2017 #9 Aqua: It's Not A Barbie Girl {By Carol Fox}

2017 Topic 9: Aqua

It can be more of a challenge than you expect to work with one colour palette. I love how Carol has made this fantastic book and stuck to her palette with different shades of the same gorgeous blue. How perfect is this for a travel journal!?

Hi everyone, it's Carol with you today, and I'd like to share with you a little journal I have made. I like to make things from scratch as I enjoy the whole process of printing my own backgrounds with a Gelli Plate and making something that looks so uniquely your own is lovely. I quite often make these to give as gifts as the pockets and tags just seem to be made to keep all those special keepsakes in. I have done them for the bride to be for Hen-do weekends and baby keepsake books, the list in endless. Keep them as simple or as intricate as you wish, you can truly make them your own. 

I only used the three colours Mermaid Fresco Chalk Paint, Bora Bora Fresco Chalk Paint, Inky Pool Fresco Chalk Paint and Snowflake Fresco Chalk Paint to print mt Gelli Prints, but it is amazing how much variation you can get. I also used a massive variation of stencils, to many to list, but the entire range can be seen HERE

With the variation of prints I had a good selection to mix up the pages when I made my book up so although I got a nice consistency with the colour there is still a nice surprise when you turn the pages.

I used black ink to stamp lots of images from the Stamp Sets by Tracy Scott. I especially used the large flower from ETS09 a lot as I masked off the inside and added lines to write on, it was a lovely size for this, and the smaller stamps on ETS11 were lovely to add small details with.

 

I added a few extra bits, a large elastic wrap closure for the book using the large butterly (I do love how this turned out) , a charm and a couple of journal clips, using elements from the stamps sets above. Finishing my whole project off with some stitching and a bit of black paint to edge all the pages.

I added lots of bits to my journal, tags for extra places to write, and lots of stamped images throughout, I have for the main part at the moment left these uncoloured as I am intending to take this away with me next month to fill with holiday rambling and other stuff. It will give me something to colour if I fancy it and as all the stamping is done all I need are a few colouring pencils.

As I said in my opening post I love to make things from nothing. But what also works well for this type of book is a junk journal. I went to Rome last year and I came home with every bit of tat imaginable, but I used the tourist maps for my pages, cut up things for my tags and I ended up with a lovely memory of my holiday and a handy book to keep all the other stuff in too. I do have a link on my blog to the book instructions and also a very short video showing how I made my charm, a blog link is below.

Carol x

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What a beautiful and practical idea Carol! This palette just oozes summer, and such a treasure it would be to fill it with sunny memories from a special trip! ~Leandra

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