Journal52 – Aromatherapy

Over at Journal52 this week we have week 8’s prompt which is “Aromatherapy”. When I first read this one I thought to my self “How on earth can you depict a smell…or the idea of one?”.

Then I watched Chelle’s YouTube video and that set my mind racing. I immediately thought of at least three ways to do it, but went with the one closest to my heart! “Coffee”!

So to start with…

I adhered some preprinted Tim Holtz tissue paper across two pages of my A4 Dylusions journal. I then had a rummage in my ephemera tub for some appropriate bits and bobs.

I couldn’t find anything coffee related so I had a search on Google for some public domain vintage coffee labels. then printed these out using Photoshop and cut them out. These were then stuck onto my pages with matt Modge Podge.

Once heat set and dry, I covered the pages with gesso and wiped away some areas with a baby wipe so that some of the label still showed through. I then heat set the gesso with my heat gun.

Next, out came my Vintage Photo Distress Paint which I applied to the page with a baby wipe, trying to avoid covering up the areas I’d cleaned the gesso from.

Next out came my burlap stencil from TH, and I applied Walnut Stain Distress Ink through it here and there around my page, this gives the impression of the bags that coffee beans are packed in. Neat huh?

The next step was to outline all the label edges with a black Stabilo All pencil, and went over with my water brush.

I then took my white Sharpie poster pen and added some wisps of white vapour coming from the cup with the kitten and added one or two highlights around the page. The final step for my page was to stamp my quote using black archival ink onto paper and cut out, adhering them with a collage glue stick. I finished off by adding some black line doodling and dark shading around the quote pieces.

ps. no kittens were harmed during the production of this page!