Journal Page SDC85 Whatever Makes You Happy

Kaz created the challenge for this week's Stampotique challenge;"We all have our problems in life, but life is short and we should all find something to put a smile on our faces as often as we can. So whether you choose 'happy' as your theme, your word or you use a technique that makes you smile, show me your little bit of HAPPY!"

I did wonder about this as I am normally pretty happy but the last few months have been tough. Then middle son's motivating phrase "Positive Mental Attitude (PMA)" which is a family joke came to mind and the song lyrics "Be happy, don't worry". Lying in my sick bed I had been rereading some old magazines and in August 2012 Craft Stamper; Jaine Drake had an article about using old pieces of chipboard and texture paste as the base for a journal page. As one of my intentions this year is to use up arty and fabric stashes this seemed like a great way to use some of those early purchases like peel offs...

I found some peel offs, chipboard and letters and added them to a gesso base. I then put texture paste on top of these pieces and more gesso followed by some dylusion inks and distress stain.

At this point I was pleased although those large letters don't really keep their appearance with layers and the peel offs were much better. Then it went wrong...

I had an idea about using glossy accents and embossing powder and I hated it. I grabbed some alcohol thinner and rubbed it off (was not set yet) and gessoed over the offending pieces. I then added stamps from a number of Dylusions' sets that I stamped on dictionary pages and card,  journalling and more doodles. It was still a bit lacking in cohesion so I stamped Claudine Hellmuth dots over the whole page. When I was sticking the stamps on the page I used Golden Soft Gel medium (semi gloss) as it was all I had and noticed it made the colour much brighter and reacted with the distress. In the end I used my finger to add gel medium all over the page. I added journalling on waste sprayed paper and finished my page. It does show that if you make a hideous mistake in a journal you just get the gesso out and keep going until you are happy...

I had taken more photos but the gel medium has a slight sheen and the close up pictures did not really work.

Art Journal Secrets

This was another prompt on UK Stampers but I have put off this one for weeks as I did not want to reveal my secrets... Then I realised I could hide the journalling under the tag. This is a very grungy distressed page and I had fun trying out different techniques.
I placed a layer of gesso on the page and then added distress inks. Where the gesso was uneven it has created a much darker scratchy layer that I really like. I used Paper Artsy stamps and I think the student book-keeping one is going to be overused. I added a ledger stamp from same range on the side of the page but embossed and stamped it in clear ink.

I crumpled, stamped and embossed a tag with di and mahogany distress embossing powder and added to page with journalling hidden. I then decided to try embossing/stamping keys with some success and then added alcohol inks over clear embossed areas. Letters from TH papers with distress crackle and ink  were then added.