Always... by Katy Leitch

I was lucky enough to receive the Gothic Grunge set from Illusionary Artists for my debut DT piece. As soon as I saw it I thought it would pair beautifully with Andy's skull stencil for a monochrome project. The word stamp comes from the versatile IA Word Up set - I decided to give this romantic sentiment a sinister twist....

Here's how I made it:

1 Repeat stamp the arch window in a pattern onto the journal page – be sure to use permanent ink. Overstamp areas with the smaller arch.

2 Mute the stamping by covering with a thin coat of white gesso.

3 Add colour wet-in-wet with Dark Grey 6 and Translucent White DecoArt Fluid Acrylics

4 Stamp the gravestones in Watering Can Archival and again over the top in Jet Black (this gives an illusion of perspective).

5 Stamp all around the edges using just the very top of the scenic stamp and one of the ‘fig’ text stamps to create a 'frame' to your page.

6 Draw the outline of the skull through the stencil with pencil and block out in white gesso.

7 Position the stencil again over the gessoed area and apply Carbon Black Americana Premium through it with a stencilling brush.

8 Use your finger to apply more Carbon Black around the page edges.

9 Finish with the word ‘always’ stamped into a white area of the skull image.

I hope you like my Gothic-inspired journal page!

Katy x

 Gothic Grunge and Word Up sets from Illusionary Artists - available here