What You Make Others See

It's such a pleasure to return as a monthly Guest Designer for Stencilgirl Products. Just in case you were wondering I simply LOVE their stencils and use them all the time in my art journalling so making pages specially for them is wonderful.

I don’t know about you but I’m always quite relieved when January arrives, the Christmas tree can be dismantled, the decorations tidied away and life can return to normal without the frenzy of Christmas shopping and the writing of Christmas cards.  I love the dark days at the beginning of the year when the evenings can be spend cosily by the fire, and the warmth of the stove compensates for the frosty coldness outside. This spread reflects such winter evenings.

You can find a full step-by-step tutorial on the Stencilgirl Talk site with more pictures which include images of these pages in progress. I used the following stencils:

medium stencil November 2016 Stencilgirl Club
S329 Trio of Trees
small stencil April 2016 Stencilgirl Club
S218 Bali Doily
L318 Wall of Words
L067 X Rows

Remember you can obtain the stencils from previous Stencilgirl Club issues by joining the club and ordering them.

When I finished the spread (in the A4 Dylusions art journal) I realized that it appeared very Dutch to me, both the collage image (looks to me like Amsterdam, but I'm not sure. I collect collage images from old magazines, catalogues and old books and have no idea where this particular one originated) and the trees, called knotwilgen( = willows) in Dutch, so I added the Dutch stamps for good measure.

The pages are also dimensional as I used gold embossing paste which also makes the spread sparkle, just like when there is snow on the ground.

It's very appropriate for today as we are having an icy cold but very sunny day here in the Scottish Borders with a bit of snow still on the ground. By tonight it will be an evening like I captured on these pages.