that book for a study of these verses:

For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land - a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey;   Deuteronomy 8:7-8

And why am I quite so excited when I haven't even started filming the class yet?   Well, amazingly on Sunday I found the negatives of photographs I took in October 1995 when Andy & I went on a trip to Turkey.   At the time I was researching The Promised Land plants for an embroidery course I was on and I was fortunate to see and photograph olives, figs, pomegranates, date palm and grapevines.   On Monday I sent them off to be digitised and they came back yesterday on a CD and I now have all those photos to use for the Altered Book class.  I just need to find the photos I took last year of wheat and barley.

In amongst the photos was this one - showing Andy sitting on the pontoon waiting for a watersports class.   Wasn't he cute?

I'd better get back to my planning.

Thanks for stopping by.

Bernice