Lifted Illegibility

     I decided to try to mesh two techniques together and I'm really excited at how it turned out. I haven't turned this into a card yet, but I love the look and decided to share it now. 
     The first technique I described in my last blog post. I learned it from last week's Mixability Challenge where Lydia linked the fun tutorial for very loose, illegible writing as a bg. The second technique was featured a couple of weeks ago on splitcoast and it is called watercolor lifting. I have combined the two using distress inks and a liquid coffee that I sometimes use as a spray with my writing done using a Versamarker.
     I started off by smooshing several different Distress Inks onto some plastic packaging and adding water and dripping in some of the coffee liquid. I make this from instant coffee and water. (I guess I'm really doing 3 techniques because I know this one as Wrinkle Free Distress). I laid my paper, torn from a Mixed Media journal, down into the wet ink. Once that was dried, I did another dipping to intensify the color and dried again. I ran an embossing buddy over the whole sheet and then used my Versamarker to illegibly write over the whole sheet. If I remember correctly, I loosely wrote the lyrics from a couple of worship choruses on this one. I then embossed with clear ep.

As you can see, it is hard to see the writing when the whole piece is darker.

Looking at the top left corner you can see where I'm starting to lift the color and as the bg gets lighter, the embossed writing now shows up darker. MAGIC!!

Here's the final piece. I removed color from the whole piece. I poured out some of the coffee liquid into a dish and dipped an empty toilet paper roll into this to add the circles. I also spattered a bit of the coffee around too. Really fun technique to try out. Hopefully I'll either get it turned into a card, or maybe just add a bit as a journal page.

Secret Journaling

     Last week Lydia introduced me to a fun technique on the Mixability Challenge. She described it as "secret journaling" but it is basically a very loose writing that is illegible. Here are a few pieces I made using markers on plain white paper and onto some previously made watercolored pieces.

 I quickly became obsessed so here are a few more cards I made using cut up pieces of the writing. 

All the details for each card can be found at my splitcoast gallery where I'm known as mamaxsix.