Working in Joan's Journal - Creatures of the Bay

I was very excited to received Joan's journal in the mail about a week and a half ago!

As this is the first journal swap I've been involved in, it took me a while to get up the courage to do anything in it!  Joan provided some pages (on the right) that could be used in the journal, or for inspiration.

Once I decided on my pages, it flowed pretty well.  Joan's instructions requests (instructions seems a harsh word!) for her journal included something to do with the inhabitants of the ocean, and that, though she was really interested in conservation, this didn't have to be part of the theme. 

As the journal has a really wide double paged spread, I wanted something that would flow across both pages.  To start with I reinforced the pages with plain paper that Joan had provided.  I had some wide tape that I thought would be suitable to put down the spine of the two pages.  I then gessoed the whole thing.

I decided to do an octopus, and used the big stash of gelli printed papers that I had. 

A bit backward; should have done the background first but I hadn't decided what I wanted to do yet!  Thus I did a light blue green background afterwards, and added dots through a stencil for the air bubbles.  Almost finished I thought... and then discovered that the tape I used was too smooth, and the gesso and paint were peeling off!  Bugger.  To rectify this I peeled the paint off, lightly sanded the tape, and glued a strip of plain paper over the tape, and some of the page (hoping this would tie it in together).  I used gel medium which I've found to be pretty strong, so hope it works!  I then re-painted over these areas and finished off with a thick white outline and a thinner black one.

I didn't have anything conservation based in my spread, but I found a quote from Jacques Cousteau that I thought was appropriate.

And here's the finished spread.  Thanks Joan, I enjoyed working in your journal; I hope you like it!

Cheers, Lisa