Into the woods - Art Journal

 Hi, 

Today I’m sharing my latest art journal layout that I made with minimal products since I brought it with me as I was traveling last week. I already shared this on my IG so I could play along with the SSS art journal challenge that week but didn’t get a chance to publish it on my blog before now. 

The inspiration for this double page art journal was the phrase “and into the woods I go to lose my mind and find my soul”  The last couple of years I have enjoyed and used hiking as a way of self care, exercise and adventures with my dog and also with my sons. I love how quiet my mind goes looking out from a nice view when we reached the top. Norwegian nature sure is beautiful 🤩 

So back to the project, I worked in my stone paper journal from Stamperia and I first applied thin white gesso with a cheap bristle paint brush you typically get in a hardware store to get a streaky finish as my base. Next I applied Dylusion paint I blue and turquoise with baby wipes to get a very transparent color coat. Than I stamped randomly with a script background stamp around the pages. Since I was traveling by plane and couldn’t take lots of fluids with me I did this at home. I also printed out the flowers that are a free Digi paper from Maremis small art. 

On my trip a sat down enjoying and relaxing fuzzy cutting the flowers and gluing them down. Then I wrote the phrase and my page was done. I forgot my white gel pen and my black doodling pen at home but I really had fun crating this pages on the go and that’s the main point. I don’t typically use my hand writing on my pages, and the marker I used wasn’t the best, so I might have another go on a page using the same sentiment some day only because I love the phrase so much. 

Thank you for stopping by, I hope you got inspired to create yourself a happy day crafting too. 

Hugs, 

-Christine💮

Forever by my side - Art Journal

Hi everyone,

I`m so excited to share this art journal page with you today. I`m totally in love with how this one turned out, even though it might be on the darker side for some of you. For my focal point I used an image I colored up myself, combining two of my favorit things, Copic coloring and art journaling. I just love the outcome and you will see me doing this more often in the future.

I`m sorry for the poor photo quality. The bright daylight wased out the colors a bit, I will try to take better pictures when I have time during this week. Hope you still like it :)  

The beautiful image is actually cut out from a coloring book I have from Mitzi-Sato Wiuff called Midnight Gardens. She is the artist behind Aurora Wings stamp. I don`t think the coloring book is still available anymore, but there are many stunning digital stamps on her Etzy shop. 

I used quite a lot of markers on her dress and I may have used hintes of markers not mention here as I was looking for the color combination I wanted, but here are the once I mainly used:

Skin: E50-51-11 - BV20 - R20

Gold: Y15- YR24-27-E15

Red: R20-22-24-29- Grey T7 for deeper shading 

Orange dress: YR000-00-31-38-16

Flowers: RV00-55-66-69 - R22

Green: YG03-17

Skull: Grey C:0-1-3-5

For my background I used some blue shaded distressinks on a plastic sheet, spritsing it with water and then dabbing the plastic sheet on y pages. Then I used a background stamp from Stamperias Create happiness stamps and stamped randomly with Tumbled glass and Faded Jeans. Then I used black Archival ink for the text stamp and the cute flowers I stamped along the bottom of my pages, also from the same collection. I decided to color my flowers with gold acrylic paint to get a more ancient Japan feel to my pages. As a finishing thouch I splattered with gold acrylic paint, used my white Sakura gelpen for some highlights and my black Copic multiliner for some black details and I also wrote my text for hand since I was crafting at the cabin and didn`t have anything else to use for my quote. 

I love the contrast of the beautiful lady with her stunning kimono holding a skull in her hand as she looks back at you. I think the words " Always by my side" fits the image well as she walks holding the skull, but I guess it also has to do with the date as today was my wedding day. This summer it will be 8 years since ha suddenly past away and he would also have had his birthday the 23th. So I guess you could say that these days every year he is in my thoughts more often.

I`m entering this in :Simon Says: Art Journal | (simonsaysstampblog.com) (second entry)

I hope you like todays art journal, and that you got inspired to create yourself a happy day crafting.

-Christine

17th of May - Art Journal

 Hi,

Today I`m back with a quick post to share my 17th of May inspired art journal layout.

We had a great celebration yesterday spending time with our family. My youngest son participated in the parade and we eat lots of cake and ice cream.

For my background I used several fun techniques like gluing down paperpices with modpodge, painting, stenciling and stamping. For my flag I painted white cardstock with some red Dylusion paint before cutting out the flag like it was blowing in the wind. The white is cut out from Bazzil Bling Diamond cardstock and the blue is cut out on white cardstock again but this time I used a blue Copic marker, B18,  to color it up before gluing the pices together and ontop of the red flagbase. For my flagpole I used a small wooden stick that I peeled in two and then I inked it up with Vintage Photo and Gathered Twigs distress inks.

The green leaves are diecuts left from a previous project also colored with Dylusion paints and the strawberries are cut out from the napkins we used yesterday, but they didn`t quite turn out like I hoped because of all the dimension and colors underneath. Oh well... :) 

I stamped the words Hipp Hurray in Norwegian before I added some splatters, some white Sharpie pen highlights and then I finished it off with black and white marker around the edges to frame the pages.

I`m super excited about this weeks theme over at Simon Says Stamp monday challenge - Art Journal, and I`m happy to enter this 17th of May Art Journal layout to Simon Says: Art Journal | (simonsaysstampblog.com) 

Hope you got inspired to create yourself a happy day crafting and thank you for stopping by.

-Christine

Art Journal - Bee happy

 Hi, 

Today the sun is shining, and you really trust the feeling that spring is finally here. It feels like today is going to be a good day and what better way to start it than to share my new art journal layout with you. I`m totally in love with how this one turned out.

While I picked up some groceries on Saturday I came across these adorable napkins that I just got so many ideas on how to use in my crafting. On one part you got these bigger bees and on the other side they where smaller and lots more all on top of these pale yellow polkadots.

Cute.. But now back to my art journal pages. I skipped one page and started to create my background with Distress inks in Tumbled glass, Peacock feathers and Faded jeans. I spritzed on a good amout of water letting the ink do its thing before letting it dry completely. Splatters in Walnut stain and white gesso with my fan brush. I put my crafting mat under the page I wanted to cut in as not to ruin the other pages in my book, and used some round Spellbinder dies as my guide as I carfully cut out the three circles with my craft knife. Then I cut out the scallop borders with my X-cut nesting dies in brown cardstock darkening the edges with Walnut stain. The circles dont have a perfect match and since I didn`t want two offset circles on the same page I cheated and ripped the smallest one and adjusted it to fit hiding the overlap under my bee. 

Fore my page behind I peeled off the back layers of my napkin and placed it the way I wanted the bees to show up peeking through the circles and glued it down and sealed it well using mat modpodge. I also did the same with the bigger bees on a pice of cardstock before I fussycut them when they where dried  completely. Before I glued them down I traced all around the edges with a black marker as not to leave a white border.

I went ower the wing with the lightest blue Copic markers to tye everything together using the colors B0000-B000-B01. It`s extremly important that the modpoge is completely dry before you color ontop of it since the glue will destroy your marker nib if still wet.

I darkened the edges of the papers with Faded jeans and Walnut stain and cut out the letters for my motivational words on black card stock. The word happy is from the Tim Holtz booklet. I used my Sakura gel pen and a black pen to add some finishing touches.

I just love the outcome of this and how fun and cute it is with the bees from the napkin peeking through from the pages underneath. 

I`d like to enter this in:

Colorful Options: May 2023 Blue - second entry

Simon Says: Paint It | (simonsaysstampblog.com) - second entry

Simon Says: No Patterned Paper | (simonsaysstampblog.com)

Thank you for stopping by, I hope you liked it and that you got inspired to create yourself a happy day crafting.

- Christine

Art Journal - Blessed

 Hi,

Today I`m back with a colorful double page art journal layout that has a very personal meaning to me.

This layout represents my children and how blessed I feel having them in my life. The three hearts hangind from the sign pole are my boys and the little pink heart is my little angel and my first pregnancy where I went into labour to early. When I got pregnant again I praid for a boy and now I`m blessed with tree. I wanted this layout to be bright, happy and colorful because this is my story and I feel so lucky to be blessed as a boys mom of three.

To get the fun and happy colorful page I wanted I used Dylusions paints both on my background and on my hearts and leafs. For my background I applyed the color with a baby-wipe and then dabbed on the same color using a Tim Holz stencil. I then stamped around randomly with a script stamp using blue distress ink. For my heart and leafs I colored up some paper in the colors I wanted and used my scissors to cut out the hearts and used Lorelai Leaf die from Poppystamps for the leafs.

For the sign pole I sketched out the shape I was going for with my pencil on some wood texture papers from Simple Stories. I used an eyelet to put them together and threaded it with some twine. On the ends I tied in some Tim Holtz typed tokens with the words "Story" and "Lucky" and I think they where just perfect here.

I also used some twine to hang my three hearts from the sign, and I think it really adds some interest 

to my page.

This is actually the first page in my Dylusions art jounal that I saved to do this personal layout on, and I`m really happy with how this turned out. Hope you like it as much as I do.

I`m entering this in:

Simon Says: Anything Goes | (simonsaysstampblog.com)

Simon Says: Paint It | (simonsaysstampblog.com)

Colorful Options: May 2023

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you got inspired to create yourself a happy day crafting.

-Christine

2 page Art Journal - Travel, Blue Dream

 Hi, Today I`m sharing a double page layout and it`s my first time playing in my small Dylusion art journal. I`m actually working on the secon page, since I have something special in mind for my first page wich I will share with you soon.

I`m totally in love with how this layout turned out. I used papers from the beautiful Blue Dream collection from Stamperia. I`m just so in love with this paper collection, and I actually bought it to make a mini album from a trip to Gran Canaria with my dear friend but I couldt help myself from diving a tiny bit into the beautiful papers already, making a travel, sea and summer themed journal page.

The borders and most of the elements are cut outs from the 12x12 paper pack, and and some elements are from the ephemera pack.  

For my background I used Distress Inks from Tim Holtz and I must admit this is kind of alian territory for me since I mostley used to copic color images and finnished of the card with pattern paper. I don`t have many colors, I have one round and one square old blending tool and for my vintage photo color I just held the foam with my fingers. Still, just playing around with different techneques like spraying water on the page, lifting color using stencil and dabbing on some ink in the two darkest color through my stencil. I`m super happy with how my background turned out. 

I did however get a dark color transfer smear just over the travel word when I was nearly finished, but I`m not going to let it bother me and take away the joy I feel from this layout. It`s part of my learning prosess, and remember- it`s just creative fun with beautiful colors, papers and ink. Don`t let small mistakes like that discourage you :)

And here are a few close ups showing the bautiful paper and the lovely background. I used wild honey, spiced marmalade and vintage photo distress inks. The stencil I used is called Compass and is from the Welcome home collection from Stamperia.

I finished of my project with my white Sakura pen to add some highlights.

I would like to enter this in:

Simon Says: Anything Goes | (simonsaysstampblog.com) 

Simon Says: Make Your Mark | (simonsaysstampblog.com) second entry

Do you like to travel? I hope you got inspired to create yourself a happy day and enjoy some crafting time. Thank you for stopping by.

-Christine