Step-by-step Art journal

Hello fellow Crafters,

I quite often get the question of how I do certain things. So today I thought I do a step-by-step Art journal. I hope you let me know what you think, not just of the spread but about the tutorial as well.
Now, make yourself a nice drink (or pour yourself a glass of something), sit down and enjoy !!

Today my theme was "The Wizard of Oz" again.  As I mentioned in my last blogpost HERE,  I am quite partial to this film and recently I managed to get the Stampotique Stamp series, designed by Janet Klein together. I decided to use the "Cowardly Lion" today.

Start by applying Gesso over the pages of your book, then let this dry. 

Meanwhile paint some white card stock with Gesso and let this dry as well. You can use a heat tool to dry both your journal and your pieces of card stock if you are impatient like me .....

Paint the card stock with yellow acrylic paint and set aside to dry. I will explain later why I used painted card stock and not just yellow paper. 

Now the fun really starts, take three colours of your choice; preferably two shades of the same colour and some white.

Paint the pages of your journal, light in the middle darker around the sides. I used a paintbrush to apply the white and lighter blue and then used my fingers to apply the dark paint around the edges. Set aside to dry.

Cut out some circles from your yellow painted card stock, use a die or do it by hand.

I put the acrylic paint on this card stock because I was going to use my Faber Castell Stamper's Big Brush pens and wanted to blend an move the colour a bit. That only works on a non porous background. 

I used two shades of yellow, one of orange and a red to colour the circles. 

Next, back to the journal and some stencils. I used the same white paint and a Tim Holtz stencil to put some stripes on the page. This is just to create a bit more interest and texture. 

Here's a close up of how it looks. 

Next, another stencil with Distress Ink in a similar colour to the background this time. Now this ink you can just wipe off if you don't like the result because it is water based and won't adhere very well to your non porous background. I found though that when it's on and dry it is perfectly OK and won't come off.

This is what that looks like. I now needs some black :

I used some cheap black craft paint for this and made it a little thinner with some water. I used a cookie cutter for the circles and made some splatters by tapping a loaded paintbrush.

This is what it looked like and I think the background is mostly done now. 

Later on you will see that I changed my mind.... A girls prerogative I think ! 

Here is the Stampotique "Cowardly Lion" stamped with Memento black ink, he is ready to be coloured.

Almost done here, but not quite....

Here is the finished article, looks rather handsome, don't you think ?

Now I smooshed a Versamark Inkpad over my coloured image. Be careful if you do this over watercolour pencils (or anything else that reacts with moisture) because it will smudge. You have to dab it instead of smoosh it.... I found that it doesn't matter with alcohol markers. 

Then sprinkle clear embossing powder all over him and melt the powder with a heat tool.

This is what he looks like after embossing. I think the images look so much better because the colours become even more vibrant and there is that lovely shine of course. 

After cutting the image out I use a "B" Faber Castell Pitt Pen to go around the cut edges. That way you won't notice if you did't cut it out perfectly.

Next, I found the sentiment I wanted to use on the internet. It is a verse out of a song from the film. I printed it on white paper and cut it into strips.

After you've done all this it is time to have a look at how you want the lay out to look. I usually move stuff around for quite a while until I am happy with it....

Here I decided that big circle was too big and cut some more smaller circles from it.

So I glued the circles down on the page and decided it needed something more.

I did a tiny bit of background stamping, not worrying about stamping on the circles as well. I used another Stampotique stamp for this called : "Fax to Wolfgang" designed by Amy Wilson Wellenstein.

And this is the final product. Everything adhered to the page. I used some washi tape to put the lion on and also here and there under the sentiment. Lastly I went around the sentiment strips with a black pen and put a date stamp on the page. 

Thanks for stopping by ! I hope you enjoyed my first step-by-step tutorial.