This blog post is about some of the ways I’ve used my TN style art journals over the years. I’ve moved from the “traditional” 8.25″x 4″ size to the larger approx. 8.5″x 5.5″ size. I love the larger size! If you are interested in how I make the larger size TN journal, leave a comment and I’ll see what I can come up with.

“Cutie Keeper”:

The Fussy Cuttin’ Cuties group have what they call “A Cutie Keeper”, a place where we “keep” all the projects that we participate throughout the month.

On the left is our monthly calendar, our activities at a glance. On the right is a montage from our “Take Me Away Day” ephemera. Every month we go on a virtual vacation, in June we went to Spain.

Having a page filled with the “TMAD” ephemera is just a fun way to remember the experience of attending a ‘live’ with Paula G. and Kelly B., it’s an hour or so of chatting with friends, fun facts, and a lot of laughter!

“Project Gr8tful”

Hosted by the wonderful Larissa Traquair, designed by Kelly Bangs, and available at Illustrated Faith.* Larrissa has a group on Facebook where she shares more about this awesome project.

On this page spread I used pages from a vintage hymnal, a vintage children’s book image, ephemera from Kelly Bangs’ “Southern Charm” collection, and the labels from Illustrated Faith/Kelly’s “July Gr8tful Bits“, a large circle punch and a small green doily. I use Google Docs to write out my “#words” to print on clear label paper.

“Memory Keeping”

I started with a layer of gesso, added a torn piece of scrapbook paper on each side of the page spread to pull them together, then added a layer of tissue paper across both pages. I matted the two photos on the left on one piece of paper. The photo on the bottom is only adhered on three sides so I could slip a tag with info about the photo into it. On the right, I matted them separately with a tag and a small paper piece. Then decorated them with some of Kelly’s “Southern Charm” collection and a few die cuts from my stash.

“Listing”

Ingredients: Tissue paper, vintage children’s book image, Kelly Bangs “Southern Charm” collection, the list is from Kelly’s “Let’s Get Crafty” collection, and a white paper doily*, pretty simple.

I hope this post has inspired you to use your journals in some new ways.

As Always,

Thanks for the visit,

Have a great day,

~Patty

* the links are for your convenience, not my paltry bank account 🙂

“The way I see it, if you want rainbows, you got to put up with the rain.” ~Dolly Parton

Need I say more!

One of the things I like to use my journals for is Quotes, I love quotes…and it’s another excuse to play around in my journals!

This is a small collection of supplies I decided to use for this page spread, Kelly Bangs’ “Let’s Get Crafty” line by Simple Stories. (I highly recommend scrolling to the bottom of the Simple Stories website for some deals), a quote from the interwebs, florals from Kelly’s “Sunshiney Day” collection, tissue paper, a couple of tags I punched out of painted card stock, and stickers from my stash. I decided to go with a rainbow theme for obvious reasons.

I prepped my pages by scraping on a layer of white gesso to blend the background a bit, white paint works too. I like to do this when working on pages that don’t match to make them a little more cohesive. Then I added some heart stenciling for a pop of color. I like to stencil off the edge of the page because I will most likely cover a lot of it up with embellishments. If you cover more than you had originally intended, you can always go back over your work with more stenciling.

This stencil is from Vicki Boutin and may be discontinued, but I found this one at the Amazons:

Heart Stencil

So there were a couple of add ons here: a plastic adhesive pocket I got at the Target “Dollar Spot” many moons ago (they have quite a selection on the Amazons too), a journaling card made from a vintage playing card with a page tab, and a little heart shaped die cut.

As you can see, these little pockets hold quite a bit. There are three tags in there, and I’m sure I could get more in there. I love that little sticker on the outside of the pocket from Kelly’s collection to add a little depth.

Well, that’s it for my “Rainbow Quote Page”. I hope you will come back for the other installments of my “Idea Book”.

Until then,

Thank you for the visit,

Have a great day,

~Patty

Paula G. and Kelly B. of the “Fussy Cuttin’ Cuties” are hosting their annual Cutie Camp this week. I was not able to attend, but I still wanted to participate in some way, so I sent a care package with lots of art journals and decorating supplies to Paula to take to the campers. I thought it would be fun to do a kind of art journaling class remotely, so I put together this little art journal filled with pages of ideas to send along. Well, it started out little…it grew to about 3 inches thick when it was finished!

I used a lot of Kelly Bangs printables in this journal, and I will try to include the collection’s name and relevant links with each photo.* Her designs are so much fun to mix with vintage ephemera and your favorite scrapbook paper. (actually, that’s this journal in a nutshell!)

There are a lot of us that are not going to be able to attend camp in person, so I suggested that they have virtual camp along with the in person camp. They loved the idea and ran with it, it is officially called “Camp Fomo”! And that is the brainchild behind taking loads of photos of this Idea Book and sharing it here for all us in “Camp Fomo”.

The first page spread is lots of pockets. A handmade library pocket with a journaling card on the left, and a couple of torn paper tuck spots on the right.

I have an envelope punch board from “We R Memory Keepers” that I use to make my custom sized envelopes. I made my own library pocket template, but there are a ton of free library pocket templates online, just google it. It’s a great way to use up scraps, and it’s something to do while listening to an audio book or your favorite podcast.

Another envelope page, a great place to stash embellishments. I used a small heart shaped die cut for the closure.

You are going to see a lot of Kelly Bang’s “Southern Charm” in this journal, the colors are just gorgeous!

Well, that’s it for now. I just wanted to share a little introduction to this series of blog posts. I blocked all of my “Idea Book” blog posts by theme and there will be seven blog posts in total over the next week or so, so stay tuned.

As always,

Thank you for stopping in,

Have a great day,

~Patty

*footnote: no links in my blog posts are affiliated, that’s too much work 😉