Darcy Journal - month 8 - The Tree of Knowledge

When I was away last weekend, Darcy posted her final page in her monthly journalling series with Paperartsy. The Tree of Knowledge - which involved a recap of some of the techniques we'd learnt over the last 7 months - and drawing... eek!!

However, I wasn't going to be undone by drawing a tree to join in the final challenge.  Here is my entry.

 I used a mixture of Fibralos (I have the 15 chunky set, so quite limited with colours) and water colour pencils (Inktense and WH Smith) for my background

loved re-visiting the torn paper as a mask border and the mini wall stamp is lovely.

 my tree - I sketched it roughly on paper first as recommended by Darcy, then on the journal but rather than fill in the lines, I kind of used it as a guide, and painted the branches.

 I then had a panic about the leaves, as I didn't have the Urban Snapshot set Darcy used, but a twitter convo resulted in Darcy suggesting Sara Naumann's set 12- one of the new ones - for Paperartsy, as there is a splotchy stamp that was perfect!  3 colours of Fresco - Holly, Tinned Peas and Sage - give a lovely soft full in leaf tree look - thanks Darcy, thank goodness you were on twitter at the right time!

then on to the technique leaves - die cut as Darcy showed, (only had to staple one together, lol! ) and chose my techniques to fit on such a small space.. I chose - (left page) stencilling on tissue, crackle, blending opaques, torn stamped tissue; (right page ) masterboard (I had some of the one I used for Darcy's previous month where we did this, so die cut a leaf from it) blending Treasure Gold, stencilling resist with portfolios,  stamping into gesso.

and to show that the apples really do keep the leaves in place!

and of course the apples themselves! cool idea Darcy, they were fun to do (once I got a red I liked mixed)

thanks for months of fun with this Darcy and all your hard work getting these pages ready for us to try!
It's been great to play along.