 Hi everyone and welcome back to another art journal video. In the coming weeks I am planning to share many Christmas themed art journals and I have a bunch of new products here, most of them are by teamholes and I will be using lots and lots of those in my art journals that are coming up. So today I am going to start with some of them and I just want to let you know that there is a great sale on the teamholes brand, everything is 20% off and you will find the link to that down below in the description area. So I got some collage paper, I got a washi tape, lots and lots of scissor ties by teamholes which I absolutely adore the designs, I also got some ephemera and many chipboard sentiments and a bunch of other products from the new Christmas collection. Now for today I am going to mainly play with this scissor tie which is absolutely adorable. The moment I saw the design I knew I had to turn it into an art journal page, it gives you a die to cut out that little elf as well as lots of dies to cut out gifts and bits and pieces. Now here is a standard card size that's 4.25x5.5 so you can see that it makes a great focal point for a card. However I am going to use it on my art journal and I am going to play on a 6x6 art journal, this is the disc bound one that I have. So I have already cut out a 6x6 watercolour paper, this is nice and thick and I am going to place that on top so you can see the size and compare, you can see that it makes a great focal point for a 6x6 journal. And if you are working on an art journal book then that size is perfect as well. I am going to put the dies aside for now and I will work on my background so again this is watercolour paper and I am going to cover it up with this collage paper, this is by Tim Hose and it has a lovely design. Now I want to have some of that colourful design on my page but I don't want it to be centred and definitely not covering up the whole part, I need to have some white space as well so I am trying to figure out which part I am going to use and once I am happy with the placement I am going to use my scissors, cut out a part of it and then it's time to stick it down. To stick it down my collage paper I am going to use distress collage medium, I am going to open it up for you so you can see the colour, this works exactly like mat medium but it has a tint on it and since I am going for an art journal with a vintage look and feel I prefer to use this as my glue. So you can see here how it adds some colour at the background, I am going to cover it up completely with my brush and then place on top the paper. Now if you get some wrinkles it doesn't really matter, these are all going to flatten up once I use my brush on top and also remember that wrinkles add texture and more interest on your background so it's not something that you want to avoid. I get a lot of questions about the brushes, I just dip them in water and I leave them there until I finish the project where I go to the sink and wash them nicely. So now I am going to make sure that the mat medium is completely dry, I am using my new embossing tool, this has two settings, the first one is for drying out things so it's not as hot and the second one is super hot for embossing. I am going to use my scissors to cut off the excess collage paper, for that you can also tear it off if you want to have rough edges and I am going to create a border with white gesso, I am using a flat brush and I am working from the outside towards the center, I am not going to cover it up completely obviously, I just want to have a nice white border that fades out towards the center. The gesso I am using is by Faber-Caster and it doesn't completely cover up the design since it is quite thin but of course if you want to completely cover up the design at the edge then you can use a thicker gesso or just add more layers of the thin gesso that you have at home. Now this is where I decided to add some splashes with the gesso that I have on my table, I am going to dilute it with water. At the finished project I will not have any of those white splashes that I am going to add now, however I decided to leave that part of the video on so you can see the different stages and how we can change our mind as we go. And in any case if I decided to add more splashes I could have done that when the project was finished. Now I am going to do some inking, I have my Distress Oxide ink here and that's Vintage Photo and this is where I decided that I wanted the main part of the paper to be quite darker and that's where I completely covered up the splashes but again you can always add them at the end. Now I am trying to decide where this elf is going to go and you can see here the bug is very busy so I am going to turn it one more time and try to decide where this is going to look better. I don't want to have a busy background otherwise it's not going to help the elf to stand out. Now I think this is the best placement, however if you look at it like that the word Christmas is upside down. I don't care about this detail at all, I will find a way to cover it up so that it's not readable later on. Now these are design tapes, they come in a pack all together and they have lovely designs, very Christmasy ones, I'm going to pick a few of them, a couple of them to work with on my page and the idea here is to create kind of a ground where I'm going to place the elf standing on top so that it doesn't look as if it is floating. I'm also going to bring in one lovely sticker from this sticker pack so I'm going to tear a few pieces and place them one on top of the other to create a cluster of washi tape and I always make sure that the edge on the inside of the paper is not completely straight, I always like to have a rough edge as it adds more to the project. Now just because I have mat medium underneath it is very forgiving so if I don't like the placement of those washi tapes I can always peel them off and place them in another area and you will see that I'm going to do that later on. If you want to make sure that this is not removable then just use some glue underneath. Now as I tear off the side of this sticker you can see the white and as I tear off the side of this sticker you can see the white core coming through, if you don't like that just like I didn't like it you can always use your blending tool and add a bit of a vintage photo to cover it up. This is where I change my mind and you can see how easily I can peel it off and place the whole cluster of washi tapes just a bit lower on my project and of course you can add some glue at the back to make sure that they are nicely secured there. Now I'm applying some collage medium at the back of the elf and then I'm going to stick him on top of my project and I absolutely love the silhouette if I had to choose just one of the new C6 and teamhold dies then I would definitely go with this one. Now I'm going to embellish my art journal a little bit more and I'm going to use some of the phrases from this sticker pack. I'm going to place them just underneath his feet. This one says be good for goodness sake and just because one is never enough I'm going to use one more which is the deck the holes one and I'm slightly inking them up to help them blend with the rest of the background. And now it's time to do some more die cutting for that I will use the rest of the dies from the Santa Helper's die set and I use some colored cardstock to cut out all the pieces. I'm going to assemble three boxes, three gifts. For that I'm using my Nuvo Deluxe glue. I like that because it has a very fine tip and at the same time it is great because when it dries it is completely transparent so any white glue that you see at the moment it's going to completely disappear. The color combo that I went with is green and red and I throw in a little bit of yellow as well. Now another fun part about this die set is that you can use it all year round just because it gives you the dice to create those gifts you can use them to create birthday cards in any color combo that you like and it gives you also bows and by the way if you are wondering how I know exactly where I'm supposed to stick all those tiny pieces it is really easy because when the big dies cut out they also create little crease lines so I'm going to place them here trying to decide where everything is going to go so once I decide where everything is going to go I'm going I'm going to remove everything and do some inking. These are little details that really make a huge difference and helps everything come together so I inked up the background to help all those elements to stand even more and I'm also inking up the edges. These are going to make again a huge difference and help them stand out against the background especially this yellow gift which is pretty much the same color as the background. Now I'm going to make this a tiny smaller so that it allows some space for the bow at the top and I'm sticking everything down by using glue of course you can use your collage medium if you like and as I'm looking at this at the moment I think that you can turn this self into a bow for a birthday card holding all those gifts if you cut out the tail on his hat as well as the tips on his shoes so it is really versatile and you can use it all year round Now this is how I'm going to cover up the upside down Christmas word and I just stuck down a sticker that says all is calm all is bright I'm also going to use a few more stickers on the other side just to balance it a little bit and create a triangle a visual triangle of stickers and this time I used Merry Christmas and Filling our stockings. Now one of the things that I absolutely love doing on my art journals is adding some highlighting for that I'm using my gel pen and I'm adding here and there's some white lines and I'm doing that on some parts of Santa's helper and I'm also going to do that on the gifts these highlights are so tiny but at the same time they bring a lot of difference on the page and helps all those elements to stand out. The pen that I'm using here is the Jelly Roll by Sakura. The color is bright white and it writes beautifully as you can see just make sure that everything is completely dry underneath. Now I'm going to do a finishing touch which I think really brings everything together. This is one of the new stencils by Tim Holtz. I'm going to place a stencil on one side of my page and apply some paste with my spatula. I picked up a small spatula so that I can easily control how much I add. I'm not going to completely cover up the whole space I just want to have those stars around the perimeter. I'm going to clean my stencil before I go to the other side and repeat the same process one more time. Now I have white stars over the white border which gives a great texture and at the same time I do allow some of the stars to come towards the center. Just because the stencil is semi transparent I can easily see where my elf is and I'm making sure that I don't cover him up with stars and I am also careful as I add the stars at the bottom making sure that they don't cover up the washi tape. Now another thing that you can do is to use a gold embossing paste instead of white or while the embossing paste is still wet you can sprinkle some glitter which is going to stick on the stars and add some sparkle. And here is the finished project for today. You can punch some holes and put it back on your disc bump journal or leave it as it is and frame it as it is going to make a beautiful Christmas decor. And here are some close-up photos on the project for today and don't forget that everything that I used by team holds is 20% off for just a few days. You will find the links on everything I used down below in the description area. I hope that you had fun that you got inspired. Don't forget to like and subscribe and share this video with your friends if you had fun watching. Thank you all so much and I'll see you all next time.