Buzz Buzz Buzz

I woke up bright and early at 6:30 am on a Saturday. It was not entirely my idea, the cats were demanding breakfast. But that’s ok, I had been trying to find time to get back to my Dina Wakely Media journal.

I knew I wanted to work on the kraft paper and bees kept coming to mind.

I put down a layer of color using Gelatos (Butter Cream, Kiwi, and Aqua Dolce) and Scribble Sticks (Tangerine, Ruby, and Night) I blended these with a Gelatos blending stump.

I then stamped a honeycomb design randomly over the page using KaiserCraft’s Honeycomb clear stamp and Distress Ink, Walnut Stain.  I thought I took pictures of just the background with the stamps but I can't find them in my files. :-(

My next step was to spray a layer of Krylon’s Workable Fixatif. My hope was that this would keep the Distress Ink and Gelatos from fading away when I added my layer of gel medium. (it worked pretty well, I had very minimal bleed/fade in the Distress Ink and no noticeable color change in the Gelatos)

I applied Golden’s Gel Medium (soft gel, semi gloss) with a palette knife and set it aside to dry. It can take several hours for the gel to dry completely. Let it set and dry on it’s own and it dries clear. Dry it with a heat tool and it dries with a milky cast.

Once the gel medium was dry, I rubbed on some Snow Cone and Watermelon Gelatos on top. I then brushed these places with water to make the color move down between the gel medium hexagons. I then, while still wet, wiped the excess color off the gel medium areas.

You can see the base colors and stamped lines under the clear hexagons.

I applied some more gel medium ‘honeycombs’ to capture a bit of these new colors. The gel is partially dry in the picture below.

I drew the queen with Prismacolor pencils (Dark Brown, Peach, Light Peach, Black, White, Tuscan Red and Violet) the highlight in her eye is white acrylic paint. Her hair is a mixture of Prismacolor pencils (Black and Dark Brown) and Scribble Sticks (Black and Lemon). Her crown is Scribble Sticks (Lemon, Tangerine and Black). I ended up going back over her crown with Prismacolor pencils (Black, Canary Yellow and Spanish Orange) to make is show up a bit more. I colored in between the gel hexagons that overlap her face, with black Prismacolor, to make them stand out.

I found a photo of a honey bee online. I resized it and added 3 of them to my page. The largest is about ¾ of an inch. I then colored the edges with Dark Brown Prismacolor to tone down the brightness of the body and the whiteness of the wings.

I am debating back and forth as to whether it is finished. Part of me wants text or scribbles along the left side. Part of me says don’t mess this up lol

Thanks for stopping by!

**Update

I added bits of text using Distress Ink, Walnut Stain and a rubber stamp from Non Sequitur from a stamp plate that I bought maybe 20 years ago. If you have a choice, always by red rubber stamps! They will last a life time!!! 

As always...Happy Crafting!