Art Journalling... it begins

I have delved into the world of gesso and distress inks:

 from Flickr By Jen {crafty type}

And I had a lot of fun with this new set of Darkroom Door Wilderness stamps. They are so versatile - I can see myself using these for cards ATC's.

 from Flickr By Jen {crafty type}

These are just snippets of the pages in progress, as I think the one on the right has a lot more work to be done. It's an interesting process when you are just getting started.... I couldn't 'begin' until I had some essential tools - paint brushes, for one. And even when I had these, I couldn't 'begin' with all the colors until the gesso was on, and dried. All the little preparations have to be done first. It is almost a warming up process. Or like holding onto a kid's lollies and telling them to eat up all their lunch first before they can have any. The anticipation is both annoying and exciting.

But once the gesso was dry I attacked it with the distress inks out .... it was magic.

For these pages, it wasn't difficult to play around because I really had no final intention. It's kind of freeing. Sometimes not knowing how it is supposed to work out makes the end result a bit of a surprise.