Watercolors can add a subtle background to an art journal page.   This is a very serendipitous way to add a layer to a background.  Here is my purple tag background after stamping with watercolors.  You can see it in a finished journal page here.

It started as this:

Step 1: Start with a prepped journal page.  I prep it with either gesso or acrylic paint.  The important part is for the watercolors to float on top in the next step.

Step 2:  Slather on watercolors.

Step 3: While the watercolor is still very wet, use an uninked rubber stamp to REMOVE some of the watercolor. Let it dry.

Here is what the blue looks like dry-

Some other examples:

While visiting wonderful Creative Every Day blogs, I had an ah-ha moment while reading Ajax’s blog post.  Two simple words, allow happiness.  Her words prompted this journal spread.  This page was finished while my Internet was down – down from the night before until dinner.  The whole family was in terror, panic, fearful of life without it.  Then I remembered to allow happiness – this was a great blessing – no emails to answer all day.  I got lots of art done- but I must admit that as soon as it was back on we all hollered in joy and raced to computers/ipads.

Happiness is what this page represents to me – it has the colors I’m loving right now, it has lots of texture, and words.

My die cutting leftovers, extra inks, oversprays, and anything else that was around became the base.  I build these types of pages  to keep the blank page from being scary.  This way I end up with a variety of layers and a toucy of serendipity.

I was playing around with Diamond Glaze and reinkers to add color to the page.  I just mixed drops & squirts of ink into the Diamond Glaze – the end result was a wonderful transparent color.  Then a few touches of acrylic paint to bring out the textures.

Die cut the letters from book text, then went over it with a sloppy coat of white paint – allowing some of the text to peek out.  Added blue India ink to define the letters a bit more.