A Creative Journey

Hi there!!

I've just dropped in today to share the start of a fun creative circle journal I have signed up to participate in with Scrapping Clearly.

For those of you new to this whole concept (which totally included me right up until about 6 weeks ago!!) a circle journal is an art journal that goes around a group of people (in this case, 12) with or without a theme. My theme is "Advice for a younger you". I completed the album construction, the front and back covers, the sign in page and also the page with my own advice. My journal is in transit as I speak to the next person in my group who will complete their own version of my theme on the next pages in my album. It will make its way around the whole group and I will receive it back in 12 months time full of beautiful art work - I cant wait to see how it comes home!! Also, I am super excited to play along in everyone else's journals with everyone else's theme's over the coming 12 months!

So, I hope that makes sense and onto the fun stuff!!

Here is the front cover

I actually did my front and back as one piece before I assembled my bag so here is the front and the back together

As I toyed with different ideas for colours/design while I was working on this I heard my little guys (Master 6) little voice in my head saying "rainbow Mummy" so thats what I did!! First a coat of gesso then gelatos in Red, Pink, Orange, Yellow, Green, Teal-ish and Blue - yep, I totally missed the Violet and that was totally on purpose!!

I used some permanent chalk ink in grey to stamp and then to apply through a stencil.

Here is my sign in pages

I got the idea from a couple of other peoples journals (the tags) and from Suse Fish with her "planner pockets" in her scrapbook pages.

A quick coat of gesso again and when that dried I splashed water all over the 2 pages with a paint brush and then splashed all my pink Heidi Swapp colour shines in the same way to give this fun water colour effect. Next was the stamping - I used grey ink with the stamp set from Amy Tan's Finders Keepers stamp set. When that was all dry I added some black colour shine to some texture paste and applied that through a stencil.

And here are the close ups of the 2 pages

I didn't take a photo of my tag because I thought I would keep that for the people reading the journal :)

And then onto my advise to my younger me

Again, a coat of gesso - I seriously cannot believe how well these brown paper bags stood up to all the water, ink and mists!!

This time I started with some white embossing of those gorgeous Kaiser butterfly and texture stamps. Then I went in with my cheap water colours from spotlight - they have this gorgeous shine to them that I just cant seem to capture on camera. I used some blues and greens and really, really love how these pages came out!

For my embellishments/words I started with one of those gorgeous lace doilies and pulled out a bunch of cameo cuts that I had made both in vellum and in paper using the Dear Lizzy Documentary range! I just love the colours, the words and those florals are just beautiful!

I have a little container on my desk with little bits and pieces that I have been dipping into to get used so I also pulled from that the white and silver arrow and the silver glitter ampersand. Those alphas are one of my all time faves - October Afternoon Mini Market.

I used my scotch quick dry adhesive to attach the doily (after I cut it and the embellishments on it) and then used hot glue to attach everything else!

I seriously love how these pages turned out! Here are a couple of close ups of these last couple of pages

Oh, and my very final touch was adding some splashes of both black and Oceana (I think) colour shine and sticking down a few sequins :)

So, thats the last I will see of my journal until this time next year when it makes it way back to me! I hope you have enjoyed seeing this and I will share my progress as journals come and go throughout the year!!

Happy scrapping!

Mel

xx