Flowers, a Feather and Some White Space!

I tend to want to cover the entire background of an art journal page with paint or color of some sort.  But more and more I am realizing that I really like the look of seeing some white space.  Okay, in this case, some antique white space.  The colors stand out better and everything appears brighter.  As far as I'm concerned, the brighter, the better.

With this art journal spread in my large Dylusions art journal, I started out by sticking down a page from an old ledger.  Then I used some stencils and spray ink to apply some color.  Along the right and left edges I adhered some brown paper bag pieces that I had stamped with an alphabet stamp and cut into large scallops.  The centers of the larger flowers are circles I punched out of some vintage wall paper that I ordered from Roben-Marie Smith when I first decided that I had to give art journaling a try. Then I went to work with some acrylic markers adding petals to the flowers and doodling along the scalloped right and left edges.  The feather on the left-hand page was created using a Crafter's Workshop stencil designed by Julie Balzer.  Her creativity and her blog are beautifully inspiring.  Some of the finishing touches included adding little white dots with my white uniball pen.  It is amazing how adding lines and dots with a black and/or white pen can really make some of the colorful details pop!  Thanks for looking!