La Vie est belle

In a way it's a relief that September and with it autumn has arrived here because there is no longer any point in looking forward to a summer that never came. It was one of the coldest on record here in Scotland and that means it's easy to forget about the few sunny days that we did have and during which life was indeed beautiful. One such spell took place early in June when we had 3 sunny days in a row. I know this because I can see it in my Dylusions sketchbook where I made spreads on all of those days. It makes so much difference when things dry quickly instead of having to wait for hours for it to happen or alternatively use a heat gun. These pages were made on the 12th June.

Making them so long ago means even I find it hard to reconstruct exactly what I did. But it started with acrylic paints and stencils, from a variety of sources. The Star Flowers stencil comes from Joggles and the little circular one is from January 2015 Stencilgirl Club. I added a large stamp (featuring a French Journal page which you can just see above) from Stampotique designed by France Papillon (I love the stamps this Belgian artist designs). The leaf stamp comes from a sheet designed by the organizers of The Documented Life Project.

I also used the top layer of both a flowery paper napkin and a red small leaf patterned one (it's originally meant for Christmas) and some collage elements from a variety of catalogues.

There are peeks of other elements present there. I had so much fun with this page that it was hard to call it done. But hardly any of my sketchbook pages are declared finished before I have added postage stamps to match and you can see that I went with flower ones this time in colours to match the spread.

Looking at these pages now I can almost feel that sunshine again. It's one of the things I love best about art journalling. The pages can take you right back in time and bring back memories of both the day and the mood I was in.