Boxed Words

I love to browse other people's blogs and become inspired.  Sometimes, I can't wait to try out an idea or technique.  This time it was Julie Fei-Fan Balzer's blog that inspired me.  She shows how to make sprayed and boxed letters Here.  I like it when I have things on hand to jump right in and try it.

I used a smaller size journal and some letter stickers for my word "fun". I thought the stickers would be good to use because I've had them a long time and they are not very sticky anymore.  Therefore, it would be easy to spray the word, then pull up the letters to spray the word over and over. 

Of course, you know what they say about the best laid plans.  That little pile of colored pieces to the right of the journal are what's left of the stickers.  Since they were paper, the spray really got them wet. When I tried to pull them up, they just tore to bits.  Fortunately, each letter has multiples, so I was able to spell the word three times without running out of letters.  Live and learn.

But, my word "fun" seemed pretty big for such a small page.  I scrounged around and found some smaller press-on letters.  I liked the size of "play" much better.  Plus these letters are more durable yet pulled off the page easily to be repositioned four times.

I used Dylusions sprays for the boxed letters.  I used watercolor pencil (blue and yellow) to color the backgrounds, then brushed that with a water brush.  On the play page, I used pan pastel with a stencil to add a little more to the background.

Incidentally, the borders on both pages were done first.  I used stencils and traced the border designs in pencil, then filled it in with permanent black marker while sitting in front of the TV one night.  That was about a week ago, so when I decided to try the boxed words, I went straight to those pages.

It was fun, fun, fun!