Art Journal One Week and Art Journalling Vs Scrapping

This week we are asked to write down 7 things we did this week, provide evidence of two and use an old calendar as a background.

I scraped pink Dylusions paint onto the page and then stamped with purple/white paint using a foam stamp from the Claudine Hellmuth Dwelling set, I then overstamped with the acrylic stamp.

Evidence included 2 receipts, part of son's passport and bits of photo from his birthday and small calendar pages from the year so far. I sprayed with dylusion inks to add detail and hide personal details. You can see my "craft" mat which is an oven liner from Lidl but it works pretty well

I then made the receipts into fans and stuck them on and added the journaling from another page that I had sprayed with inks then written on and then stuck on. One of the reasons I did this was that when I started adding journalling on my background it was hard to read because of the dark colours. This is not one of my favourite pages as I feel it didn't come together how I wanted. But I have been in a grumpy mood all day and I never create as well when grumpy. Lens Guy suggested my mood has something to do with the Super Moon...

At the moment I am enjoying the art journalling as I feel there is a freedom to make mistakes that I don't have when scrapping or making cards. However I have been thinking about this and I think journalling in the art journal has freed me up to handwrite and journal on scrap pages and I think I am going to start creating a series of pages that are a mix of the two and incorporate some digital elements. Does anyone else have thoughts on this? Do you think as crafters we go through phases of preferring one type over another or am I just easily distracted?

First Ever ATCs

These are my first ever ATCs made for a 3 x 3 swap - one was to say Health, one Happiness and one Hope at UK Stampers. I used my homemade foam stamp for the purple background and then sprayed it with pink inks. I stamped Olivia three times (Stampotique) and coloured her with pro markers. The wings and hats are from Love Struck  Lucy (Dylusions) stamped onto leftover backgrounds from my Valentines.

Art Journal Perfect Day

For the UKStampers challenge set by Ephemera this week we had to:
Say what would be our Perfect Day, include a picture on the page and use some stamping.
I didn't have to think about this one at all as my Perfect Day would be spending all day on the beach at Camusdarach and if it was a lovely day watch the sunset over Skye, Rhum and Eigg.
I used Dylusions inks to create the background and then painted the title with white and teal dylusions acrylic paints. I printed out small bacl and white photos of the beach and spattered them with the inks and blended it a little. After sticking them down I used TH Shabby French swirl stamp to stamp with Versamark Turquoise around the page and over the photos. I added journalling using a white sakura Gelly Roll Pen and then stamped a Banana Frog paisley pattern frog with white acrylic paint. I also stamped TH butterflies from the shabby french set in clusters towards the title using red, green and purple stazon inks.

Dylusions inks for background with water droplets

colouring photos

details of pictures and journalling

More details

Those butterflies

Bit messy here

Lots of inking and painting going on today and will show all tomorrow as light too poor now. I have also been playing about with my blog's look and trying to simplify the labels for posts - don't recommend you do this retrospectively.
Do you like my steampunk art splatter lady who started off at Graphic Fairy?

Loving that transparency vibe

The transparency prompt from Shimelle has been fun. I have created a wholly digital page which I printed onto acetate and then a page using acetate print outs. The elements for my seeds page all came from free downloads from Shabby Princess Happy Go Lucky and other sets. I set the background paper to almost transparent to get that faint washed out look - although why I am creating a digital transparent page in an acrylic album I am not sure. I think this page may end up being printed again and being used in my garden journal. I then printed another page of digital elements and used them on the next page.
The lo was dictated by the page again but I am loving this page. The class has inspired the layered flowers and I found scrap vellum (almost transparent) and used this as a mount which then improved the look of the page on the other side. The blue flower is three layered transparencies and the snowflake flowers are made of snowflakes and purple flowers layered up. I think page below is improved by vellum and transparencies on other side.

The small blue flower was made using a circle torn into a spiral and reglued into a flower. The album is getting thick now. 

Grow Your Own Flowers and have a kiss

More pages for Shimelle's class using up flowers. It could be about nothing else but the fact that my garden is a muddy slope and I need to Grow my own flowers. This layout was dictated by the page behind. I used my Martha Stewart flower punch to punch out loads of flowers that I edged with aqua promarkers and then just layered these on top of each other and around the cut out pic of my very muddy welly boots. The journalling is on the white flower and explains that Rule 6 means that if your garden is a muddy slope then you have to grow your own. The chipboard g was white and pink but I wanted more purple so promarkered the white. The three big flowers at the edge each has three layers of flower, felt and brad.
Why a kiss? Well apart from the obvious romantic meaning it also refers to the idea of keep it stupid simple - part of another shimelle prompt. I took the pretty pastel squares left over after I used the letters and inked them with Stazon, brushed acrylic over that and added more embellishing powder. These were then stuck on paper mache blue tissue and are in my album as not sure what to do with it next. I like that each letter has a different texture because of how much or little I layered the paint, ink and powder.

111 items on the page and using Lens Guy camera

I was responding to the sticker prompt and discovered I had managed to get 111 items on the page. Quite a feat on an acrylic page. As youngest daughter is in China on a school trip (luckiest child ever) and taken my super easy point and click compact with her I am using Lens Guy's work camera. The body and lens are so heavy I can hardly lift the thing. I could give you all the boring details about shutter speeds and stuff and lens type but basically it's a pro users cannon camera.  I enjoyed doing this layout as although I buy stickers I don't use them very often. I enjoyed randomly putting eyelets around photos and I used the mix of colours to try and tie in with the letters I had chosen. I had two small alphabets that had very different colour schemes and no letter As so decided the eyelets would work as an A. The pics below show what the page would like with my homemade dots paper behind - think that might happen. A pic of the back of the page - I really don't make life easy for myself, plus a pic of the edge of the album as it takes shape. I like how all the paper, ribbon and lace edges are beginning to work together.

More ribbon and metal - Rule 3 Smile whatever the weather

Back to that mini book - the acrylic is really challenging me as I am trying to find ways to respond to Shimelle's class prompts and get the album to work. Everything I read in the past suggested this type of album had to be planned like a military operation and when I am in my happy crafting place planning and organising is the last thing I want to do. Far to much planning, organising and forward thinking at work. Crafting is my spontaneous response. I had found two pics of Lens Guy and me taken about a year apart. One was taken on the ferry to spain last summer when it was hot, the sun was setting and there was that romantic glow to the whole thing. The other was taken the year before on a very wet and dreach day on Lake Windemere. We had paid to go on the ferry trip down the lake and we were determined to sit outside whatever the weather. We were absolutely soaked through but still had that feeling of closeness and romance. Therefore Rule 3 is... Smile whatever the weather.
The pics below show a bit more detail. The circular ribbon mounts I made the other day by wrapping and sticking ribbon onto chipboard. The heart came from the DCWV Hippie Chic set. The ribbon was found in eldest daughter's stash box and I used metal staples to gather it. This was a way to still keep that translucent feel to the page on both sides. The border came about as the other side of page was my paper scraps border so the ideal solution was to use the scraps of ribbon left over from embellishments. I roughly sewed the ribbons to the back of the orange ribbon and stuck down. The paper was another scrap and I just tore and teased the edges a little more.

Gardening and the other side of Shimelle's acrylic pages

More of a productive day than I thought it would be today.
(1) The other side of Shimelle's pages. I managed to work out the correct size of paper etc to cover the other side of the front cover and luckily I still had some scrap flowers so was able to place these over the ones of front cover and disguise glue dots. In the spirit of the class I decided to use up a pile of blue gems and metal stars as the centre of the flowers and to hide glue dot on butterfly. The heading "Rules of Life"  was printed out from computer. I used the UK scrappers font of the week - Kilogram and then outlined the text in green pen to highlight more. I gave into my inner child and used a tea bag to turn the white printer paper into something  that matched the papers better. The second page is very simple and the journalling reads "Rule 1, Life is not a dress rehearsal". It is my favourite picture of my dad. The photo is at that angle because it is then hidden when the front cover is over that page. I decided I had to tear the photoedges as wel and then ran a blue pen along the edge which ran a little and I like that effect. There are no other embellishments on the page as the paper is so bright and dad was a no frills kind of person. The other side of that page is a page of journalling about my dad and how much I miss him, but also how I treasure all my memories of him and will always Celebrate my Life!

(2) On Friday I was lured by Lidl's cheap plant and bought three clematis - I have a weakness for all types of climbing plants that will cover the huge expanse of fencing - a snip at £3.59 each. Having purchased some compost Lens Guy and dug some holes and planted them. In other words he dug the holes and I planted the plants. Must be cheap plants as not one label telling what type of clematis they are. Going by the packaging pink, blue and and purple! We then  foolishly began to start picking up builder's rubble and stones. Three wheelbarrows later we had made little impression and our enthusiasm was waning... I have decided that as we can't afford to build a retaining wall at one side of garden to prevent neighbour's garden sliding into our garden the rocks will have to do.

Hole punch background paper and prompt 2 completed plus junque journal page

For prompt 2 which asked you to use up scraps I went to my trusty bags of scraps. As I did not have that much time I roughly snipped triangles for a bunting style border and homemade flower. I also had bits of pink card scraps which I  punched with a Martha Stewart lace punch and inked over the top and this all went into the mix. The sneaky peep yesterday changed as I did not feel it was all working. I found a piece of very in your face pink corrugated card and toned it down with white acrylic to make it softer. The journaling is written on another scrap I had and the scalloped piece is the cut off from a card I was making. The reason I had been avoiding the acrylic album was the planning it needs and now I am having to try and deal with that. It does not suit my messy slap dash approach.

I have been playing with the contents of my hole punch. I covered a piece of card in pva and then threw them on top. I then pasted more down with a 50/50 water pva mix that I had added some pigment powder too. I then dusted powder on top and swirled around. I like this and hope that I can use this somewhere in this album for Shimelle's class.

I have also being playing around with creating a junque journal following a comment from Jane and her helpful links. I have a cheap as chips staples notebook and I then pasted in some black and white sheets of plants and excess flowers and bits from this layout. I used Shimelle's celebrate life words and stuck it all down with the watery pigment pva mix. There was a bit of journalling about what was used which ran in the mix. So will need to go back and fix that later.

First prompt from class - use up old metal stash

Once I read the prompt I rooted around my stuff and found quite a bit of metal... as you can see. I also found a Papermania acrylic album I had bought ages ago and never knew what to with. It's so small - only 16 cm square so I am not sure how I will get on limiting myself to that size.
Quite a metal brad and eyelet collection came to light plus bits and pieces of stuff including the other butterfly clip from old shoes. It was suggested we used up a paper set too so I am using an 8 x 8 cardstock pad from DCWV called Hippie Chic which is very vibrant!!! I loved it at time I bought it and then was a little afraid to use such an in your face set of paper. But it does seem quite spring like and I do have some alphabet and stickers too in that range.

I think the bracelet has to be my worst idea ever. I found it in my box of random bits and bobs and decided I could make it into a delicate "Life" word. It was hellish to do and then I struggled to stick it to page. I did manage to hook it round the brads and Lens Guy's lent his fingers to hold bits on the page. The journalling describes the fact that spring has sprung and the page is for Shimelle's class. I went over the white card back with oil pastels and smudged with my fingers. I think I used 18 brads and 2 eyelets on page, plus punched flowers, butterfly paper, metal shoe embellishment and that bracelet... which I also had to paint a deeper purple with acrylic paint as it did not stand out. The white painty effect on butterfly paper  looks okay but was a result of my first attempt at sticking down word life going horribly wrong...

The finished page with a sheet of DCWV Hippy Chic cardstock behind which will be another page. Note sure what is going there yet... Close up of that pesky word and the most brads I have ever used on a layout.