4 Girls Art Journal Pages Swap

Over the past few months I've been swapping art journal pages with 3 other fabulous ladies.  We were to make 2 pages, front and back of each, for a total of actually 4 pages for each person including ourselves.  We each chose what size pages we wanted according to how we were going to put our books together and shared that along with a theme if we wanted to pick one, our favorite (or not so favorite) colors and things we liked or didn't like in general.  We each used this information for each person to make our pages.  This was a lot of fun and it was great getting such different pages from each person.  I'm sharing my finished book complete with my pages for myself and the pages I received from everyone else.  I'll be sharing the pages I made for everyone in more detail on other days (this post is already going to be long enough). 

This is my finished book.  I used Wendy Vecchi's large Art Parts cover, Tim's ring binder that fit it, and Sticky-back canvas to put it together.  I added Wendy's white embossing paste to the outside stamping into it while still wet with Wendy's Ornate Dots background stamp and to the inside just smearing it around with a pallet knife for texture.  After it was dry I gessoed the whole thing and then added color with Distress Paints... on the outside I just dabbed it around spraying with water and letting it blend a bit, blotting in places if necessary.  After it was all dry I used my finger to add Viva Inka Gold old gold around the edges and to highlight texture.  For the rest of the front cover I die cut various leaves (Sizzix Branch w/Leaves, Poppystamps Lorelai Leaf, Memory Box Leafy Branch) and flowers (Tim Holtz Tattered Floral Garland) from cardstock.  The butterflies are a punch.  The leaves were colored with Distress Stains.  The flowers and butterflies were colored with Distress Paints.  There are several Wendy Vecchi background stamps used on the flowers, leaves and blue butterfly stamped with various Archival Inks except the purple flower is stamped with white Distress Paint. The quote is an old Ann-ticipations stamp.  The bird is a Wendy Vecchi Blossom Bucket piece colored with Archival Inks.

 On the inside I dabbed the Distress paints around, sprayed them with water and then gently ran a paint brush up and down starting at the left and going to the right only going over an area once as not to mix things too much. Let that dry.  On the inside of the front cover I painted a flower - Distress Paints, white gel pen, black Sharpie paint marker.  The words are a Hero Arts stamp.  The bird is a ggDesigns stamp - white pen for the eye and "wing".  Doodling along the bottom with the Sharpie.

The inside of the back cover uses a flower die cut from an ink filled paper towel that I've had lying around for a long time.  Painted the stem, leaves, and grass - yep, Distress Paints and doodling done with white and black pens.  Enjoy Life's Moments is a Hero Arts stamp.  I stamped it with Ranger's jet black Archival.  The white dots are done with a Sharpie paint marker.  The center of the flower is a Wendy Vecchi Blossom Bucket piece painted with bronze Distress Paint, dried and the Sharpie marker for the white.