Art Journal....Be Brave & Create Art

Welcome to my blog! A place where I share my creations - art journals, scrapbooking, cardmaking and mixed media. I hope you enjoy your stay and visit often. Leave me a comment so I can visit your blog. I love making new crafty friends and being inspired.

Today I am going to share a journal page I just completed in my calculus textbook. 

Once a month I co-host a local crop for a lovely group of ladies. It's a lot of fun but I usually don't get a lot done except backgrounds in my art journal. This is how this journal page started and then sat unfinished for about month until this past week when inspiration hit.

My journal pages where prepped with a light coat of gesso. Once this was dry I took some Distress Paint - Gathered Twigs, Tea Dye & Scattered Straw - and dripped some of each colour on the right side page. I then closed the book, gently pressed down on it then opened it up again.

 Overall, I was pretty happy with how it turned out but to add another I pressed some Vintage Photo Distress Oxide on to my craft mat the smooshed my journal into it. I spritzed some water on my pages to activate the oxidation effect then dried my pages with my heat tool.

The Splash Layering Stencil from Tim Holtz/Stampers Anonymous is a new fave. I decided to do the stencil monoprint technique with Distress Oxide - Worn Lipstick. I pressed my oxide ink pad directly on my stencil. Then gave it a spritz of water before turning it over on to my pages.

I repeated this few times over both pages and then repeated it a few more times with Cracked Pistachio Distress Oxide.

Next I took my ink blending tool and applied some Walnut Stain Distress Ink along the edges and did some spritz & flick with water. I quick dry and that is how this page stayed for weeks.

I wish I would have taken photos of what I did next - but hopefully I can described it well enough to still inspire you.


I began by collecting a few items to add circles with gesso to my page....I used bottle top, empty medicine bottle and a round piece of dense foam. I dipped each in white gesso to add random circle on my pages. Next I took my set of Brights Distress Crayons and added some colour to my circles.

Next I took a paint brush and lightly dry brushed some white gesso around the circles the into the centre of the page. This really helped the circles to stand out.
Once the gesson had completely dried I took my black Sharpie and roughly doodled around the circles.

I used my Black Soot Distress Crayon to darken the edges and around the circles before adding some script stamping. Finally I added this little dapper guy from my pack of Paper Dolls from Tim Holtz Idea-ology line. I love these paper dolls! I glued some Quote Chips to the opposite page and this journal page was done.

Stencil Monoprint Technique

Hello my crafty friends!

I'm here to share a card I made using a pretty simple technique for the background - stencil monoprint. It's one of my favourite techniques and I use it for cards, scrapbook pages and in my art journal. Here is a close up of the background.

I started with a 6"x 6" piece of Superstock from Creative Scrapbooker Magazine. My friend, Nicole, insisted I give it a try since I love mixed media. I had my doubts since I have tried many smooth heavy cardsock before and wasn't thrilled with the results. This Superstock is amazing! It can take a lot of abuse from wet media and still look smooth. I'm definitely a Superstock convert.

I took a couple of my Distress Oxides ink pads - Fossilized Amber & Fired Brick, and swiped them diagonally across a Tim Holtz Layering Stencil - Coundown, from Stampers Anonymous. I was careful not overlap the colours so as to not contaminate my ink pads.

After a few sprays of water over the ink I took a paper towel and wiped off the ink from the sides of the stencil. I didn't want to see any hard edges on my background.

Now its time for the magic - I flipped my stencil over on to the Superstock, and pressed it down lightly with a roll of papertowel. I let the stencil sit on the Superstock for about 20 seconds before removing it. I love how this background turned out. I took my spray bottle and gave the ink a quick spritz before drying with my heat tool.

My background is done and now it is time to work on my stamped images.

Thanks to my Misti & Versafine Onyx Black ink I get some beautifully crisp stamped images. I love my Misti. I stamped a Crazy Cat, a few balloons from the Crazy Accessories set and a Happy Birthday sentiment.  I used my Distress Ink and water brush to colour in my images. Then I diecut them out with the matching dies from Sizzix. 

I used dimensional foam to adhere them down to my background.

Here is my finished card.