Project Share: Friendship Journal Challenge

 This is one of three journal pages I created to send off to a couple of You Tube creators who are doing give-aways to celebrate subscriber milestones. I made one to keep for myself.

 The creators have asked for submissions of one journal page that they will subsequently assemble into a Friendship Journal.

 The receipt of the page will enter me into a drawing for a journal made by the artist.

 I've done this sort of thing once before when Andrea at Artymaze did a similar giveaway last year.

I had made some paper awhile back with dried and pressed hydrangea petals and tea. All of the inserts were from my stash except the belly band.

Three of these took forever to make but this kind of challenge always inspires me to up my game.

101 Journals Project: Decorating "The Way of Grace"

This is a 6 x 6 inch journal made from a Trader Joe's Shu Mai box, painted white then decoupaged with a decorative napkin.

These journals are "Anything Goes" or "Stash-Mash-ups".

Over the last 2+ years I've been at this junk journaling thing, I've amassed an extensive amount of hand made ephemera fueled by my daily YouTube tutorial binging including a lot of unfinished pieces.

My decorating scheme is bust through that stash. However, after a 4 month hiatus from the craft stores, I went on a little spree last week and bought a couple of flower punches. I love them! ...so I made several more bits to stick in the journals.

I've had this Daiso yellow craft paper forever.

Daiso origami paper

Coffee dyed envelope pockets.

This is a page from National Geographic. It's something under a microscope.

Lots of little collages...

Decoupaged napkins...

I use a lot of museum quarterly brochures and Edible magazine pages because I like the matte surfaces , the paper  weight and the images. The text is great to paint or collage over.

I love making little collages

Although the cover may suggest this is a garden themed journal, it clearly is not.

101 Journals Project: Decorating "Live the Life You Have Imagined"

I've been decorating. I think I'm up to 4 now. Decorating is where all the work is. I'm trying to use stuff I've already made(inspired by a gazillion hours of YouTube tutorials)...or finish things I started. I have a lot of decoupaged napkin bits and painted/stenciled/stamped backgrounds.

I call my style "Anything Goes". I like to think that my aesthetic will give each journal some sort of cohesion but I don't do themes. The closest I get is Travel.

For this journal cover I tried a layering technique I saw in a recent Artymaze YouTube craft along video. She's the queen of textured layering. This is the first time I have ever used lace on a journal. I have sooooo much lace from back when I used to design costumes for theatre but I've always shied away from using it in journal making. So many use it and use it brilliantly but I always feel it gets so fussy.

I make all of my own tags, pockets, journaling cards etc. as my primary goal is to use what I've got. I don't have a computer or printer so I don't use digital kits.

My stash is heavy on fashion and I love deconstructing Somerset Studios magazine.

Stamping on coffee/tea/avocado dyed paper happens. A lot.

Collage happens a lot...

I use art tissue paper to color pages and envelopes. I laminated some hydrangea petals and raided my box of art postcards and note cards that I've been collecting since I was a kid. I've always loved stationary.

I like using art paper (watercolor and mixed media) so there's space to create and more little collages to accent a page yet leave room to write or doodle.

I use a lot of tea dyed index cards (for writing notes and ideas) that I'll decorate with a little stamping. I like to use the Somerset Studios page to inspire the colors and sometimes the actual technique to carry over to the neighboring page. I made this 3 pocket belly band inspired by a video on how to use up those 6 x 6 scrapbook pads

I made some little envelopes out of the 6 x 6 papers and some faux postage stamps. I got my mitts on a couple of Open Art Studio catalogs chock full of beautiful thumbnails of gorgeous art. They make perfect "stamps".

Napkin decoupage pocket and a big tag made from glue stick packaging that I had practiced saran wrap texture painting on ages ago. I trimmed down an art postcard to mount on the background.

I got several of these batik Fat Quarters from a sale at Joann's months ago when they were moving locations.

Slowly but surely, I'm working through my stash.