My Delight

At first glance, this page is pretty cluttered, but even the clutter had an important message for me.  Here is how I created it.

The page had a bunch of "do this while you read this book" instructions that I covered with Art Basic's Heavy White Gesso before covering the whole page with their clear gesso.  I mostly used the clear gesso to help the rest of the page have a similar look and feel to that which had the white gesso since the white gesso had stretched the page a bit.  While I usually use the smaller round Ranger applicator with foam pad for applying gesso.  I found that for using the heavy white gesso, it seemed to go on better if I used a foam brush instead - didn't pull the page as much.

After the page was ready, my first step was to prepare the heart-shaped doily I found in my stash.  I colored it lightly with distress ink (Worn Lipstick), then colored the outside of the heart with a Scroll & Brush marker before adding the words with another marker & a Millennium pen.  Knowing I wanted all the intricate pieces glued down, I decided the easiest way to make that happen was to use some spray adhesive (I used a Krylon one I've had for some time).  I placed this in the center of the page.  

Next, I found some pink fuzzy alphabet stickers in my stash & formed the word "delight" - adding "in the" with my Millenium pen.

I found myself thinking about the promised result of delighting in God's law of love and wanted to illustrate that as sort of a vignette on the page.  You see the result.  

For the colored areas, I used my Scroll & Brush markers.  For the stream, I sort of outlined it with long strokes from one edge of the page to the other with a light turquoise color. Then I colored over top of all of that with a light blue.  Next I took a clear stamp of a tree (from HOTP "Four Seasons" set), shaped it on my block to give me the sort of placement I wanted, and then inked it up it with my markers.  I first stamped on a piece of paper to "season" it before repeating the process and stamping it in my Bible.  This particular stamp just stamps the outline of each leaf, so I took a lighter color green and colored them in (coloring frequently on a piece of scrap paper to remove the darker green that transferred to the marker).  Finally, I came back in with a marker to outline the trunk & add a bit of texture, before doing the same for the stream (choosing a darker turquoise this time).

I finished up by adding a couple of heart stickers and paraphrasing the two texts I was thinking about - using my Millennium pen for most of the words.  The exceptions were the word "heart" that I wrote on the sticker heart was done with a Sharpie so it would be more permanent on that slick surface.  I also colored in the outlined word "Love" with a Scroll & Brush marker.