Helloooo! It’s Project Art-time again and this month the kit contained the following fun supplies to play with: three Grumbacher watercolour brushes, a set of 12 water-soluble Lyra crayons, a bottle of maya mist, Heidi Swapp paper tags, 1 sheet vintage Western Union ticket, 1 vintage joke card and assorted paper dots.

The aquacolor crayons are highly pigmented, lightfast and very smooth. They dissolve and blend easily and you can either apply them dry and then add water, or you can use your wet brush to pick up the colour directly from the crayon. I use both of these methods and what I prefer depends on what I’m painting and the look I’m after.

If you apply the crayon dry you can then decide if you want to dissolve the crayon marks completely or if you want to leave some of them. The result will also vary depending on the paper you are using and it’s always a good idea to test the various supplies you are using before adding them to an important piece of work! An art journal is of course the perfect place to experiment!

For my first page this month I started out with some green scribbles on a non-gessoed page, using both of the green crayons in the set.

I dissolved the paint partially. It’s always possible to go back and add more colour later on if you like.

I cut a piece out of one of Stephanies exclusive papers from the main August kit and glued onto my page using matte medium. I added some journaling, the stamped and coloured image (using the Slug a Bug stamp), an arrow from the Downtown Boutique add on and I also decided to add some orange to my background.

I coloured some stamped images, using one of the stamps from the July Day in the Life kit…

…and finished my page with some more stamping, a piece of washi and some letter stickers from the main August kit.

For my next page I decided to begin with adding torn pieces of the Western Union ticket, using matte medium.

After drying, I added a thin layer of gesso and on top of the dry gesso, blue crayon…

I added more gesso on top of the dissolved blue crayon and then used the camera stamp from the Downtown Boutique add on.

Next, I added more of the blue…

I sprayed the Maya Mist over a stencil and I added some white gesso dots using another stencil.

Next I decided to add some clear gesso to seal the surface. The gesso did react a little with the mist, smearing it a bit, but it wasn’t much and I didn’t mind. If the clear gesso is applied quickly and with a light hand bleeding is minimized. When the clear gesso was dry I added some of the yellow Lyra crayon on top of it, dissolving it with water.

Next, I took one of the Heidi Swapp tags out and painted it yellow and green.

To finish my page I added the tag using my sewing machine. I also added a blue tag and some stamping on both tags. Underneath the tags I smeared some gesso out onto the background, to lighten up the page a bit. I also added a piece of washi tape from the Day in the Life kit and some journaling.

My third page started out with a piece of patterned paper. I went around the piece with my sewing machine and then added some white thread, using gesso as glue.

When the gesso was dry I added some paint, picking it up from the crayon with my brush and then painting.

I coloured one of the Heidi Swapp tags with the Maya mist this time, using a brush.

Adding different amounts of ink to get the uneven look…

Behind the tag I added a piece of one of the chalkboard stickers from the Downtown Boutique add on. I added machine stitching, stamping, journaling and some paper dots.

For my final page this month I cut one of the labels out from the August Panda Eight printables and I glued down paper dots around the label, using matte medium.

I removed the label and covered everything up with gesso.

When the gesso was dry I added colour using the Lyra crayons…

First the “Pale Geranium Lake”…

…and then some Orange too.

I layered a piece of the Western Union ticket, some vellum from the patterned paper add on and some of the tissue paper from my Cocoa Daisy Box together with some messy thread, under the label. The stamping on the label was made using one of the Main August kit stamps and the wood veneer feather is also from the main kit.

I hope you are having fun with your kit! Let me know if you have any questions and thank you so much for stopping by!