Hi everyone. It’s Bonnie here with the new prompt for Week 32 of the AJA…hard to believe we are at week 32 already. The prompt for this week is Water. “Water??” you say… I thought of this prompt for two reasons. The first is that I wanted to try a technique new to me with Distress Oxide Inks which I learned from a Jennifer McGuire video. The second reason is that we have had a lot of rain lately, although it seems to come all at once and then we go for a period where everything is so dry and my gardens are crying for water. Summer always seems so focused on water. The water prompt is open to all sorts of interpretation…you can use water with your products (think watercolour paints, splashing/ flicking with water, water stamping like I did, or stencilling with water a la Dyan Reaveley). You might decide to feature water in your focal image or as part of the scenery or maybe a colour palette based on colours from the sea…you get the idea. Whatever floats your boat (water pun intended) will work.

I started with a 6 x 8 inch rectangle of mixed media paper. To this, I added three colours of Tim Holtz Distress Oxide Inks ( Salty Ocean, Peacock Feathers, and Cracked Pistachio) applying them with mini ink blending tools. I wanted cool “watery” colours.

I referred earlier to a Jennifer McGuire video which I had watched where she demoed techniques using water with the Distress Oxide Inks…fabulous video, by the way. One of the techniques she demoed was spritzing a stamp with water and then applying it to the Distress Oxide background. I decided to use this with a Rynn stamp of raindrops. You spritz the stamp, apply it where you want it, and then hold it in place for a few minutes. Once I removed the stamp, I used paper towel to soak up the extra ink and water. What a cool effect! I just kept spritzing and moving the stamp.

I made sure that the water stamping was thoroughly dry before my next step. While that was happening, I downloaded a free clip art rainbow  and cut it apart so I had two parts with the same curve. Yes, I could have drawn that but I knew it would drive me nuts fussing until I got the curve right. I wanted to play! Using a rainbow palette of Distress Oxide Inks (Seedless Preserves, Faded Jeans, Salty Ocean, Lucky Clover, Fossilized Amber, and Abandoned Coral), I used the two rainbow parts as a mask and inked colour by colour until I had the rainbow finished. I just kept moving them to cover up the spaces next to the one I was inking.

I knew where I was going with this page now so I tore a piece of vintage sheet music into a path shape. Coffee Archival Ink was used to darken the edges before it was adhered to the background with Scotch Quick Drying glue.

Before adding Umbrella Man to the page, I added finishing details and the sentiment which had inspired the rainbow idea. The sentiment was printed onto white card stock and cut into segments which were matted with black. A black border with raindrops inserted was doodled around the outside edge and sketchy lines were added to separate the colours of the rainbow. White Sharpie paint pen dots were added to the rainbow to create a magical effect.

Umbrella Man, an old friend I hadn’t pulled out in a long time, was die cut from black cardstock and adhered with his feet solidly on the path so that he could admire the rainbow. Black Big Brush Pen was used to blacken the page edges before it was adhered to the black mat which backs all of my pages in this journal.

So now it’s your turn to play in the water…LOL. It’s another wide-open theme and I can’t wait to see where your imaginations take us.