I went into this week with an idea of what I wanted to do – use stripes – but my initial foray into putting them on the page didn’t exactly yield stellar results.  Because I’d gessoed the page first I was able to use Dina Wakley’s reduction stenciling technique and our Bubble Blast to add pattern and remove color.

I’m getting ahead of myself.  The first step was to add gesso to the page…

Which I did after masking off the other side.  I scraped on Dina Wakley’s White Gesso using her Palette Knife, and then let it dry.

Then I selected colors in Dina’s line of Heavy Body Paint: Blackberry Violet, Ocean, Turquoise, and Lime.

I added the colors one at a time, using my finger as an applicator.  Starting with Turquoise, then on to …

Ocean.

Then Blackberry Violet and Lime.

I repeated Ocean and Turquoise and each time I added a stripe of color, I blended it with the one next to it.  And… yuck.  I don’t like this at all.  It’s definitely not what I had in mind when I thought “Stripes!  I’ll do something with stripes this week”.  Since the paint is still wet in spots and at least a little moist in others, I can use Dina’s reduction stenciling technique and get some of that awful color out of there.

I’m using our Bubble Blast stencil and a baby wipe and will remove paint by wiping through the openings of the stencil.

Marginally better, but I’m still not satisfied.  Gesso makes many things better and it what I’m going to use to salvage this… mess.

Better.  Not great, but better.  Ah gesso, how I love thee.

I’m still stuck on the idea of stripes and am determined to add them to the page and not be revolted by it.  Toward that end, I decided to bring in some of the Extra Long Rectangles Sticky Snippets™  and arrange them vertically on the page.  This is a sheet I’d made previously and the colors work with what I’ve done so far.  Happily.

Better.  Way the hell better.  At last.  This looks good, but I realize that the Sticky Snippets™ stripes are blending into the background a bit.

I used a black PITT F – Fine tip pen and the Omnigrid 1″ x 6″ Ruler and lined along both sides of the Extra Long Rectangles.  Now the stripes are more distinct and I like the look far better now.

Horizontal stripes are my next step and since I didn’t have any black cardstock, I cut strips off one of the Square Black Dylusions Insert Sheets.  Initially they were the same width, but I didn’t like the way it looked, so I cut one in half.  I like the look with the narrow and wide strips.  The black is high contrast against the background and now I’ve got horizontal stripes too.

Auditioning some colored and cut shapes…

And decide that Virginia England’s Funky Flower #1 looks better alone.  And that the black stripes look better with some white pen work.  I used a Sharpie Water Based Fine White Paint Pen and added dots and short dashed lines.   I really like this now, but there’s too much open black space, so I used the same white pen and added text…

And called it done!