Borders are my thing when it comes to art journaling.  To me a page looks a bit naked and incomplete if there isn’t a border to frame whatever it contains.  Week 16 of the AJA is all about borders.  I thought I was going to have one as usual, but the spread morphed into an all border effort.

Today’s spread began with the idea that there would be a bit of a chunky border toward the outside edge of the page, but first I needed some color.

So on go the Dylusions Ink Sprays (I used diluted versions of Tangerine Dream, Postbox Red, Pomegranate Seed, and Funky Fuchsia) and I’m off…

I love the colors, but the page is flat and needs texture.  Visual texture.  I’m not adding pastes or gels here.  I spritzed water through our Sunflowers Stencil and let it sit momentarily to rewet the Spray Inks, then picked up the water and color by pressing a paper towel to the wet areas.

See that piece of paper in the top right corner?  It’s there to contain any water overspray.  Otherwise you end up with a ghosted pattern that looks like the edge of the stencil.

I repeated the process a couple more times till I had texture over the entire spread.  Then I used a #4 Fan Brush to spatter water over the spread – big spatters – and let it sit a moment to activate the Ink Sprays again.  Same process as with the stencil.  Once the water has had a moment to rewet, mop it up with a piece of paper towel.  When you’ve finished ghosting, give the entire spread time to dry or use a heat tool to hurry the process along.  PITT Pens, like most, do not like being used on a damp surface.

Once the surface is completely dry it’s time to begin the borders.  Here’s the kind of wide frame I began with.  What to fill it with?  Loopy things…

For lack of a better name, loopy things it is!  Up next was a really narrow border drawn right next to the first one.

See in the upper left corner?  I’ve got a checkerboard pattern started.  I’ve also added another line inside of the first frame.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.

With the first checkerboard finished I decided another one would provide a little continuity…

But I didn’t want it to be identical to the first one, so I made the checks longer.  By now the idea that this page could be all borders has sunk in, so I started another layer of them.  This one is just straight lines to fill in a section, then an open space filled with a heart.  Rinse, repeat around the entire border.  I used a metallic Gelly Roll Pen to fill in the hearts.

If a page without borders is naked and incomplete, one without some kind of glimmer is… more naked and incomplete?  Not good, that I know for sure.  Since I’d ignored the temptation to spray Lindy’s Starburst Sprays on the background, I gave in to the call of the metallic Gelly Roll pen and filled in all of the hearts.

By now the borders have gotten smaller and will continue to do so as I move more to the center of the page spread.  Up next was a another style of loopy thingys and the beginning of another row of checkerboard pattern.

Both of these loopy thingys are patterns that appear a lot in my doodles.  I like the shapes and how it feels to create them, so I use them – a lot.

Here’s that one completed.  I filled in the inner loopy thinys by adding a smaller one inside of the first, then filling in the smaller one’s opening with straight lines.  Almost finished.  What remains is to figure out what to do with the inner rectangle created by all of those borders.

Vertical rectangles.  Skinny ones.

Filled with circles and more lines, this time on an angle.

Borders gone wild!