I have been super OBSESSED with mixed media, art journaling, gel pressing since I took my first class a couple months ago. I cant stop, if I could I would work all day long on these things. Haha but with kids that's not going to happen. 

I had received my design package from paper rose and this beautiful bloom die was part of it, I had seen so many wonderful projects with it that I really wanted to use it and find a unique way to show case it. So mix that together with my current creative obsession and you got this art journal project. 

I started off by die cutting this beauty from heavy weight black and white  cardstock, I wanted it to hold up to the different mediums I might use. I ran it through my Gemini with the detail metal shim as its very detailed. At first I didn't know what I was going to do with the die cut at first.

Then I wondered how it would hold up using it as a stencil and adding texture paste. So I pulled out my brand spanking new Dina Wakley Media journal and decided hey the front page is a good page to experiment on lol (I don't suggest this in the future as I didn't like this project to begin with and I would have to look at it every time I opened the book)  I went to town stenciling it with opaque texture paste from Ranger, any left over paste I had out I just kind of smooshed on to this paste and an empty page in a different journal.. Didn't want to waste the paste. 

Once the paste was dry, I pulled out my three lonely Distress stain sprays I had, and went to town. I loved how the texture paste really grabbed on to the colour, I repeated the process a few times, in between dabbing of the excess with a paper towel.  I was still not sure where this was all going lol.. just went along with it.  I did this a few more times and well in the end I think I over worked it, and had to figure out how to cover it up . 

 Well how do you cover up really bright colours.. Black paint or gesso. and that's what I ended up doing and REALLY kicking myself after the fact. At this point I really was not happy and did not know what to do to fix it.  

I took a look in my stash to see how I could fix it, or at least find some inspiration to fix it. I noticed my Jane Davenport napkins and I got inspired by some of the colour swatched prints. I pulled out a whole bunch of paints and started to create that look the best way I could.. It still really looked like a hot mess and really was not liking what was going on. Lol I almost cut this page out to be honest.  

But I stuck with it, If in the end it didn't work out well that's Art its not always going to be a winner at least in your eyes, someone else might see it differently . For this reason I pressed on, adding more to this then maybe I should have but oh well. I pulled out some of my Tim Holts stencils to add some extra texture and layers, I added some circles with white gesso, and also rubbed away some of the paint through the linen stencils. Really I was just playing and experimenting. 

I took a step back and decided that the BLOOM die really needed something to draw your eye to it.

I took a white Sharpe paint pen and went around the whole stenciled image, first just out lining it and then for some reason I decided to make these scallops on it. (Not sure I am all that crazy about it but it was definitely an improvement.  From there it was time to figure out a sentiment as I new I didn't want to write in it myself. 

I found this very appropriate sentiment from Pinterest, and spelled it out with the puffy teal stickers, I laid it all out and then went back one by one to added strong adhesive so they would not move. I took the white die cut and trimmed out a few elements from it, then adhered them down to the page on either side of the sentiment, I also went back to the stenciled image and added some Nuvo shimmer paste to the petals of the flower, this to me finished it all off and whats a project of any kind with out a little glitz and glimmer. 

Hope you were able to draw some ideas from this and maybe find some inspiration to carry on with projects you may not be in love with.

Have a Great Weekend!