Stylish woman

Now those who know me, know that I am not a stylish woman. I am a woman of comfort and fun.  I do however have stylish parents so I suppose it is in my genes to wish to be stylish. I spotted the Vogue colouring book in Waterstones recently and had to buy it. I knew the large images would be perfect for the large square Dylusions journal.

People who follow me on Instagram and Facebook will have seen this page developing over the last few weeks.

The book has double sided pages so not ideal but at more than 90 pages long I can live with having to choose half of them.  The images inside are fabulous… and full of stylish women.

So this is where I am going with this post … yes just like the dragon fly page a few days ago I will be adding an image from the colouring book into my journal.

Stage 1… background prep.  This was a page I wiped stencils off onto when doing the dragonfly page…

Lovely already… but I wanted lots of colour not something delicate…

Is that colourful enough? Well it’s a start.  So I have Paperartsy fresco finish paints (Baltic Blue and Bora Bora).  Gelato in Blood orange. White gesso through stencils and stamped the Kim Dellow Paperartsy stamps. Orange paint mixed with gesso through a stencil. More stamping in Archival ink.  Lines of white acrylic using a credit card.  Yes I think that’s what I had done by this point. I also used a stencil and a baby wipe to remove some colour in some places too.

Left that to one side and started colouring the image I chose…

Watercolour pencils used for layer one.

Water added to blend pencils for layer 2.

Love that the book gives the text about the outfit… I obviously ignored the colour instructions completely and went with what I fancied!

Ok back to the journal page… I kept it open on my desk and kept adding a little bit at a time when I could grab a five minute moment of creativity. So I added some blue gelato and then some yellow paint blending both with my fingers. Then some splatters of white and the Baltic Blue added and some more lines with the credit card edge in both colours. Then added some more stamping with the Baltic Blue and Kim’s fab circles. Then my favourite stencil of the moment (Dot Fade, Tim Holtz) with a bit of white paint.

Time to sort the stylish woman out… a bit of acrylic paint to blend and balance the skin, more watercolour pencils to add depth and colour intensity, and some white acylic to add some highlights.

Gorgeous!
I cut her out and started on the idea of placement. I think she works best to the left of the layout.

Yes I know there are still some white bits near her elbows to sort…. and she is too big for the page so her gloves are not going to make it into the page. I had suspected this so hadn’t done anything to them for layer 3 of colouring her in. So I drew round her with pencil so I knew what space she took up and then white acrylic added to provide a ‘glow’.

I used a fairly dry brush as I wanted the paint to feather out.

Time to stick her down…. Matt medium used to stick her down and good coat over the top too.

There were a few wrinkles despite my best efforts to get it flat… maybe she doesn’t iron either?

Anyways… Once this was all dry (maybe a whole 24 hours later) … It was time to add some outlining and some splatters to bed her into the picture a little more. I also started to add a title for the page and some little stickers. Plus the date and part of the description of the outfit from the book.

Oh at some point I had also added some gold paint into a few areas and added a bit of white again too.

I stencilled the CHOOSE and STYLE. Then painted it in black and once dry added the white for dimension. I am still not confident in my lettering skills but I know it’s a practice makes perfect thing so need to do more of this.

Right time to show you the completed page in all its glory…

I am really pleased with how this page turned out and with the colouring book. I think the images from the colouring book will provide some good inspiration and different pages for me to create.

Happy crafting!

Catherine
P.S. I know it was a long post so well done on getting through it to the end. I just wanted to share as much of my process as I could. ☺