Roots

      Hi everyone. Happy middle of the week to you. And Happy Earth Day too. 🌏

     If you stop by Elizabeth's blog, Altered Book Lover, be sure to wish her a happy birthday. 🎂 Happy birthday my friend. 

    Today I am sharing a page I made for Gillena's Tree Are Awesome, Aren't They? challenge.  This challenge is perfect for Earth Day, isn't it? 🌎

     It was really difficult to get today's page to photograph correctly so you could see the details. For one thing, my journal at this point did not want to lie flat. 😒

   If you can't tell what this page is about, the quote gives it all away. The background is made with ink pads, acrylic paints, liquid ink, water color paints and even a bit of watercolor pencil. Who knew making soil was so complicated? Ha ha. I even used markers and drew in the little tunnel that some little unidentifiable animal is hiding in. 

    OK I should have taken a photo of both of the actual roots before I cut them out, but in the below photo you can see one of the roots.

   This page was an experimental background page I had made with paints, and then I used some liquid acrylic and dropped it down the page. I did this months ago, and funny how it moved itself out of a paper pile so I would see it now. Of course it didn't move itself, but suddenly it was on top of a pile of backgrounds and immediately I thought the brown drips looked like roots.

   I fussy cut these and then glued them down in my journal and worked on creating the background soil around them. I'm not sure the page needed the base of the tree  trunk and the little bit of ground and sky that I added at the very top. Here's an earlier version of the page before I finished making the soil have the right color and depth. I cropped this one to get rid of the top. You can definitely see the roots better here.

   I actually found the quote  in my plant stamp bin, and so maybe that is where I got the idea for roots. It's a great quote. The stamp is from Unity Rubber Stamps.

   I tried stamping the quote  directly with black ink on the page, but it didn't really show up. To fix that I stamped it on some acetate and fussy it cut it. This acetate had a frosted look  to it,  which is why it looks so white on the page. 

   On my trip last weekend we visited Congaree National Park in South Carolina. I'll share more about our interesting walk and the park in another post, but I did see a few cool roots that fit with today's art journal.

   I'm not sure what's going on with these roots on the right... and even with the tree on the left.

   but it looks like it's growing over the other trees exposed roots.

   The walk also took us through a few stands of cypress trees. Those little nubs you see are called cypress knees. They grow off the roots and help stabilize the tree and, when this ground is flooded with water (which it was not when we were there) they might also help get oxygen to the roots.

   More to come about this weekend-get-away once I get a bit more organized. 

   That's all for me right now. Have a super rest of your day.