Darcy Wilkinson #3 Art Journal ....

"Hello again, today we have a journal page to play with".

Step 1, Spray 3 colours of ink onto a non stick craft mat. Spritz this with water and drag your
journal pages through the ink. I opened the journal and bent back half of it so that I was only
dragging one half at a time.

Step 2, Use something that has texture on it as a stamp. Here I used a piece of corrugated cardboard.

After stamping put it to one side so the paint can dry on the corrugate.

Step 3, If you are like me then you use baby wipes to mop up in your craft area. Once used, if the wipe is really dirty with glue etc then it goes in the bin, but if the only thing on it is paint and or ink, then I hang them up to dry. They make fabulous little bits of texture that you can add to journal pages, book covers.. stitch into them, make flowers.... you can do all sorts with used baby wipes.

Step 4, So here I ripped some apart, and then took some of my corrugate, and some other textured paper, and I added a little bling to the edges with these rub on foil transfer sheets.

Step 5, I then glued my strips to the page, overlapping some of them.

Step 6, Now this might look very drastic.. stay with me..
Cut a large oval, or indeed any shape that you like, out of card. Place this over your page as a mask, and paint around it with solid black. I used black gesso, as it really is very,very black, but you could just use black paint. Remove the card masks, and allow the paint to dry.

Step 7, Use a heat tool and hover over the baby wipes. You will see them start to disintegrate as the fibres melt, move your heat tool around to shrivel various areas, be careful to not overdo it, you don't want them to disappear completely.
 
Step 8, Doodle a border using a white gelly pen.

Step 9, Take some Treasure Gold and rub it over the textured,raised areas. These will include the corrugated card, and the bits of baby wipe that are now painted black

I just love these areas.

The Treasure Gold makes the raised areas really pop, especially if you only use it on the black areas.

Step 10, Next I made some more patterned tape. I stuck my tape to a non stick paper and then smeared on various Fresco Paints.

Step 11, Stamp your PaperArtsy Stamps all over the tape, keep it random and have them going in different directions.

  Here is where my inspiration for this page came into its own. I have loved being part of the
PaperArtsy 'family' it has been lovely to make new friends. We are all so different, come from different houses and yet we are all one crafting family. So this page is dedicated to all of you.

Step 12. Now to make some houses. The centre houses will be the largest, they will be joined so fold your card in half, and mark out your house shapes. Add a tab at the edges, a good inch and a half big. These tabs will be glued to the page, and will hold your houses in a 'pop up' state, so make them a decent size, tiny tabs will not work.

Step 13, Mark out where the roof will be and then use Fresco Paints to colour the wall areas.
 
Step 14, Cover the roof area with strips of your painted tape. Then turn the houses over and trim away the excess tape.

Step 15, Make 2 smaller houses. These do not need flaps as they will be glued flat to the page. Paint the wall areas, and add painted tape to the roof areas in the same way as the bigger houses. Use a punch to create window holes.

Step 16. Now to make our family. Get out all your stamps and look at them, really,really examine them. Don't see the images...look for shapes..

Anything rectangular or triangle can be a body, anything round can be a head, look for shapes that can be hats...anything long and in a strip can be arms and legs. You might have faces or full figures, they can be used too.

These are the figures that I made. I stamped everything onto scrap paper and cut out what I needed. I played with the arrangement and then taped them together.

Step 17. Now recreate your figures on fabric. This can be a bit tricky, it's definitely a challenge. But using scrap paper to mask off areas it is possible to build up your figures so you only have the bits that you want and it is all on one piece of fabric. I ironed my figures onto interfacing, doodled a faux stitch around the edges and cut them out.

Step18. The large figures are glue to the large houses, their arms extend over the fold between the houses, and are glued together, so it looks like they are holding hands.. The tabs of the houses are then glued to the page. Keep the fold of the houses in line with the centre of the book, so that when you close the journal the houses will also fold up.

The smaller figures go on the smaller houses.. glue a house to either side of the centre large houses.

Step 19. I took some book pages, swiped on some Fresco Paint, and then drew out my title in black pen, adding a little white gelly pen to highlight. I then cut some of my PaperArtsy packaging into ticket shapes. The title is glued to the page, and the tickets are stapled to the edges.
 
The title reflects how even though this family is made up of different parts, just like my figures, we are still kindred spirits.

  Here it is all finished.

Over to you... create a pop up centre to a journal page, or just create figures from bits of stamps on a tag, have a go at masking off a coloured area and painting the rest black... try using your old baby wipes. … Hope this has inspired you to play..


Leandra Says: So many wonderful ideas. I love the treasure gold on the black edges and texture...looks so much fun!

Gillian Says: Great Art Journalling Darcy, enjoyed the step by step process as I;m completely rubbish at journalling. Perfect quote to for the "PA family".