Starry Eyed Churchill - Stamping with Watercolour

Churchill is wishing upon a shooting star, dreaming of dreams, doing small things with great love. What a wonderful way to spend an afternoon, having an adventure with texture pastes, shimmer sprays and Distress watercolour pencils inside my Stamperia's Vicky Papaioannou 'Create Happiness' watercolour journal. 

This little book (148mm x 90mm in size) is filled with wonderful strong excellent quality watercolour paper with a very light texture. A fantastic size that is perfect for every day and any occasion.

First I stamped Churchill the dog from the Dylusions stamp set, Churchill and Friends, and the moon from the Dina Wakley MEdia stamp set, Fawns, both using the Ranger Archival black ink pad. I then painted around the dog with plain water.

I then used the same brush to paint on the Dyan Reaveley's Dylusions Shimmer Spray in 'Just Indigo', a gorgeous deep blue, the colour of dreams. I had the book leaning up a bit so that the ink would flow around the dog and moon on the wet paper. 

The above photo is a close up showing the beautiful dark blue while it is still wet.

I made a Churchill mask out of scrap paper - simply stamp out the image then cut around the doggy shape and top bit of the toadstool.

Then attach with rolled up bits of temporary tape (one that is low tack, just enough to hold something in place). The above photo shows the Tim Holtz Sparkle Fade stencil over the top of my mask with the products used in the next steps.

Next, spray splatters of Tim Holtz Distress Mica Stains (Unravelled) and Dylusions Shimmer Sprays (Vanilla Custard, Balmy Night) through Tim's Layering Stencils called Cut Outs and Sparkle Fade. The above photo shows how my page looked after this step.

The textured Sparkle Fade (stencil) background above is a mix of Distress Sparkle Paste with Distress white texture paste and Ranger Icicles Stickles glitter glue, applied through the Sparkle Fade stencil.

fyi, I mixed them together because the Sparkle Paste is semi transparent and I wanted to have it more opacity as well as sparkly. I only had a bit of glitter glue left in my bottle of Icicles so used it up as well.

By this stage, the Churchill mask was well and truly inked in all the gorgeous colours, and while looked messy was so clean underneath.

Well, mostly clean! The above photo is after the texture paste mixture had dried and before I rubbed a bit of Distress Crayon (Frozen Fog) over a few of the stars.

The moon got a bit covered, so I re-whitened it with gesso then painted on Dylusions Vanilla Custard Shimmer Spray (to give a more goldenish look) then Frosted Lace Stickles glitter glue, then finally white paint!

One must remember to let each layer dry before applying more... it'll be fine! Churchill obviously likes it, he hasn't stopped staring at it all afternoon :) lol

To colour Churchill and the toadstool, I used Distress watercolour and Derwent Inktense pencils by simply colouring with a dry pencil on the dry paper. I then used a waterbrush to paint and blend the pencil pigments. Shading and darker areas were created by using the wet brush to take the pigment directly from the pencil and paint the paper (you could use watercolour paint and or a palette too). 

The blue smudge on the dog's ear was fixed by simply dabbing with water and using dry paper towel to dab the area, repeating with the water and dabbing until the blue was mostly gone. The remaining shadow of blue blended into the brown so it is hardly visible anymore :)

White acrylic paint was tipped on using a super fine paint brush for the spots, highlights on the starry goggles.

The thoughts are from Tim's Idea-ology Metallic sticker book ... "Dreamer of dreams" along the left hand side and "Do small things with great love" on the right hand side.

Such a lovely messy enjoyable afternoon! Hope you like this too and it inspires you to use all your favourites together to create more art that makes you smile :) 

Thanks so much for visiting and wandering around the Creative Space at the Art by Jenny online shop. 

Have a wonderful arty crafty day!
:)
Jenny