Altered Art Journal

So here is the First A project - Altered Art Journal. 

I have been wanting to do an art journal for a while.  I will say I have been a little bit intimidated.  I see all of these amazing pages on Pinterest, You Tube, Facebook, etc.  The thing is how do you get better at something....you jump in with both feet and just do.  As we do, we grow in our abilities and just get better with practice.  I have picked up a couple of journals over time and decided that I wanted to focus on the smaller one.  the pages are 5 1/2 x 8 1/2.  I had seen some videos on youtube where France Papillion does it on an 8 1/2 x 11, cuts in half and then puts it into the book.  I figured this would work perfect for me.

Started with a wire bound art journal.  I loosend the rings and slipped off of the covers.  I love that the journal had a texture already to it similar to canvas - bonus.  Painted with gesso and let dry.  Using a lattice and script stencils, I covered most of the surface with embossing paste. I layered on pieces of punchinella and snippets of dry wall tape randomly on the pages.  I cut tons of clock and gear cuts using the silhouette and 65 lb cardstock.  Then painted over the surface with another coat of gesso.

I then sprayed the heck out of the covers with Lindy's sprays.  Of course Tibetan Poppy Teal and Cattail Copper Brown were the main ones.  Then I followed up with gilder's paste, dry brushed with burnt sienna acrylic paint,  then smudged a black ink pad over sections.  





 Finishing touches: Added chunky aged embossing powder around the edges of the book.  Cut a welded title from silhouette 3 times and layered.  Embossed with a square patterned embossing folder.  Embossed in black utee.  Used rust gilder's paste to add color.  I did the same thing with the clock hands.  Layered those with clock gears.  Then I splattered the covers with a bit of black paint. I added dcwv steampunk papers to the inside covers to finish off.