Colour me Positive challenge - week 1

I have joined a new challenge this year because Documented Life Project have gone back to planners which is not my thing.

The new challenge is hosted by Lulu Art and is called Colour Me Positive. It will be an inspiring experience and they use quotes for prompts so that is exactly the sort of thing I respond to. The link is http://blog.luluart.com.au/challenge/
The prompts are published or emailed weekly on Fridays (Australia time) and it is free to join.

My art goal this year is to finish off a few journals I have started previously so for this first challenge I got out a journal I started during the mermaid circus online class. I didn't like the pages I did with Teesha Moore so I wanted to redo them because the heavy watercolor paper was too good to just throw away.

I removed all of the collaged images from magazines. Some of them came off easily but others ripped the page when removed. I didn't mind because it would give me a textured background to work on. I roughly applied gesso over the top of everything with a credit card. Some of the writing bled through the gesso.

Next I used a stencil and palette knife to spread Molding paste across the page. I tried to go over the areas where the writing was bleeding through so they would not be readable later on.

I used these acrylic paints to cover the gesso when it was dry. It was not an even coat because it would be covered with the sprays I was going to use. I used Lindystampgang Moon Shadow mists in brown and green to spray the page. I like using the sprays to highlight texture because they settle around the raised areas.

I used a few flower stamps along the bottom and some dragonflies. I stamped with StazOn permanent ink in a stone grey color so it wouldn't stand out as much as black would. This was a mistake as it blended into the background too much.

I drew the lady and used acrylic paints to color her in roughly. I added details and shading with colored pencils after the paint had dried for a couple of hours. 

To finish the page I went over the flower stamps with pencils, markers and paint pens. I put tracing paper on top of the page on the right and wrote out my quote. I wanted to make sure it would fit before I wrote onto the page. I used a gel pen for the quote after I worked out where it would fit. The first challenge is now complete and it feels good to do a journal page after not doing any for a couple of months. I am looking forward to the next prompt.