Creation of a Journal Page

I like working in my journal because it answers the call of inspiration without the pressure to "complete".  Sometimes I'm inspired to do a background, sometimes to work with patterned paper, sometimes to stamp, and sometimes to write.  I work on many pages at once to provide these various inspirations with outlets.

Some of you may like to see the "progression" of a page:

First I do a background, and I may add some borders either glued or painted onto the page.  This one is just plain watercolour with some borders cut from an old book:

One day, I grabbed a piece of sponged scrap from my "red" baggie, and stamped out two new stamps:

I cut these out, glued them on the page and added some journalling and white doodling.  Thinking the page was finished, I included the date.  But a few days ago I added the masks, spelling out the name of the store where I bought some of these lovely things.

So, I think that  journal pages are never finished!!  Another part of the attraction.

Go Where the Music Takes You

This card for my sister, Dianne, was inspired by some native art at displayed at the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Tissue Paper Painting

Painting tissue paper with gesso and acrylic paint toughens it up so that you can easily punch, cut, glue or otherwise manipulate it as a collage item. Try it in your journal, before putting using it on a more formal piece. This was inspired by Michelle Ward's GPP Street Team: Complete instructions can be found here.

Tissue Paper - Layered Tissue Collage

For those of you interested in more ways of using up that white tissue paper, this one is courtesy of Violette's Creative Juice, from her book Journal Bliss:

First you cut a shape from cardstock, and glue it on your substrate. (This happens to be a journal page.) Next, wrinkle some tissue, smooth it out, and glue it to the substrate. (Use the glue most appropriate for your substrate.) When dry, paint with acrylic paint. (Note: the above was coloured with Pan Pastels rather than paint.)

GPP Street Team Crusade No. 39-Pulling Prints

Yesterday was real playtime - getting messy with paints.  Michelle Ward's monthly creativity crusade inspired these:

 

Hop on over to Michelle's Crusade site for complete instructions.

Tissue Paper - Faux Washi

Does anybody else have a large box/bag of white tissue paper from gifts or clothing purchases that they can't bear to throw away?  I see a few hands have gone up among you crafters.

I've been looking for something to do with this stuff for years, and suddenly my friends (real live and Internet) have been answering the call.

First, Heather at the stamp club showed us how to make fake washi paper:

This is made by dropping random drops of dye re-inker on wet tissue paper (spray with water) and moving the colour around with a soft paintbrush.  A second sheet of tissue can be laid down to absorb some of the moisture and colour.   After drying, you bond the tissue to freezer paper and decorate with stamps.  (The freezer paper gives it a nice stable weight for further craft handling.)

I tried a similar thing with watercolour sprays and it also worked well.  Thanks, Heather!

I'll post another tissue paper technique soon!

Spring Daffodils

In a panic that nobody would want to trade my Ice Cream, Insects & Indigo Artist Trading Cards ("ATC") at the Vancouver ATC Group, I made a few with a hand carved daffodil stamp: