Forever by my side - Art Journal

Hi everyone,

I`m so excited to share this art journal page with you today. I`m totally in love with how this one turned out, even though it might be on the darker side for some of you. For my focal point I used an image I colored up myself, combining two of my favorit things, Copic coloring and art journaling. I just love the outcome and you will see me doing this more often in the future.

I`m sorry for the poor photo quality. The bright daylight wased out the colors a bit, I will try to take better pictures when I have time during this week. Hope you still like it :)  

The beautiful image is actually cut out from a coloring book I have from Mitzi-Sato Wiuff called Midnight Gardens. She is the artist behind Aurora Wings stamp. I don`t think the coloring book is still available anymore, but there are many stunning digital stamps on her Etzy shop. 

I used quite a lot of markers on her dress and I may have used hintes of markers not mention here as I was looking for the color combination I wanted, but here are the once I mainly used:

Skin: E50-51-11 - BV20 - R20

Gold: Y15- YR24-27-E15

Red: R20-22-24-29- Grey T7 for deeper shading 

Orange dress: YR000-00-31-38-16

Flowers: RV00-55-66-69 - R22

Green: YG03-17

Skull: Grey C:0-1-3-5

For my background I used some blue shaded distressinks on a plastic sheet, spritsing it with water and then dabbing the plastic sheet on y pages. Then I used a background stamp from Stamperias Create happiness stamps and stamped randomly with Tumbled glass and Faded Jeans. Then I used black Archival ink for the text stamp and the cute flowers I stamped along the bottom of my pages, also from the same collection. I decided to color my flowers with gold acrylic paint to get a more ancient Japan feel to my pages. As a finishing thouch I splattered with gold acrylic paint, used my white Sakura gelpen for some highlights and my black Copic multiliner for some black details and I also wrote my text for hand since I was crafting at the cabin and didn`t have anything else to use for my quote. 

I love the contrast of the beautiful lady with her stunning kimono holding a skull in her hand as she looks back at you. I think the words " Always by my side" fits the image well as she walks holding the skull, but I guess it also has to do with the date as today was my wedding day. This summer it will be 8 years since ha suddenly past away and he would also have had his birthday the 23th. So I guess you could say that these days every year he is in my thoughts more often.

I`m entering this in :Simon Says: Art Journal | (simonsaysstampblog.com) (second entry)

I hope you like todays art journal, and that you got inspired to create yourself a happy day crafting.

-Christine