Journal Hangout

A while ago my lovely friend Gillian got herself a journal, but said at the time that she probably would be too scared to do anything in it lol So we arranged to meet in a google hangout with a couple other friends, and we journalled together.

Working along with friends is always much more fun. We met up over 2 tuesdays, and this is the result of my page. Gillian is yet to finish her...hint hint missus, get on with it! Though what she did on the first night was great. EDIT. She has now finished it.

So i started my page with some Adirondack ink sprayed through a stencil.

I knocked this back with white acrylic, then added more stencilling.

more white acrylic, and then onto a couple of layers of background stamping.. I used Sara Naumann text stamps, they are perfect for journalling.

Next I used Urban Snapshots and Fresco paints to create a border.  First a layer of shades of green, then a layer of shades of blue..

Then a layer of a smaller stamp from the same range, this time using Archival black ink. These 3 layers give a feeling of depth to the border. 

This is how it looked at the end of our first session together.. I was pretty pleased with this, though I had no idea what I was going to put in the middle. 

So onto week 2...

I had looked around for inspiration, and had an idea I wanted a birdcage hanging down and a large quote. So I searched google images and found 

THIS WALL DECAL

far too big of course, it is meant to go on a wall, but I liked the general feel of it and the shapes. So this was my starting point. 

I hand drew the branch onto my page, one coming out to the right and one to the left of the centre. I didn't want them solid black so added my fave little white dots. 

I thought about handrawing 1 large birdcage, but them i remembered I had a tiny stamp from Character Construction, the tiny birds were in the same set. 

On the other side i added some birds from HP1104 and HP1105 i coloured them with Fresco translucent paint. 

and then added a little journalling around the spirals..

Now for my title/quote. I loved the one that was on the urban snapshot stamp, but it was too small... So i copied it out large.. 

next I dripped some Acrylic ink down the centre of the page, this joins the 2 branches and gives the effect of a tree trunk. 

The bottom corner looked bare, so I added this stamp to fabric that was painted with Snowflake.. 

I also added a couple of butterflies, again from PaperArtsy Urban Snapshots. and this is how the pages looked at this point. 

I felt it was just lacking in something, the branches looked far too much like the wall decal, and I wanted to add my own bits to them.. so I added more spirals..and tiny squiggly doodles. Now it was looking more like my style. 

..and more spirals to the other side too..

finished pages..

Left..

Right..

 and the whole thing finished.. 

I hope this inspires you to get together with a friend and journal along together. 

Darcy x