Grow the Right Kind of Fruits

The pages in my art journal recently have all been about being and doing today what I'm hoping to be and do tomorrow.  I've been thinking about this a lot and thinking about the kind of person I want to grow into.  As a Christian I look to Jesus to show me.  He is all loving, kind, compassionate, faithful, patient, gentle... I could go on.  When we invite Him into our lives we start to become more like Him.  As we allow His Spirit to live in us these traits, or fruits of the Spirit, will grow in us.

This spread was inspired by Darcy Journaling month 8 over at the PaperArtsy blog.  Darcy has done this wonderful series of art journal pages with loads of really amazing techniques.  When I saw this month's I just had to try some of the things she did, in particular I loved the border made using a mask and I had to try the tree:

The backround is sponged distress inks, water sprinkled to remove some inks and paint added with the edge of a ruler:

I tore a mask and used to sponge a border with Freso Finish paints then stamped with the crackle stamp.  I drew and painted the tree, then added my home made texture paste which I'd coloured brown.  I didn't have any brown paint so mixed some up from a combination of the Fresco Finish paints. 

Darcy stamped on the texture paste on her tree but I added texture with a cocktail stick:

I added punched leaves in three different shades of green:

I cut out 9 different hearts from patterned paper for the fruits and journaled on the backs.  Then I added loops made from thread and hung them on the tree so they could dangle loosely.  I couldn't resist adding a couple of birds:

This was a really fun page to do.  I absolutely loved doing this!  Now I've got to get growing these fruits as big as I can!