Give me a break!

Are you like me, where you know you have a whole list of things to do, and you'd rather be creating something? What do you do, do you give in to the urge to be creative or do you feel the guilt and start crossing off your 'to do' list?

I'm terrible for giving in to the urge to create, and then my family just give me the look! That look which makes me take a reality check, not knowing that I've completely lost the last couple of days in a world of my own.

This was the inspiration for these pages. I just wanna be creative, is that too much to ask? These are the pages in the music book I bought in York on Monday.

The pages started out being gesso'd, then spritzed with bubblegum pink and London blue Dylusions inks. 

Then I used an old Helix alphabet stencil and wiped a baby wipe over it to blot the ink here and there. I was in a shop the other day where I saw some wallpaper samples, I whipped a couple of samples off the testers and I've stuck a piece of anaglypta (love saying this word, it's so funny!) on the top right of this page. I used some of the structure gel to put raised circles and textured paint on the wallpaper piece and random areas of the page.

I used my brown and black pastels to rub over the page to pick up on the texture of the gesso under the ink, and also to lowlight the edges of the wallpaper and some of the raised spots. I went to my local craft shop and they gave me the large circle mask for free, as it was a bit of wood waste, nice one Tom, Thanks. I used this mask with red firefly Cosmic Shimmer Mist.

I used a flourish mask that I bought from Tom (not actually in production), and used my structure gel mixed with blue acrylic paint in the corner. You can really see the piece of wallpaper here. I've painted white, metallic purple, and illuminous pink paint over and around it. I just love the texture. I stamped some flowers around the edge with green and white Adirondack paint dabbers.  Then I started to journal everywhere with Posca pens.

I drew a frustrated me (wishful thinking that I'm that slim!), printed out my sentiment, coloured it with Moss Green Distress ink and added some shading in places. 

I used a Papermania stamp for the little notice boards. I coloured the edges with Posca pens, then painted white acrylic on the inside. I used my brown pastel to distress it a little.

I used Crafty Individuals Postmark stamps in some of the circles.