Art Journal Reveal - Hope Wish Love

It is time to reveal our 2nd Art Journal pages.  The theme was Winter/Christmas.  I chose to do a Christmas Tree.  I have seen the tree done like this in several ways.  I have to say I was very inspired by Christy Tomlinson's canvas creations and her techniques.  I love her doodling, she does it so freely.   I tried to add a bit, very discreetly as I'm not too comfortable with it yet.

There's a lot of layers here - I love looking for them all when I'm looking at the pages.

I started with spreading Iced Spruce and Evergreen Bough Distress Paint with a credit card over the tissue wrap which was adhered with Liquitex Matte Medium.  I had a few issues adhering the tissue wrap - there is a couple places where it did not adhere properly, but you can't notice after all the layers.

Here you can see the snowflakes also stamped in Iced Spruce.  

Once the background was dry, I started adhering the tree pieces with the Liquitex Matte Medium.  I used the bone folder to crease the paper pieces into the seem of the book.

This part was really exciting for me - I got to use my new Big Brush Pitt Pens to outline the tree.  I used my finger to blend and this helps ground the image.  See the difference from the photo above?

A little more definition was created by outlining the tree with a black fine tip Pitt pen.  

Here I used some more colours and stamped the poinsettia and added the bubble wrap.

I added the Stormy Sky colour through the stencil.  

Here I added a border with some more stamping to the edges and the I added the rub-ons as well.  At this point I added some gesso with bubble wrap and and thought I was done.  I liked it here a lot and could have left it, but I REALLY wanted to add the chevron texture with the embossing paste and glitter.  

Now hop over to see Tracy's Winter Challenge creation.  It's beautiful and I love how whimsical it looks, I can't wait to see it in person.   Our next challenge is Love/Valentines.  

I am entering my journal page in The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge #8 - Something New for the New Year, since most of the techniques I've used were new to me :)

Supplies:

Ranger/Dylusions 5 x 8 Creative Journal;
Tim Holtz Tissue Wrap and Remnants Rub-Ons;
Basic Grey Jovial Paper
Distress Paints - Iced Spruce, Evergreen Bough, Festive Berries, Aged Mahogany, Stormy Sky, Pine Needles;
Brilliance Archival Ink Graphite Black;
Stamps:  Unity Stamps Like a Snowflake, CTMH December 25th and Snowflakes
PITT Big Brush Artist Pens
Simon Says Falling Snow and Heidi Swapp Chevron Stencil 
Liquitex Matte Medium, Wendy Vecchi White Embossing Paste, Martha Stewart glitter, bubble wrap