Gothic Arches and MMM

This is the first gothic arch I've created in some time, but I couldn't help but be inspired and play with the Rose theme at Gothic Arches this week. The flower-headed lady was created on our trip out of two images I got from a Flickr group called Collage Images (Not For Posting Art). The actual arch was made using techniques I learned from an Extreme Journaling workbook by Juliana Coles. This is by no means "extreme journaling," but I decided to play with what I learned from her workshop booklet "Empty Raw Creations, and I found that her techniques can be used for almost any mixed media project. Here's what I did: I prepared a piece of heavy watercolor paper with molding pasted, stamping it before it dried with a paisley-shaped rubber stamp from Walmart. When the paste dried I painted the entire arch with cheap aqua acrylic paint, and when that was dry, I drybrushed magenta paint on the textured areas. I let the paint set for a minute or two and then began wiping and reapplying the magenta until I was pleased with the result, and then I did the same with yellow paint. I added a little mediuum pink paint for highlights and then glued Madame Rose and flower cutouts from Artful Blogging onto the arch. I brushed around the edges of the cutouts with magenta, aqua, and yellow to make them seem more a part of the arch, and I used my new favorite art tool, Baby Wipes, to remove paint as needed. I continued adding and removing various shades until I liked what I saw. It's important to use a new Baby wipe when one gets covered with paint or you will muddy your surface. When all the paint was dry, I rubbed a black ink pad over the textured areas and used a flourish stamp in some of the bare areas. Again, I used a Baby Wipe to make the stamps less distinct. Next, I added two butterflies from my vintage butterfly book that Ava gave me last year, overpainting them with magenta and yellow arcylic, and I went back around the outside of the arch while I still had paint on my brush. The last thing I did was use my black stamp pad on the edges of the arch and voila!