New Journal Pages

I just wanted to share a couple of recent journal pages with you.They are similar colour tones but created in two very different ways.

 I usually start with the background and build the page up but this page started out with the sketch of the three mushrooms. I then went in with some distress stains in broken china and peeled paint. The mushrooms were coloured with distress inks and more ink was layered through stencils on the background. A very quick page.

The second page started out totally differently. I used various different washi tapes to cover the page vertically. I really wasn't sure what I was going to do with this background at first, but then I started to see the shapes of the New York skyline in the page.I outlined various shapes in black permanent marker and the 'city' started to come to life. I let the patterns of the tape dictate the shapes and locations of the windows in the buildings and coloured the buildings using black Inktense block. For the sky I used the Inktense blocks also. I scribbled graded colours up the page to create a sunset and then applied water to blend. I love the effect I got. Hope you like the pages. 

Mother's Day Gift

A Mother's Day Gift

I recently made a Mother's Day gift bag as a tutorial on Crafting Ireland, (see here) and decided that I needed to make something to go inside! What good is a gift bag without a gift? So I made a box of cards for all occasions that my mum can send to people over the year ahead. The cards are a standard C6 size and I used the same October Afternoon papers as for the bag. My Mum is in the USA at the moment so she won't get her gift for a couple of weeks, but I would like to wish all of you Mums a Happy Mother's Day!

This is a close-up of the box that the cards are in.

The box with cards inside.

Crafting Ireland Design Team

I can let the cat out of the bag now! I am on the new Crafting Ireland magazine design team. I am so excited to be on this team of very talented women, and I am looking forward to the next few months. Look out for our first projects in the March edition of the magazine. For those of you who don't know about it, Crafting Ireland is an on-line magazine, published monthly. If you would like to subscribe head over to the Crafting Ireland where there is a link to the magazine and a place to subscribe so that you never miss a thing.

Icarus Falling- Journal page

This page/ pages started out as a sketch idea for another project. I was just laying down some colour and texture as a background when my Derwent inktense block made a kind of circular shape on the page.

So as the name suggests the page is based on the Greek Myth of Icarus, the boy who flew too close to the sun. The pages were gessoed in white quite thickly. While the gesso was still wet I dragged my spreader through it to create grooves and patterns. I let this dry and then started adding paint. I started with a deep yellow which I painted on one page. I closed the journal over then and pushed down to transfer some paint to the other page. This gave a great mottled effect. I dried this off with a heat gun and then applied a lighter yellow to the opposite page and repeated the process. This results in one page being brighter than the other. This is where the happy accident happened. I got out my Inktense blocks to add a little more depth to the background and ended up with a large sun which just didn't want to be contained on one page! Then I thought, 'what does the sun bring to mind'? and I thought "Icarus". Off I went to the trusty internet to find some images of Icarus. I found this great one by Frank Wright, which has a lovely sketchy quality to it. I printed it down and used an image transfer paste to transfer it to the page. I used some more texture paste and stencils to add a little bit more interest and sprayed the lot with Cosmic shimmer mist in Mango Blaze. To finish I added the story of Icarus around the son.

A close-up of the texture

A close-up of Icarus

"Love" Journalling

Did you see what I did with the title? For this page I played with my new Dylusions sprays. Oh my word are they fab! I used the Bubblegum Pink, Vibrant Turquoise and Crushed Grape. I got the sprays from the lovely Kate at Create with Kate. She has a great range and I believe the new colours will be coming in over the next couple of weeks. I can't wait to get my hands on them, there is a new red and a new pink.

 Anyhow to the page. I spritzed the page liberally with water and then sprayed my three colours onto the page. I then closed my journal and got two pages for the price of one! I rolled off the excess ink with kitchen roll to give a lighter background. I then went back with my turquoise and grape sprays, but this time I didn't spritz the page first and concentrated the sprays at the top of the page. I stood the journal up then to allow the ink to flow down the page.

After drying the page I drew a large heart in the middle of the page and used a thin layer of gesso to fill the centre of the heart. I stamped out the love crafting girl from Stampotique Originals and used an image transfer paste to place her to the left of the heart. I outlined her in white to make her stand out from the background. The heart was outlined firstly with Derwent inktense pencil and blocks and finally with white pen. To finish I used the Dylusions Stars stencil, through which I spritzed water. I ran over this with my kitchen roll to lift some of the ink off the page, dried the page again and outlined the stars in white.

The quote is from Shakespeare.

The Secret Garden - Journal Page

This is my latest journal page. I started with the idea of trying an image transfer. The base page and border were already done when I did a previous page opposite. If you want to check the post out it's here. Well the image transfer went totally wrong, so I ended up printing the image again and colour tinting it with Distress inks. The roses were cut from some old wrapping paper. The leaves were drawn on and coloured with Derwent Inktense blocks. The quotes were taken from the book "The Secret Garden" by Frances Hodgson Burnett. This has to be one of my all time favourite

This is a close-up of the image and text. I have to apologise about the bounce back from the flash. The days are so dull here at the moment there is no decent light to take photos!

The Journal Journey continues......

Not Quite Alice

My latest page is extremely messy! Those of you who know me will say that it is a very me page. I started out by painting the background using Citrus Paint Dabber by Ranger. Then I got busy with stencils and texture paste. The stencils are from Dylusions and I got them from the lovely Kate at Create with Kate. I added washi tape and some splodges of distress stain. I also swiped the stains over the textured areas.

(sorry about the shine on the bottom of the page- the washi tape was bouncing the light everywhere)

Curious Corrin was coloured using Tim Holtz Distress inks, as was the white rabbit. I drew the daisy and painted it with a mixture of white paint and yellow distress ink. A little bit of text and I was done. I learned a lot from this page. Some washi tape is very shiny and doesn't like having anything added to it!