Hello everyone, and happy Sunday! Today I am sharing my final page for the language theme at Art Journal Journey, but first I wanted to say a big thank you to all the admins at AJJ ( Bleubeard and Elizabeth, Yvonne/MeggyMay, Erika N/BioArtGirl, Chris/Pearshapedcrafting, Valerie-Jael) for inviting me to be a Guest Host this month. I also want to thank everyone who joined in with language-inspired pages. I really enjoyed seeing all your amazing pages and I hope you enjoyed the theme as much as I did hosting it. The end of May is of course tomorrow, but Monday is a holiday for a lot of people, so I thought I would add my final page today and then spend the rest of the time catching up or maybe enjoying the rare appearance of the sun!
As you know, I am Guest Hosting the May challenge over on Art Journal Journey this month and my chosen theme is…
Language!
My page this time was inspired by the iconic Chat Noir cat poster and this postcard I have of Paris with a black cat silhouetted against the city. I’ve gone with an Art Deco/Art Nouveau look this time mainly because of the cat. This page went through a few ups and downs before reaching its final state, and in the beginning I even had drawn an Eiffel Tower on the right hand side but I decided I didn’t like it and had to cover it up!
I started off by drawing the black cat from the Chat Noir poster as big as I could fit him on the page and still have room to add the stencilling behind his head. Normally if I had planned all this stencilling, I would have done that first and then drew the cat on top, but the stencilling was unplanned and so I had to work around the cat (carefully!) lol.
I coloured the background with some Jane Davenport crayons, then made a mask for the cat using some post-its, and stencilled the mandala stamp behind the cat’s head and on other places on the page, using some Versafine Clair ink in Chianti. After that, I did some stamping with another one of the crayons using the Tim Holtz Tapestry background stamp and sprayed with water. Then on top of that I used a French language stamp and two Distress Oxides to stamp over the background so now the page looked like this:
A lot of my stamping gets covered up later so here’s a close up of the tapestry and French language stamping:
Then I started painting my cat using Neocolour IIs and Pitt artist pens.
At this point I decided to draw the Eiffel Tower using the image on my postcard as a guide. I didn’t like it, so then I had to cover it up, but before I could do that, I had to use a fixative since most of what I had used so far was water soluble! I was also so unhappy with it that I left it alone for a day and worked on something else. There are no more process photos, but what I did was cover it with stencilling using the Finnabair Swirly Florals stencil and some Orchid Fresco Chalk paint. Then I did another layer of stencilling offset against the pink, using Liquitex Titanium White. So at this point there’s been three layers of stamping and three layers of stencilling haha.
I cut out some letters in black card using the Sizzix TH Society alphabet which always makes me think of Art Deco style. The words I chose were “Toujours Paris, Toujours” which means “Always Paris, Always”. I glued them down and then added a drop shadow with a white gel pen. It was good to add more French words since a lot of my stamping has been obscured. The final touches were to add the “Polaroids” from the cat’s visit to Paris, using a Polaroid die and some of the Mini Classic stamps from TH, edge my page by using some Black Soot archival on the outside edge, and white and gold gel pens on the inside edge and call it finished!
I hope you liked this page, I even managed to spill a whole jar of water all over my desk but luckily not on the page! Thank you all for joining me this month during my Guest Hosting. I really enjoyed every minute!
Let me know what you think in the comments. As always, thanks for reading!
Ingredients
My handmade journal containing 200gsm watercolour paper, Neolcolour IIs, JD crayons, mandala stencil, Versafine Clair Chianti, Tim Holtz Tapestry stamp, Tim Holtz Mini Classics stamp, French language stamp, DO Wild Honey and Victorian Velvet, artist fixative, Finnabair stencil Swirly Florals, Paperartsy Fresco paint Orchid, Liquitex Titanium White acrylic, Lawn Fawn polaroid die, Memento Luxe Tuxedo Black ink, Pitt artist pens, Sizzix XL alphabet dies Society, black card, white gel pen, gold gel pen, glue, Black Soot archival, stabilo all, black fineliner,
Challenges
Art Journal Journey – Language – May Challenge For the language theme I chose French (again!)
Country View Challenges – We Will Always Have Paris – May Challenge
Funkie Junkie – Anything Goes
SSS Monday Challenge – Frame It
You might also like . . .
Brilliant Sassy cat and lovely background! Thanks for Joining us at The Funkie Junkie Boutique Challenge!
Lovely page, and I always wondered what the phrase meant so thank you.
I’ve enjoyed seeing your posts throughout the month.
Love the layers in your background – thanks for sharing how you did it!
Fabulous project ! Thank you so much for your contribution to our May challenge over at Country View Challenges !
A fabulous final page for the theme you chose for AJJ. know I haven’t been around so much but I have so enjoyed seeing your inspiration and what other folk have shared over there. The black cat looks amazing , such a super expression and a wonderful background.
Stay safe Elle.
Yvonne xx
We also appreciate your hosting this month. It was great to see your various takes on the theme you chose. You came up with some awesome art and some unique designs, as well as some out of the box ideas for your theme. You Chat is amazing. Bleubeard gives it two paws up. Thanks once again for hosting and for sharing this with us at Art Journal Journey.
Elle, this cat is fabulous and I love the look on her face. Fabulous background too. So cool!!!!!
The chat noir cat is fabulous Elle. You really caught its vibe and look! One can never go wrong with a Paris page I think. And it has been such an interesting month. Language was a great choice of themes. Thanks for the inspiration, and for me, I learned a lot of new things also. Hugs-Erika
A sentiment I will echo! I love this Elle and I have loved this theme even though we have been struggling to fine some spare time – lots of ideas still in my head and will remain there! You’ve been a brilliant host and it’s been great to see so many ways to interpret this word! Hugs, Chrisx