My Journal Monday–Week 29

I’ve been out for a while–dealing with family, work and life in general. I’ve finally had a little break in the clouds and took some time to feed my creative side. I am doing a journal swap with a fine group of ladies I met a retreat a few years ago. We have stayed in touch and decided it was time that we all had a little piece of one another’s art. So, we are sending our journals around our circle and giving everyone time to work in each journal. When my journal comes back to me I will have a precious piece of art from a fellow artist and friend. It is an exciting and fun experience.

The first part that must be done is getting your journal ready to go. As life has been interrupting my art time lately, this was a bit more of a challenge than I had anticipated. I finally at the last minute found some approx. 8″x10″ papers/signatures that I had been saving for several years for creating another handmade journal. Many of the pages already had washes of various patterns and colors and they were made of 140# Fabriano Artistico Watercolor Paper. It is my favorite paper of all papers on the planet. 🙂 I didn’t want to make it too heavy for shipping purposes so I decided to take a larger piece of the same paper and make a wrap cover for the signatures. I gave it some room to grow and tore it to the proper size. I then decorated the paper before I sewed the signatures into it. I used black gesso and then multiple colors of spray inks from Linday’s Stamp Gang. They are water soluble so I had to seal them before proceeding. I used several Seth Apter’s stencils from StencilGirl to add some quick “detail” to all of the cover surfaces. I used a sponge and white gesso to do the front since I had to move the larger stencil around to get the words placed where I wanted them. All of the other pages were sprayed with Liquitex white acrylic spray paint (water-based). The iridescent spray inks showed up great on the black gesso. I will definitely be using that technique again.