"This was Awesome, Epic, Cool" for Let's Get Sketchy

Finally finished this one! It was a work in progress for about a month, if you can believe it. I started off with the background by playing around in my art journal a bit to see what could be accomplished with some white gesso, Dylusions sprays, a stencil, and some texture paste that became rock hard. (FYI: I don't know if there's an easier way, but I just broke off a chunk of texture paste and let it soak in a puddle of water for a while. It still never spread beautifully, I had to really smoosh it into the stencil, but it's not like I could go out and buy another pot of the stuff because, well, Vanderhoof!)

So, if you would like to recreate something like this background on your own layout, here's what I did:

1. Apply a thin, random layer of white gesso all over the middle of a piece of thick kraft cardstock. I used an old gift card to spread the gesso.
2. Spray Dylusions Ink Spray through a stencil, again, randomly. Don't worry if you go off the edge of the gesso, it just gives some more variation of colour as the gesso tones down the bright colours of the spray quite a bit. I used Postbox Red, Squeezed Orange, and Lemon Zest as my three colours, but I could not for the life of me find the brand/manufacturer of the leaf stencil!
3. Apply texture paste in random areas over the gesso and ink spray. The texture paste will pick up some of the colour from the sprays, so you will end up with some white areas as well as some coloured leaves.
4. Any areas that feel too white, take a gelato (I chose gold) and colour the texture paste. It will be bumpy, but that's okay! Then you can use a waterbrush (or paintbrush dipped in water) and spread the gelato out more evenly. I ended up with some really pretty gold, sparkly leaves that the photos don't really do justice to.

After the background was done to my liking, it was relatively simple to lay out rest of the elements according to this great sketch from Let's Get Sketchy:

Here's a few close-ups of the journaling and other details like the die cuts:

It's a pretty busy layout, but I like it! I don't think it's Brenna's favourite, though. She said to me, "Don't you think there's just too many fall colours in there?" and I said, "Nope! It's a fall page." But yeah, maybe she's right? What do you think?