 Γεια σας και καλωστά στον νέο μου. Θα πω κάθε φορά, ένα νέο αργερνό βίντεο που θα είναι κρίσμα στιγμή. Θα έχω πολλοί και πολλοί πρόταξες που έχουν μιλήσει αλλά θα κομπάνω τους με όλες τα πράγματα που έχω στην μου στάση και θα σημανήσω 8 διαφορετικές λεωτές όλη την στιγμή μέχρι το κρίσμα. Μεταλληθώ με το φοκάλι που χρησιμοποιηθώ να δουλεύω κάθε φορά, θα χρησιμοποιηθώ σε διαφορετικές φορές της αργερνότητας. Δεν θα ζητάω κατά το CHANNEL but θα ενδέχω μεγάλο στάσμα, ένας που θα έχω και θα χρεήσω πολλές δυντρακώματα για ποτέ τα διαφορετικές λεωτές μεταλληθώ σε δυντρακώματα, όταν θα χρειαζα σε μεγάλη άρεια να δει και μεγάλο έργο που θα χρειαζω ένας διαφορετικές λεωτές, comme σήμερα. Θα μπορώ να επικοινήσω στιγμή με 6x6 ή ένας που θέλω να κάνω και να their να σκοτω τη στιγμή ή ανήχος μεγή για άλλες πρόταξες που έχω κάνει μεγερνότες. Οπότε εδώ είναι ένα παράδειγμα, they are the ones that you bind with an elastic in the middle. So I will have lots of fun playing different sizes and different types of journals. You can follow along, hopefully you will get inspired and of course you can work on your favorite size of art journal. And of course if you want you can turn them into really dimensional projects and work on a canvas. I do have a couple of examples here. These are canvases that I like to work on. If you don't want to work on a book, these are a great option. They are not so big so you will not get overwhelmed by the white space. Plus you will get to play with all the mixed media techniques that I will do on my art journal pages. These are about 8 x 8 inches in size and they provide a great way to decorate your craft room or hunt them out as lovely gifts. I have a few of them and they do decorate my craft room. So I'm going to take you through my creative process and I'm going to show you how I start on an art journal. So this time I want to use the new Cezix die designed by Tim Holtz. This one is called Festive Stems and I fell in love with the moment I saw that. I love the size of them, they are really big. Plus they are on a big large die which means that you can cut out grunge port, chip port, really thick material, even felt or fabric. However I'm going to work with paper for today. And I'm showing you here how I like to store my big dies just because I don't have the image on top of them and I like to throw away the packaging. I always like to cut out the leaflet from the packaging and I stick it on top of my big dies. So when I browse through them it is super easy for me to find out what I'm looking for. Now check out an example of how big these leaves are which means that this is going to determine which size of art journal I'm going to work on. And that's exactly why I grabbed my dinner weekly one. This is a great art journal book, it gives you different textures to work with and I like the white pages because they are super thick and they take lots and lots of mediums with sprays and water and it's not going to work on you. So anyway I decided to work with this super old teamholes pad, this is an 8x8 pad that I had for years. Probably you have some of these papers in your stash too. Even if you don't have this specific pattern paper it is a great way to use up old scraps of pattern paper and I will use them to create a border. Now at this stage I have no idea of what I want to create. All I know is that I need a background for those big leaves so that I can put them on. Now the idea here is to create a border and at this stage I don't know what I'm going to do on the inside. But I just go along with what I have in my mind and I take it from there step by step. So here I'm going to cut out little squares that I can stick down all around the borders. For that I'm using a brush that I dip lightly on water, not too much water on the brush and then I'm going to apply my matte medium and stick everything down. I did go over the little pieces on top with matte medium as well. Just to make sure that everything is nicely stuck there and don't throw away the leftover pieces. You can repeat the same process to create a lovely background for your card making and just stick on top a sentiment. Now I'm going to give it a quick dry with my heat gun and this is where I got the idea that I wanted to use that burlap piece on top of my page. I like the texture of it so this is what I'm going to do. Once everything was dry I used my scissors to make the page look nice and neat. Cutting out all the paper that sticks out and as I was sticking all those little squares all around my border the only thing that I was paying attention was to not stick two of the same patterns next to each other so that it looks nice and neat. Now I'm going to tear that off and it is possible because I did cut out the other half of the signature in a previous project. So now I'm going to use my scissors and make it smaller and I'm also going to distress it somehow. This is a great way to add lots of texture on your background and lots of interest and I think that it is going to provide the best base where I can stick on top my focal point. There are many things that you can do on top of burlap. You can apply gesso, you can add paint, you can spray on top, you can even stencil which is something that I'm going to do and you can see how it looks now. I'm going to make it just a bit smaller so that I can see more of that border all around and I will go back to an old and favorite technique that I used to do a lot. I'm going to add some shadows all around the borders by using a big brush marker. This is a technique that I'm able to do just because I have matte medium all over my background and this provides a non porous surface for me to smudge the ink before it completely dries and gets permanent. You can get of course similar looks by adding some distressing all around, blending your ink there. You can use watercolor on top. Just play with what you have to create a shadow all around. I like to have darker borders just because it makes your eye drone to the center of my project and it gives a lovely finished look. So the idea of this art journal series is to post one new Christmas themed layout every Tuesday and I hope I will be able to make it until week 8 when it's Christmas. I'm also back in lockdown. The situation in our area was getting out of hand so they had to lock us down. Older kids in high school like my daughter are doing online school but the youngest have to go to school still but they do have to wear masks in the class or even outside of the class in the yard and that's the case with my son who is in middle school. So the situation is not easy and it hasn't been easy for none of us so let's count out with art until Christmas and let's hope that the next year is going to be a better one. So now with my life update let's go back to the project. I did add lots and lots of white splashes. I'm doing that with a white paint spray that I have but you can do with white acrylic paint or even gesso. Just thin it out with water and because the color of the burlap was too bright for me I decided to go over it with a brush. This is a very stiff brush by Nouveau and some vintage photo. It doesn't have to be perfect and I'm not going to cover it up completely. Just some areas here and there to make it look more interesting. And again you can spray on top of it. It's going to take sprays really nicely. Now I like how it looks on top of my background but I want to add something extra and that's why I'm going to bring in one of my older stencils. This is a Christmas one that has lots of Christmas words on top and I'm going to apply my embossing paste over it. I just applied with my spatula and the truth is that this is not going to stay as bright and white as it looks at the moment. It's going to blend a little bit with the distressed oxide ink that I have on the background plus my stencil wasn't completely clean but this is not a problem, I prefer it like that. Make sure that you use embossing paste or texture paste that is very thick. This way you get a good impression of the stencil plus it's going to hold its shape and dimension. Now it's time to work on my focal point as my embossing paste is drying so for that I'm going to go with three oxide sprays these are a couple of shades of green as well as one brown one. I'm spraying on three pieces of craft cardstock and I'm going to mix them up apply water on top of them, blend them nicely I just want to have a non-flat greenish colored paper. You can of course go ahead and cut out your focal points out of colored cardstock or patterned paper if you wish to. If you are wondering on the specific colors that I used you will find them linked down below just like everything else that I'm using to create this project. So here are the finished patterned papers that I created I absolutely love how these colors blend together and they create this lovely and interesting background. Now I'm going to use these pieces on top of my die and the fact that this is one of the big dies means that I can cut out three of them with one passing. For some of them I went upside down just because I don't want all of my leaves to look the same. So I'm going to run them through my die cutting machine and you see it cuts like pattern through all these three layers and I'm also going to bring in some scraps of these these glitter cardstock and I'm going to cut out the berries out of that. Again I'm cutting out three little pieces so that I can stack one on top of the other and with one passing I will end up having lots and lots of berries. Now my background already has a vintage look and feel on it with that burl up and all that patterned paper that I have on the edges that's why I'm going to continue this look and feel on my leaves. I'm inking only some of the edges with vintage photo This is probably my most used ink that I have ever had in my stash and now it's time to put my layer together I'm going to use some double-sided tape to stick the burl up down it is really strong and it did hold up nicely that burl up on top of paper but you can use any type of glue that you feel it's going to hold these two together. So I'm peeling off the backing I'm going to place it on top of my page and of course I'm manipulating the burl up just because my embossing paste was already dry. Now I'm going to put together my focal point all those three branches one on top of the other and I'm just sticking them together with white glue I had this red polkadot ribbon on my stash for years so I'm creating a little bow and this is going to go at the top of my mistletoe to embarrass it a little bit and to give that touch of red on top of my focal point and again I'm going to use my white glue to stick that down on the burl up and I found that it hold just fine this was my Novo Deluxe glue which I absolutely love and then with that I'm going to stick the bow on top and of course let's not forget the berries so I'm going to add some dots of glue here and there spread them around and then stick the berries on top Now this is an afterthought this is where I was looking in the box these are the measurements that I have for Christmas and I found those tokens from a previous release by Tim Holtz I want to use one of them that says Holy Jolly I'm going to apply on top some acrylic paint this is an acrylic paint marker this is going to go inside the etched areas and highlight the engraved words there and just wipe it with my fingers so I'm going to tack it underneath the bow I did use a glue dot to stick that down and go with your glue gun or any other type of glue Now with my box of Christmas embellishments I did find all those sayings these are from last year's release by Tim Holtz these are cheaper sayings that are all about Christmas I like that they have a white background with red letters and there are so many in the packaging that they are going to last me forever and I decided to go with the one that says Deck the Halls I'm going to stick that down and I did go all around it with a little bit of vintage photo so that it doesn't look so bright you can stop right here or if you are like me and you cannot resist your white gel pen just add some highlights on some of the lips so this is my finished layout here are some close up photos just like always you will find linked down below everything I used but if you had fun today that you got inspired let me know in the comments what you think about the new series that I decided to do until Christmas thank you all so much for spending some time with me today and I'll see you all next time