Merry Art Journal Page

Good morning

This will be my last post for this year and I want to take this opportunity to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy and healthy 2022.

I really appreciate the time you spend here on my blog and look forward 

to sharing more of my papercraft projects with you in the coming year.

A new year is always exciting I think, because we don't know what the future will bring for us

 and what changes we will make as the year goes by.

Today I want to share a Christmas Art Journal page.

I love Christmas trees and this page features a Christmas tree, although I have to admit that wasn't my original idea.

I had planned on having the baubles hanging from the top of the page and the background was going to look like the tree, so a closeup of the tree if you will.

The proportion of the baubles to the background did not look right to me when I tried this 

so I had a re-think and decided to make a Christmas tree shape using the baubles

 and I have to admit, I am quite happy with the results.

I used Woodware Bubble Mini Bauble stamp, Versafine Onyx Black Ink, Embossing Buddy, 

Clear embossing powder and smooth white cardstock to heat emboss twelve of the baubles.

I coloured each of the baubles with Distress/Distress Oxide inks, and a water brush, using two tones of each colour on each bauble, so they had a little shading.

 These are the colours I used:-

Distress Ink Bundled Sage & Distress Oxide Cracked Pistachio

Distress Oxide Shaded Lilac & Distress Ink Dusty Concord

Distress Oxide Tattered Rose & Distress Ink Spun Sugar

Distress Ink Mowed Lawn & Distress Ink Pine Needles

Distress Ink Faded Jeans & Distress Ink Chipped Sapphire

Distress Ink Barn Door & Distress Ink Fired Brick

Distress Ink Carved Pumpkin & Distress Ink Ripe Persimmon

Distress Ink Festive Berries & Distress Ink Candied Apple

Distress Ink Scattered Straw & Distress Ink Mustard Seed

Distress Ink Victorian Velvet & Distress Ink Picked Raspberry

Distress Oxide Salty Ocean & Distress Oxide Blueprint Sketch

Distress Ink Peeled Paint & Distress Ink Twisted Citron.

Once all of the baubles were coloured, I fussy cut them and 

inked around the edges, with Archival Jet Black ink

To create the background I used a sponge to pounce acrylic paint to the whole area.

I used Southwest Teal, Seabreeze Turquoise and Jade Green,

 blending them until I was happy with the look.

The texture for the background comes from putting Avocado Acrylic paint

through Kaisercraft's Lattice stencil,

Modelling Paste through TCW Mini Labyrinth 6" stencil

and stamping Uniquely Creative's Wavy Words stamp with Archival Jet Black ink.

I attached the baubles to the page using Gloss Gel, 

I also coated the whole page with the gel being careful 

not to smudge the inks used to colour the baubles. 

This will help the baubles to stay in place and allow me to use my 

black Stabilo All pencil to shade around the baubles.

I cut a base for my tree and a star from some gold cardstock and added them to the page.

To highlife the gold pieces I used a black paint marker

to draw faux stitching around their edges.

My title was die cut from black cardstock using Kaisercraft's DD700 Alphabet Upper Case dies.

To add some shine to my page I gave the larger circles on the baubles a coat of Glossy Accents

The final touch for the page was to use some watered down black acrylic paint

in a Fineliner bottle to draw a scribbly boarder.

Here is my process video

Well that's it for me for this year

Thank you for spending part of your day here with me today

Once again I hope your Christmas and New Year are all that you hope they will be

Till next time

Stay safe

Hugs

Julie

 

Last of my Christmas cards for 2021

Good morning

I am sharing my last three Christmas cards for this year here today.

I am using a sheet of acetate I have coloured using Alcohol Inks.

Here is the video that shows how I made this sheet.

These are today's cards

They are all 5" square.

I use my We R Memory Keepers Envelope Punch Board to create envelopes for my cards.

Card No 1.

I used Kaisercraft DD216 Scribble Star die to cut a couple of stars from gold sticky backed paper.

I attached the stars to the acetate sheet and fussy cut around them.

I also cut a 1" x 4 1/2" piece of acetate and attached a 3/8" piece of gold cardstock to the centre of it.

I cut a piece of red paper 4 3/4" square and a piece of white cardstock 4 1/2" square.

I attached the acetate strip 1/8" from the top of the white panel

The red paper and the white cardstock were attached to the card front.

The stars were then attached. I used a Sharpie to 

draw the string lines between the stars and the gold strip.

I used some black acrylic paint in a fineliner bottle to draw a bow at the top of each line.

The sentiment is from Uniquely Creative. 

I matted the sentiment on some of the same red paper I used for the layer.

The sentiment was attached to a scrap of chipboard and then to the card.

Card No. 2

This card has three Christmas trees created in the same way as the stars.

The die I used is one of my favourites and I do not know what brand it is.

The patterned papers are from Paper Rose's B&W Christmas 6" paper pack.

I chose two dark papers and one light.

I cut the papers 4 3/4", 4 1/2" and 4 1/4" square.

I cut a piece of white cardstock 2 3/4" x 5" and two 1/2" x 5" strips

of gold cardstock that where attached to the top and bottom of the white panel.

The Christmas trees were attached to the white panel using liquid glue.

I did not attach a sentiment to this card. I did not want to cover up the trees.

Card No. 3

The layers for this card are 4 3/4" for the red and 4 1/2" for the white.

I embossed the white panel using a Cuttlebug embossing folder.

I cut strips of the coloured acetate 3/8" wide.

I attached these to a piece of plain acetate using Art Glitter glue

I used my Spellbinder circle dies to cut a circle from the acetate

and a larger circle from gold cardstock.

I attached the acetate circle to the gold circle.

I hand cut a gold top to create a bauble from the circle.

A piece of black crochet cotton was attached at the top of the embossed white panel.

The bauble was then attached to the embossed panel

The red and white panels were then attached to the front of the card.

The sentiment, once again, is from Uniquely Creative 

and is matted on some of the red paper used for the panel.

The sentiment is attached to the card front with a piece of chipboard behind it.

Here is my process video

Thank you for being here with me today

As always, till next time

stay safe

hugs

Julie

Vintage Christmas Cards

Good morning

Today I am sharing three vintage Christmas cards.

All three cards are 5" square, created using Coredintaions Vanilla Cream cardstock.

Each card also uses Bo Bunny's Father Christmas paper range from 2011.

All of the paper layers have been distressed using my Prima Distressing tool and a black ink cube.

OK let's start with 

Card No. 1

The two background layers are 4 3/4" square and 4 1/2" square

The strip of red patterned paper is 2" x 4" and the cream cardstock is 1 1/2" x 4"

The square patterned papers are attached to the card base with double sided tape

There is a piece of chipboard between the red patterned paper strip and the lace,  

(the lace is a gift from my Mum)

which is attached with liquid glue

Three sparking red poinsettia (a gift from my Mum) are attached down the length of the cream cardstock, 

also attached with liquid glue

The sentiment is stamped using Versafine Onyx Black ink and a stamp from

Kaisercraft's Christmas Edition stamp set.

I die cut the sentiment using a lacy rectangle die, added a piece of chipboard behind it

and attached it to my card front.

The inside of the card

I have cut a piece of red patterned paper 1 1/4" x 4 1/2" and a green piece 3/4" x 4 1/2".

These have been layered onto each other and attached to the left of the inside back panel.

The greeting is stamped using Versafine Onyx Black ink and Kaisercraft's Christmas Greetings stamp set.

This was then covered with clear embossing powder and set using my heat tool.

Card No. 2

Each of the patterned paper layers on this card are matted on a piece of cream cardstock.

Paper sizes are:-

Patterned paper No1. 4 3/4" square

Patterned paper No.2 4 1/4" square 

Cream Cardstock 4 1/2" square and 3 1/4" square.

For the focal point on the front of the card I used an image from the cut-a-part sheet which is 3" square.

Between the cut-a-part image and the 3 1/4" cream cardstock 

I have added a 4" square piece of glitter tulle.

On the inside

I cut "Merry Christmas" from Uniquely Creative's Holly Jolly Christmas 6" paper pack

and  matted it onto a 2 1/2" square piece of patterned paper.

I stamped and heat embossed a Christmas tree from a free stamp set I received with a magazine.

The magazine was Creative Cardmaking.

I added dots of Nuvo Crystal Drops in Autumn Red to the heat embossed tree.

Card No. 3

This card has all of the patterned papers matted on gold mirror card.

The patterned papers measure 4 3/4" square, 4 1/4" square and 3 1/8" x 3 5/8"

The gold card is 4 1/2" square and 3 1/2" x 3 5/8"

on the smallest piece of patterned paper I have put Decofoil Transfer Gel Duo

through a Christmas tree stencil.

When the gel was dry I added gold foil using my brayer.

Inside the card

I cut a piece of patterned paper 4 1/2" square and attached it to the inside of the card.

I used another "free with magazine" stamp to stamp and heat emboss

a sentiment to the patterned paper.

The magazine was Australian Papercraft Essentials

Here is my process video

I hope you will check it out

Well that's it for today

Thank you for spending part of your day here with me today

Till next time

Stay safe

Hugs

Julie

Design Team Project for Mystical Scrapbooks December Challenge

Hi there

Thanks for joining me today.

This project is created for the December challenge at Mystical Scrapbooks.

There are two challenge for the month and this particular challenge

 is to create a Christmas project using non-traditional Christmas colours.

This can be a layout, cards, mini album or any other project you would like to make.

I have created a mini album to hold our photos of Christmas Day.

 

I saw an album created in this fashion by Heidi Swamp several years ago.

She used her pre-printed cards but they are smaller than I wanted my album to be.

I wanted my album to be able to hold 6" x 4" photos without any trimming.

If you use her pre-printed cards you don't need to add the patterned paper.

You can see how I created an album using pre-printed cards here

And how I decorated it here

I have used purchased 5" x 7" pre-folded white card bases.

The patterned paper I used for this album is Cocoa Vanilla's Sunkissed, 

a nice bright cheery collection that reflects the lovely warm/hot 

Christmases we have here in Australia

To start I trimmed 10 of the patterned papers to 4 3/4" x 6 3/4"

inked around the edges with my Versacolor black ink cube and 

attached them to both panels on the inside of the card bases.

There is no patterned paper on the outside of the card bases.

To join all of the cards together and create the album I ran 

a row of double sided tape around the two long sided and the bottom short side.

Carefully lay one card on top of the other ensuring you have the cards lined up perfectly.

If they are not lined up exactly your album may be a little wonky.

Do this for all 5 cards.

By doing this you create a pocket between each page of your album.

I then took it to my sewing machine and stitched where

I had applied the tape. This is optional but it does strengthen the album.

I cut two piece of the patterned paper 5" x 7" to cover the front and back of my album.

The spine for the album is a piece of POW Gold Glitter cardstock that I cut to 1 1/2" x 7" 

and folded around the spine of the album. I have attached it to the back and front

 covers using liquid glue. Do not put any glue on the centre section of the spine.

I created a tag to go inside each (4) of these pockets

I cut four pieces of white cardstock 4" x 6 1/4"

I cut four pieces of patterned paper 3 3/4" x 6", inked the edges

and attached them to the cardstock.

Next I stamped a journalling panel onto white cardstock and cut the panel out.

This was then attached to the tag on top of the patterned paper.

This is actually the back of the tag, I have left the front plain so I can attach my photo.

To create a pull tab for the tags I stamped and clear heat embossed the 

Tree and Bauble from Kaisercraft Sparkle stamp set 

onto white cardstock and then fussy cut them out.

I created four of each shape so I could attach then to both the front and back of the tag. 

You will need to choose a symmetric shape for this.

I used liquid glue to attache these as it gives me a little time to make sure they are perfectly lined up.

I have kept the inside of the album pretty plain as I did not want too much bulk.

Each opening has one plain page with a little journalling tab and 

one page with a pocket and a flat, simple embellishment.

The embellishment for the page above came from the Kaisercraft Starry Night Collectables pack

The embellishments for this page came from 

Kaisercraft Starry Night Collectables pack and 

the Wooden Flourish pack from the same collection

I painted the "25" with Kaisercraft Dusty Pink acrylic paint

The banner on this page is from the collectables pack 

and the cut apart is from the paper stack

These embellishments came from a pack I purchased from our local cheap shop.

The tab on the left page is another cut apart from the paper stack 

and the poinsettia (this is a similar die) was die cut from the patterned paper.

To embellish the cover I cut two more of the poinsettias,

painted two Christmas trees from the Wooded Flourish Pack with the same Dusty Pink paint,

the banner is from the Collectables pack and the 

title is cut using Tim Holtz Inside Out Alpha die. 

I have not added the year, I will do that when I use the album.

The centres of the poinsettias are Pops of Colour Glitter Champagne

If you check out my video below you will see the whole process

Thank you for spending part of your day here with me today,

Until next time

Stay safe

Hugs

Julie