You don't always know what you've got

I've been working on the Chocolate Baroque colour challenge lately: blue, purple, yellow and orange. After ending in a dead end with some experiments, I thought I would do something different for a change, took my art journal and ended up going for the CB colours anyway! I am entering this art journal spread for the Chocolate Baroque colour challenge (I have used a small flower head from the Flora and Fauna set and a Texture Fragments stamp), the Country View challenge (Anything goes) and the SimonSaysStamp Monday challenge (B is for...blotches)

The art journal spread was in an "in between" state. I've been working on the Documented Life Project prompts, and I'm a bit behind, so the spread was in the middle of week 9 (at least five layers) having done journaling all over the page and planning to cover it up with the next layers. I took a couple of pictures along the way--

At this point my layers are:

Journaling

Ripped papers glued here and there

Gesso

Dylusions ink sprays (After Midnight and Crushed Grape, they reacted with the gesso and turned lighter, the purple is almost pink!)

Gesso, white acrylic paint and gesso again, spread through a home made stencil...trying to make white blotches, but the ink sprays kept seeping through.

Yellow acrylic paint being spread with finger.

The blue still came through, and made the yellow areas green. Somehow my camera refuses to see the green: without photoshop-help, it shows as a brownish-grey, even though to the eye it is approx "Peeled Paint"-green, quite nice. This pic shows the green, but makes mistakes with the blue...

After adding some orange and white accents to the blotches I felt the background was ready, and started wondering what to do with it. I collected all my CB challenge experiments and searched for underpapers and other bits and pieces in the challenge colours. My plan was to adhere bits and pieces, maybe sew a "sandwich" or something... And to start with the badly smudged image of a purple girl watering a plant = nothing to lose, I would try adding a CB flower at the top so the smudge would be hidden away. 

This is where the surprise came, the result was much better than I had thought, and felt it fit my spread and needed space around it. The rest of my pile went back to where it had come from :)

My next layers were

CB Texture Fragments around the edges (the ink bled into the gesso, so only the outer edge is visible)

Doodling around the baubles with a fude ball pen + smudging with a wet cotton bud

Text typed on underpaper

Sewing over the text and around the upcycled image

The image was adhered with double sided tape

Continuing the Texture Fragment stamping of the edges by doodling with the fude ball pen

Here is the finished spread once more:

Here is my journaling: words from a well known song (Joni Mitchell). I don't feel it has much to do with this page or my life at the moment, but it came on the radio a short while ago and has been ringing in my head:)