Little Journals

It’s always a good idea to have some gifts ready for special occasions so as not to be caught unaware, and one of the things I love to do is to make small journals that people can use in any way they fancy.  I thought I would share some with you as my May project for Stencilgirl®. You can find the full instructions on the Stencilgirl®Talk website today. You can also find a list of all the stencils I used there.
Don't let the fact that it involves a bit of bookbinding put you off. This is ever so simply and each journal is done using just one sheet of paper.
As you can see on some of the pages I have already started adding extra items to the journals (mainly postage stamps at the moment) and I hope to add more elements and also writing in due course. Here are some detailed pictures:

You can also find a small video of one of the journals on my Instagram account here.

Art Cards 225 - 233

Here is the next set of 9 art cards. Remember these cards are part of the #365somethings2018 project on Instagram, where I hope to end up with 365 cards, one for each day of 2018. If you want to see them appear individually each day you can find them all on my Instagram feed.

Some of the cards in this set of nine were made as part of a monthly project as Guest Designer for Stencilgirl  Products® and that means you can find a full tutorial on how I made them on the Stencilgirl®Talk website.

Art Cards 188 - 196

Here is the next set of 9 art cards. Remember these cards are part of the #365somethings2018 project on Instagram where I hope to end up with 365 cards, one for each day of 2018. If you want to see them appear individually each day you can find them all on my Instagram feed

You can find all the cards here too by clicking on the 365somethings2018 tag below or in the sidebar.

Art Cards 179 - 187

Here is the next set of 9 art cards. Remember these cards are part of the #365somethings2018 project on Instagram where I hope to end up with 365 cards, one for each day of 2018. If you want to see them appear individually each day you can find them all on my Instagram feed

Art Cards 161 - 169

Here is the next set of 9 art cards. Remember these cards are part of the #365somethings2018 project on Instagram where I hope to end up with 365 cards, one for each day of 2018. If you want to see them appear individually each day you can find them all on my Instagram feed.

Full Circle

The prompt this week on Joggles Art Journal Adventures was: Outward from the Center. By one of those flukes that make life so interesting I had just finished the perfect spread for this prompt. Only problem was that it is not meant to be revealed till December. So I decided to see what else I could come up with. I started the spread in my A5 sized notebook/art journal by glueing vintage papers all over the background.

I continue to be busy destashing the house (mainly books at the moment) and have come across some interesting finds, the existence of which I had long forgotten about, both in books and in other possessions.

I found a stack of vintage postcards of Venice and managed to persuade myself that because I hadn't missed them in all the years, it would be okay to cut thme up. Two of them became the centers of my circles.The next round were rings from a vintage French dictionary. I made sure to incorporate some imagery on the pages I choose to use.  The last round also consists of vintage imagery, this time from an art book dated the end of the 19th Century.

I then coloured in the rounds with yellow and violet markers and added turquoise to the background. I also doodled on the violet ring. There was a lot of rubbing out and spreading the marker with my fingers till I was happy with the result. The turquoise background with lightened with a baby wipe.

There needed to be more texture on the pages so I grabby some of my artfoamies, one (the rings) designed by Julie Fei-Fan Balzer, and the other one by Nathalie Kalbach (I used gold paint with this one). I also stencilled on some small circles using sequin waste.

Finally outlining was done with black and white markers as well as a luminescent pink one. Pink paint was splattered over the pages. The words (by Tracey Gold) were added using a Tiny Alphabet sticker set from Making Memories.