From my Art Journal.............. The dark side of Love!!

Hi there, today I'm bringing you another mixed media piece that was inspired by one of my journal pages. I belong to a Facebook group called "The Craft Hole", we sometimes have challenges, I was intrigued about the "Gothic" challenge for April.  I looked at my art journal, and why would the word LOVE and hearts and birds make me think of Gothic, I will never know.  Here is what I did, I hope you like it, when I showed the final piece to my son and began to tell him the story behind it he said....."stop, I'm sad already" his words exactly.

So here is my story, very short to the point.

Love, we all hope is something that once we find IT, will last for ever, and yes sometimes it does, along the way, you find the way to overcome anything and everything and keep your love going strong.  Sometimes, love ends, hearts get broken and people walk away from each other, this is my story, short but to the point.

You can see the love birds, no longer together, the broken hearts that separate them, the light and darkness that comes with a broken heart, with a love that is no more.  Well now I see why my son said the piece made him sad.

Here is my piece from beginning to end, I love it and I have to say that I'm not in that place anymore, time does heal!.

Here is the journal page that inspired me to create my mixed media Gothic piece..... The dark side of Love!

I used water color paper, all was covered with Tim Holtz mini distress ink pads, it was just added over the entire page, then I used some of his stamps as well with black ink, and added text to one half of the page, on the other I stamped some hearts going down, added wings to some of the hearts and used the bird stamp one on the top and one on the bottom.  I added the word LOVE by hand, and painted with red acrylic paint, and used a black marker to outline the letters.

I was working on another project and had used the amazing casting resin along with Alumilite brown and red dyes. Amazing Casting Resin comes with a part A and Part B, you are supposed to mix equal parts of resin, and if you want to add color to the resin it is suggested to add it to part A first, then add part B and mix together, I followed this instructions, and right before pouring the colored resin, I added a bit of the red dye, I wanted some swirls on the resin and I wanted a red that was not too bright so mixing brown and red, really worked out, as you can see in the close up photo below.  Now amazing casting resin has very little time before it begins to set, so I just poured it over the page and let it spread on it's own, had I used the clear cast resin, you would be able to see the text underneath, but that's not what I wanted, I really loved how the resin lookes, the swirls of color came out just the way I was hoping they would.

Now it was time to use the amazing clear cast resin with some Alumilite red dye, this resin takes longer to set, so I had time to play with it, I used a stick to add the resin on the letters, then I decided to add it to the birds, the hearts and wings and some around the border of the page, using the stick to color in the hearts and wings was fun. 

I had to let the resin set over night, actually a bit longer, it's a bit humid in my home right now so it took a bit longer to set. 

Next I decided to take some acrylic paint in black and just added some all over the page in random, all around the resin, the words and the border of the frame to give it a darker look, all the purple you see on the photo above is not as bright anymore.  

Once the black paint dried, I took some Alumilite metallic silver powder and used a brush to apply everywhere I added black paint.   Once I was happy with the result, I mixed more amazing clear cast resin, this time I needed it to be clear, so I poured it all over the page in random areas, I did make sure to add it to all the stamped images, and to the red resin I had poured before, I loved how it made all the colors pop, made the text on the page stand out and loved how the metallic silver powder mixed with the resin and took it to other parts of the page as the resin moved, I had to let it set again, this time I let it set for 24 hours. Below are photos of the final piece.

Here you can see the red resin covered with the clear cast resin

This close up shows the areas that were covered with the amazing clear cast resin 

this close up shows the clear cast resin over the hearts and wings, the resin is already set, yet I love how it looks like water sitting on top of the images, at least that's how it looks to me

here is a close up of the top area of the page, you can see I only added to some areas of the page, it shows dimension but also contrast, as you clearly can see that the areas covered with the clear resin stand out, the colors look much brighter

Here is the final piece, I took the photo outside today, and it was very windy so I had to rush , because the wind kept blowing my piece away.  In person it looks amazing.