Tutorial: Two Drips Meet

Do you hate staring at that blank white page in
your art journal but don't know where to start?

Here is a fun, quick and easy technique that we
first saw over at Balzer Designs blog: Two Drips Meet.

I started with a sheet of 120 lbs card stock and
picked 3 colors of spray ink to use. A thicker
cardstock or watercolor paper is recommended but
this was what I had on hand so I glued two sheets together.

I make my own acrylic spray inks with FW Artists
Acrylic Ink and the Ranger Mini-Misters. A bottle
of acrylic ink is about $6 and lasts forever.
Much cheaper than buying the ready made spray inks.

I put about a 1 to 3 ration of ink to
water in my misters and then shake well.

I quickly sprayed each color across the top of the cardstock
pretty heavily, followed by a good drenching of  water sprayed on top.

Lift the paper up and let the ink drip down.

Do the same thing to the other side and let it
run down the page onto the other side.

Turned out fine but the colors were
a little muted. Also, you can see where my blue
mister was clogged and didn't spray well.
Remember to check your mister before spraying
and clean out the spray hole.

I then decided I would try again but this time
I would coat my page with gesso first. Repeated
the spray ink, spray water and drip technique again.

Much better this time. The colors were so vibrant,
the drips were much more distinct and
the 3 colors blended beautifully at each end.

Wouldn't it look great to add your
journaling text to the white spaces?

Then I tried the technique on a piece of  designer
scrapbook paper. Not bad. Probably an easy way
to customize a piece of scrapbook paper to make it unique.

If you are participating in our 2015 Art Journal Number Challenge,
we will be using this technique for the first month's
page/spread, a number One idiom being the prompt.

If you would like to join us, click on the
purple Yahoo button in the right side bar for more information.

Can't wait to see your drips.

:)

Cathy Calamas