My Delight

At first glance, this page is pretty cluttered, but even the clutter had an important message for me.  For the spiritual application of this page, see this post on my other blog.  Here, as usual, I'm simply going to discuss 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.