The song of the nightingale

I have been doodle-sewing all week, and wanted to add sewing to my art journal too, after all the DLP prompt for last week was sewing. I am posting this spread for the Paperartsy challenge (words), being intrigued by the way the work on the page effects the words I choose to use, and by the way the words start to effect the page once they've been chosen. I also tend to surprise myself with the way the spreads always continue from the previous finished ones. I couldn't imagine jumping around in my journal doing spreads here and there... I get fixed on colours, techniques, textures and words in a way that makes this some sort of story even though every spread is started as a piece of its own.

I took pictures along the way, this was one of the projects that I stared at more than worked on, getting somehow stuck again and again... part of the getting stuck was also trying out my gelliplate for the first time! I can see myself using it again, it wasn't difficult, but it wasn't as easy as it looks when some professional person makes a perfect page in a video :)

The luscious greens from the gelliplate prints got me thinking about an evening when I was out with the dog, and we both ended up staring at a bush where a nightingale was singing, so I wrote the text ( "hear the song of the nightingale"). After this I realized I should make the text sheet a pouch for my May TH tag, which is different in style but has a music and birds theme... so I had to get some pinks and more music onto my page!

I had used this page as underpaper last autumn, so it was already inky...
I liked the right side and decided to try and cover the red on the left with something.

I used my gelliplate as a stamp straight on the journal page. The journal
spread is 18x12 and my gelliplate 6x6 so that makes 6 prints, each with a
mixture of paints brayered straight on the plate.

I wanted a dusky evening feeling, so I added blue shades (mostly FF Jade)
with a brayer (and found out that it is much easier to brayer on the gelliplate
and stamp on the paper than to brayer straight on paper!). I also used some
background stamps, music among others.

Sewing straight on the journal page is practically impossible, but the leaves
torn from gelliprints were ok to work with. I didn't dare to just sew my text:
I first wrote it with a black pen, and then sewed over it :

Originally I thought not to have any visible birds here, because I've never seen a nightingale, just listened to them singing their heads of in the bushes nearby... but no matter what I did with the leaves, I always felt the right side needed something. I decided to copy the design of the mothers day card I got from my 8-year old son last Sunday, I guess these birds are listening to the nightingale too!