Gesso and India Ink Journal Pages

I’ve been using india ink a lot in my recent projects.  It’s highly pigmented, blends well when wet, is permanent when dry, and is also transparent enough to show other ink colors over and under it.  In other words, I love this stuff!

I wanted to add text to these pages, and I wanted to use the same stamp to do it.

• I applied a thick layer of gesso to both pages, and I stamped into it while it was still wet.
• Once it dried, I added some splashes of purple ink and let that dry.
• Then came red ink, covering the pages. I didn’t have to worry about the red covering the purple- remember, it’s highly transparent as well as highly pigmented.
• When the background colors were dry, I used the same stamp I used for the gesso to stamp all over the page in white, purple and red ink.  It’s looking so awesome!
  
• I used different sized lids to add circles of black india ink to the surface and splashed them with water a tiny bit.
• I used a thin layer of gesso in the inside of the circles to highlight them a little.
  
• The final touch was outlining the circles with lines and calligraphy.
• Now these pages are ready for journaling!

Here is an affiliate link to the ink set that I use- there’s different sets of colors, and I’m on a mission to collect them all!!