Amazing Race Art Journaling Challenge-First Stop-China

I am very fortune to join a group of great racers. In this group Amazing Rae Art Journaling Challenge, racers will create an art journal base on the country. First stop is China. It takes me awhile to decide what I want to do with China. But once I decided, it didn't take much time~ I might add more stuff later but as it for now less is better, from an old Chinese saying.

This is a replica of an old Chinese painting that was owned by my father. It happened to have some discoloring and was about to toss into the recycling bin. Hate to see it goes waste, so I save it and hoping I can use it someday.  The first stop of the challenge is China which is perfect to upcycle the piece. I brush some water around the edge to help tearing the paper with a more torn look.

Using gel medium adhesive to the journal and add more gel medium on the top, then brush gesso on entire surface. Then I use baby wipe to wipe away gesso on some characters that I like. So those characters are darker compare to the one cover with gesso. Can you tell which one?

Now work on the edge, I used Tim Holtz distress crayon on the torn area to create an old paper, a burned paper look. I used both vintage photo all around and stain walnut in some area.  Just draw a thin line and start rubbing it like crazy.

With old looking edge, the entire page now looks too clean, so I use antique linen to again draw some line next to the characters and blend it out quickly. Distress crayons is hard to rub or blend once it is dry. So if you let it set for too long, it won't blend nicely and the line will stay as is unless to reactive it with water.

I choose floral as center piece and I want it to look like a Chinese floral painting, so I cut a piece of pink card stock adhesive behind the flower purposely leaving the bottom more pink cardstock than the top. So in a way it is a Chinese painting without scroll. lol
The flowers are embossed with white embossing powder then paint it with distress ink.

The Final Piece

Thank you for visiting my blog~
Stay tune for the next stop for this Amazing Race Art Journaling Chanllenge.