An Abundance of Dandelions

I am happy to have finished another Wanderlust lesson which I actually started almost on time but then got delayed sourcing materials and then waiting for things to dry, so they sat around for a bit while I gave it some extra thought.  This is the lesson from week 4 with Shay Michelle, and it required a brown paper bag.  In the UK, brown paper bags or in fact any kind of bag is no longer as readily available as they used to be (although we have never bought into that brown bagged grocery type here) and for the last few years if you want a bag to take home what you purchased in a shop, then you have to pay for it!  So bags are quite thin on the ground these days.  My local supermarket has finally got rid of those very very thin plastic bags that were always available for putting your fruit and veg in, and while that is a good thing, what they have replaced them with are bags that fall apart whenever you put something with any weight in it, you know, something like fruit or vegetables lol.  I took my zucchini to the self-weighing scale, weighed them, put them in the bag and they promptly fell through the bottom!  Completely pointless if they can’t stay together long enough to get out of the shop!  So I thought about using one of those but I could only see disaster and heartache, and that is why I was delayed in starting this lesson.  Eventually I found these lovely brown paper items lying around the house…

On the left, some very handy brown paper that amazon used in a box of things I ordered (thanks amazon!) and on the right, a small brown paper bag from the chemist.  Sometimes they use these and sometimes they use white bags, so I was lucky to get one of the brown ones.

As this is a class lesson, there is no tutorial, just a starting out photo and a lot of photos of the finished page.

This lesson used a technique that was similar to one I’ve used before on Christmas cards, gotta say, IMO it worked a lot better on my Christmas cards lol.  Trying to get this technique to work was another reason that this lesson took so long.  I set up a few different pages as I wasn’t sure which of them would work – if any – and left them to dry while I got on with other things.  In the end, I decided to use all three of them because I hate waste.  This post is all about the one on the left, I will write up the other two later, there are too many photos for just one post!

Here’s a look at some of the gorgeous blue metallic watercolour paint I got recently.  I’m been using metallic watercolour for a while now but this set is from an English company and I got a set of 12 for £10 which I think is awesome!  The pans are not huge but you do get 12 different colours and watercolour lasts for ages anyway.

I also have cute kitty washi tape!

Abundance is my word of the year so I wrote that on this spread using a gold pen.  I used the same gold pen to make all the little dandelion seeds you can see in the photo below.

I can’t believe how shiny this silver pen is when the light hits it!
More silver pen inside the dandelions, a dandelion stencil and some texture paste, and some cotton (plant) washi tape

These shiny blue strips are scraps leftover from some art cards I made, so I used them on this page to fill in some space

Here’s a look at the finished page taken this morning in daylight.

Challenges

Art Journal Journey – February Challenge – Heavy Metal – gold pen, silver pen, blue metallic watercolour splatters, blue metallic acrylic strips
Funkie Junkie – Groundhog Day – Challenge:  The challenge is to use something that you use all the time and I immediately knew the answer to that question – paint splatters, or more specifically metallic paint splatters.  I can’t help myself!  This time they are a lovely blue metallic but they are most often gold.
Countryview Challenges – First Signs of Spring – one of the real first signs of Spring in my garden is probably the dandelions haha.  They are always first to appear before you are even ready to do any proper gardening and they have already taken hold!  The ones in my journal look so innocent but they are already at the seed spreading stage so I am doomed to a garden full of dandelions again.  We used to have a friend with a pet rabbit who loved eating dandelions so maybe I should get some rabbits in to help! LOL

Ingredients

My handmade journal
watercolour paper, gesso, watercolour paint, salt, gold pen, silver pen, paint pens, metallic watercolour, brown paper, dandelion stencil and paste, washi tape, leftover painted paper scraps,

You might also like . . .

Brigid – Lady From Winter’s Dark

Listen to Them, The Children of the Night, What Music They Make

Romance of Flowers