A Background Note

As Lisa mentioned on her blog, www.studiorose.wordpress.com, she and I took Teresa McFayden's "Write Place Write Time" summer journal e-zine. When the month was over, we both wanted to keep working in our summer journals. We decided we would take turns coming up with a technique and a topic to keep us motivated. Following is my first contribution.

You will need Vaseline, two colors of acrylic paint, a paint brush, Q-tips, paper towels, a glue stick and some collage bits.

I glued the pieces around the edges, being careful to make sure the edges were down well. I also used some waxed paper between the pages of my journal as this can get messy. Once the images were glued in place, I added some blue paint, not carefully, I just slapped some on.

When the paint and glue were dry, I added Vaseline to the parts I wanted to show through. I used my finger in the larger areas (the girls face) and Q-tips for smaller areas.

I did some samples to show how much gives you what effect.


With this sample I used my finger to apply the Vaseline.

With this sample, I used a Q-tip. You can play around with that to find what you like best, actually a combination of the two is nice.

After I had the Vaseline where I wanted it, I painted the entire thing with white paint, covering everything! Again, not carefully, just getting it on the page. Gesso also works well. It's very important to let the paint dry completely before going on to the next step.


Once the paint is dry, take a paper towel and rub the entire piece. The white paint will lift from the resist areas - where you applied the Vaseline. I used a second paper towel to get as much of the Vaseline up as I could, once the paint was removed.


One thing about this technique, the Vaseline leaves enough of a residue so that writing on the paper isn't easy. I journaled on some old calendar pages, then edged them with the same blue paint to blend them into the background.

There it is! Hope you are enjoying your Sunday!