Art Journal

I'd been thinking about doing an art journal for a while. Was gonna buy one and I remembered I had this ruler bookz that I bought yeeeeeeeeeears ago on sale and never did anything with. And guess who made it? Why t!m, of course! It was put out by junkitz, which I don't think is even in business any more and the copyright says 2005, so it's been at least 7 years that I bought it! NO! I DO NOT HOARD! Stop saying that! I've not done the cover yet. Still trying to decide exactly what I want to do with it. The front and back covers are thick chipboard and there are 10 manilla pages inside.

I needed to get some ink on my new stamps that I bought at StampFest the other day, so yesterday I worked on the first page. I used the swipe my ink pads on my craft sheet and mist with water and schmear the tag thru it. I used ripe persimmon, gathered twigs and broken china distress inks. Then I used my new mixed meda t!m stamp set (the chicken wire) and the script stamp from attic treasures and the weedy "flowers" from flights of fancy. I used one of the small folders from the grab bag I got and inked it up with vintage photo and gathered twigs and used a sentiment from words for thought then stamped again in ripe persimmon and cut out the words most and least and used a couple of tiny paper clips to attach. I painted a flower and leaf and sanded once they were dry and attached to a frame along with a shell and muse token. The "4" I had sitting on my craft table from another project, so it got inked with fired brick and added!

Then on the other side, I used seedless preserves, brushed corduroy, evergreen bough and fired brick distress inks using the blending tool and foam method then flicked it with water and dried with my heat gun. The bird is another hoarded...ummm...lost and now found treasure from long ago! When I bought it, there were like 6 or 7 birds and they were all held together with the chain link in the bottom left corner. So I used the chain and copied Anita Houston (hi Anita!) and painted it with copper and once it was dry, put a bit of black acrylic paint on my fingers and ran the chain thru my fingers. The bird is covered with 7Gypsies Tissue Paper and edged in gathered twigs. The wing is from one of
t!m''s Valentine's dies of Cupid with a bow and arrow. I clipped Cupid's wings (!) and covered them in a scrap of cs and drew feathers with a marker, then inked the edges in gathered twigs and added distress rock candy over the top. The letters are from t!m's salvage stickers and I applied Crackle Accents over the top of then once it was dry, distressed with ...wait for it...gathered twigs. (It's become my new favorite go-to for distressing!) The eye I did with my new Black Enamel that I got at the ScrapFest.

So page one is done. Stay tuned for more!