Today I was in a funny mood, kind of blue, insular, not really grumpy but not doing a happy dance either.  This afternoon I watched one of the Tim Holtz Creative Chemistry 102 videos from yesterday on brayering with Distress Stains (fluid water-based dyes).  It absolutely hit the right feel for me, and I grabbed my journal and got busy.

I brayered about 6-8 different colors of Stains over the page, mostly blues with a couple of greens and browns thrown in.  I then inked along the edges with a brown Distress ink pad.

Distress Stains are reactive with water, so I wanted my next step to be permanent.  I took a few stencils and my Liquitex Transparent Black spray paint outside and added the trees and diamonds along the right side.  (I would have added in some white spray paint too, but sadly the nozzle was hopelessly clogged.)

Now the neat thing was that since the spray paint was permanent, I could use water on the background of brayered Stains to lighten it up in selected areas.  I did this by flicking water droplets onto the spread, letting them dry a few minutes, then blotting with a paper towel.

I really liked the effect I was getting, except that since I’d used the Transparent Black instead of an opaque one like Carbon Black, the trees weren’t really standing out.  I used a small flat brush and Golden Bone Black fluid acrylic to go over the trees and bring them up to the front a little more.

In the end I love this.  It reminds me of a forest at twilight with fog hanging around.  And as journaling is supposed to do–I feel less blue too for having done this.