Asian Delights

With the recent Chinese New Year, our new Thai cookery books and shopping at an Asian supermarket, I was inspired to create this page.

The background is painted using Distress Ink which I applied like watercolour using a paintbrush and diluting the ink with water on an acrylic block. I was amazed by the texture I achieved just with my painting and I think the vibrancy of the colours ties into the Asian theme too.  Next I stamped ink from a Terracotta Spectrum Aqua marker using a Kaisercraft stamp, which merged with the background because Distress Inks are reactivated when they become wet, which I like. Next I tore pieces of black and gold card from the Eastern Promise themed topper pack from Hunkydory and edged them with a gold metallic marker, and then stuck them to the page with double-sided foam tape. I also added butterflies which I punched out of the same card using a Tonic Studios Simplicity punch. The oriental style dream tag, birds and red sun, flowers and butterflies are stickers by Penny Black. I really like the transparency of the stickers and added some shadow around them with an Aqua marker then doodled around them using a black Uni Pin marker to add further definition. The gold lines, flowers and dots are outline stickers which I outlined with a black Uni Pin marker to make them stand out more.  To finish I added some green rhinestones to add extra sparkle.

We love cooking and eating Chinese and Indian food and as we enjoyed our visit to The Giggling Squid Thai restaurant so much, we bought a couple of Thai cookbooks to add to our growing cookbook collection. Of course that meant a trip to our local Asian supermarket to stock up on ingredients as most of them cannot be found in our regular store. This included Thai basil, galangal, shrimp paste, chilli bean paste and a variety of curry pastes for our new Thai recipes, black beans and oyster sauce for our Chinese cooking and creamed coconut for our Thai and Indian curries.

Before you enter the Supermarket itself, you are greeted with a lovely array of fruit and veg. We always stock up on fresh herbs, Cyprus potatoes and fruit – this time we treated ourselves to lychee, yum!

The shelves are full of goodies, this is the spice section where we bought our Kaffir Lime Leaves for our Thai recipes and on opposite side of the aisle are all the nuts and dried fruits.

They have a wide range of tea and coffee, we always buy our favourite Chinese Gunpowder Green Tea.

Here is the green tea in our glass teapot from Japan, it makes two mugs of tea, just enough for hubby and me. As T Stands for Tuesday I’m saying a big hello to the T Gang – Happy T day!

I’m also pleased to be able to join Linda’s theme “50 Shades of Red” over at Art Journal Journey.

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Here is a list of all the materials used to create this art journal page:

• Spectrum Aqua Marker (Terracotta, Slate)
• Tim Holtz Distress Ink (Peeled Paint, Mowed Lawn, Peacock Feathers, Chipped Sapphire)
• Script metallic pen (Gold)
• Uni Pin Fine Line marker (Black 0.1mm)
• Kaisercraft clear stamps (Sketchy CS878)
• Hunkydory Crafts Luxury Topper Collection (Eastern Promise EAST104)
• Penny Black 2006 Stickeroos (Butterfly Party #10-181)
• Tonic Studios Simplicity Punch (Flora & Fauna Butterfly 916E)
• Magenta Style Outline Stickers (Daisy Gold 93326G)
• Hobbycraft Outline Stickers (Gold Scenes 5934211001)
• Hobbycraft Stickers (Green Rhinestone 5971511004)
• The Range double-sided foam tape