Personalized Journal

A couple of days back my cousin asked me if I've ever made Journals before and if I could make one urgently for her to gift it to her friend. I was meaning to try it out journals for a while now and I jumped at the opportunity to try my hand at it. Plus I was happy that I could count it as my first official order :P (though it was from family :D )

I asked her if she had any theme in her mind and she provided me the image of the word Hope and said the rest was up to me. I started conceptualizing the cover in my head and decided I would make it colorful with some ink smooshing and also add some feathers and Angel wings as I felt it went with the theme of Hope.

So start off I gathered all my materials and decided to go with an A5 sized journal. I took some papers from a sketchbook and decided to use them as the pages for the journal.

With the dimensions of the pages ready I used my Silhouette Curio to draw the image my cousin gave onto watercolor cardstock using the pen holder feature - to use my Sakura Micron Pen.

I had never tried ink smooshing before so I practiced on some scrap piece of paper first and then once I was satisfied I tried it on the main piece. I used Mustard Seed, Picked Raspberry, Broken China and a combination of Mustard Seed and Evergreen Bough Distress Inks as my four colors for the smooshing. I liked how dramatic it looked.

I felt the word Hope was getting lost in all the colors so I went in and colored it with a black Sharpie.

I used my Curio once again to cut out some feathers and angel wings and I positioned them on the panel to see which arrangement looks best. I wanted the wings on top of Hope and the feathers to be dangling from the arrows. I decided to use some silver twine to tie the feathers to the arrow - or at least give that impression. I also added some sequins of corresponding color to make it look like the colors are splashing out. I added a few other embellishments and the cover was ready.

For the back I wanted something colorful to be in line with the front and decided to do a splatter of  the same colors used in the front. I also used a typewriter font stamp to stamp out my cousin's friend's name at the bottom.

After the front and back were ready I went ahead and punched two holes on all the pages and tied them using some dark pink twine. I also swiped my ink pads on each of the sides of the journal so that all the pages have a colored border - again used each of the 4 colors used on the cover. With this my first Journal was ready!

Though it was a relatively simple one to start with I totally enjoyed the whole process of designing it and the execution of the thought process! Looking forward to making more such wonderful journals and projects.

I am also entering the journal in the following two Simon Says Stamp Challenges!

1. Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - Layer it Up

2. Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge - Use more than One Die or Punch

Distress Oxides and some Handmade Flowers

So I got my Distress Oxides last week. Having seen countless videos on them I could not wait to get started. To start off I tried making different backgrounds with the Oxides. Loved how I could layer all the colors on top of each other without creating a muddy mess!

Here are my favorites from all my attempts. Still have loads to experiment with these.

For the the Orange and Violet background I used stencils and texture paste as well and got some very interesting results. Will be using this background for a card in another post.

The other three involved the same technique of applying oxides on a craft sheet and then spritzing them with water followed by dabbing the cardstock on the colors and developing the layers. It also involved adding more water and heating with a heat gun to create lovely patterns and layers.

For today's post I will be showing two of the backgrounds that I used. Inspired by the Simon Says Monday Challenge - Handmade Flowers - I chose to add handmade flowers to these backgrounds to create some interesting mixed media projects - the first for me!

Project 1

For this project I cut out flower shapes using my Silhouette Curio in different sizes. Created that wooden/metallic look for the flowers using Distress Inks and water and layered them together.

I also tried a decoupage technique with some paper doily on the background and also added a burlap flower strip to the center of the doily piece.I then mounted the flowers on top of this. Added corners to the background too created using the same technique as the flowers.

To finish it off I added some words on chipboard pieces and stuck them on the background. I was very pleased with my first attempt at mixed media :D I also think it would make a lovely cover for a Journal!

Project 2 

For this project I first added strips of the textured background I mentioned above to create a rough frame. After that I proceeded towards making the flowers just like the brown flowers from the previous project. Used Wilted Violet and a little bit of Spiced Marmalade Distress Oxides for these flowers. Layered the different layers and placed some pearls in the center of these flowers. Created leaves also using Distress Oxides. Then I mounted the flowers in the layout I liked in the bottom left corner. I also stuck a few of the smallest layers of the flowers around the background and also added some more pearls here and there.

Similar to the previous project, I added some words written on chipboard pieces. I colored the pieces to match the flowers finished the project by sticking it on the right side of the panel.

So these are my first attempts with Distress Oxides and also mixed media techniques. Had a lot of fun creating these :)

I am entering these in the following two challenges

1. Simon Says Monday Challenge - Handmade Flowers
2. Simon Says Wednesday Challenge - Bit O' Green