Friday, 4 May 2018

Words and Music for AVJ

The lovely Alison has chosen a fabulous theme for this month and I thoroughly loved thinking through how I could depict it in a project. Here goes ........ her brief was clear -

'For this challenge we would love to see projects that are inspired by our favourite song or that incorporate musical lyrics or sheet music in their design. Just remember to create your project in our preferred styles of vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk'.


I took one of my special cut media boards from tando Creative and sealed one side with white gesso and then adhered some music paper, words and stencilled letters. I chose the music paper carefully and typed out the words I wanted to use at the end as a sentiment. Do you recognise it?

Softly, deftly
Music shall possess you.
Hear it, feel it,
Secretly possess you.



I cut off the excess around the edges and then took some white gesso and a palette knife and scraped some across he board and round the edges, sealing it with matte medium when it was dry.


Next I spritzed the background with water in a small area so I could control the colouring up of this next layer and dabbled in a little paynes grey. In the opposite corner I did the same with quinacridone gold and across the middle with burnt umber. I didn't tilt the board to let the colours merge I just heat dried and then repeated the process with the colours swapping them to different areas.


I repeated those two gesso and paint steps again ....


.... and then gathered some collage pieces to finish off the board - old music scores and the words from Phantom of the Opera (one of my most favourite musicals - see above).


Once I had stuck everything down and gone in with a charcoal pencil to add some shading and depth I was quite pleased with the look. I said this year I would be going back to using more neutral and vintage colours again and it is certainly making me happy.


I hope you will enjoy looking at all the wonderful and inspiring projects from the team at A Vintage Journey for our Words and Music challenge and maybe you will find a little time to join in and share something you have been making.

Have a creative month.

hugs Brenda xxx