 Ευχαριστώ και καλώς ήρθατε. One of the most common questions that I get is how do I start with ARGENALING, especially from card makers. So today I'm going to show you a really simple method that you can follow to create stunning backgrounds. We will create together a mini ARGENAL full of colorful backgrounds and then I'm going to turn two of those into a complete layout by creating my own focal points. So if you are a card maker or if you just starting with ARGENALING, then the best way to start is small. Then you don't have to struggle with a big area to cover and you can try out techniques without wasting too much of your mediums. So here I have created a mini ARGENAL just to demonstrate today and the paper that I'm using is thick watercolor paper. It's widely available, you probably have watercolor paper on your stash already. Nice and thick and takes any type of medium. Now the size is 4 ¼ x 5½ If you are a card maker you are already used into working on this size and that means that whatever I create today could be easily turned into a card front. Now there are available dies and punches to cut out those holes for the discs and you can get discs separately but in any case you don't have to bind the book the way I did. You can just cut out 4 ¼ x 5½ paper and just go for it. Now I'm going to show you a method which is really foolproof. You cannot go wrong with this method and you will end up having a little color for a lovely little booklet. For that you are going to use your watercolors or if you have any watercolor brushes they work the same. I'm going to bring in my aquaflow watercolor brushes since I haven't used them for a while and remember you can do exactly the same with your watercolors. These are just brushes that have watercolor inside the barrel. I brought out 6 colors all in rainbow order. For each and every one of the pages on our journal we are going to use just 2 of those colors in that order. So for the first one I'm going to use red and orange. For the second one I'm going to go with orange and yellow, yellow with green, green with blue and finally blue with purple. These colors work lovely together just because they are next in the color wheel so you won't end up with mud. To help the colors blend even more I'm going to start by spraying a generous amount of water on top of my page. Remember this is watercolor paper so it's going to take enough water without warping. You may see a little bit of warping in the paper but when it dries it's going to try completely flat. For the first page I'm working with red and orange and remember if you don't have watercolor brushes then you can just dip your brush into your watercolor palette. I use those just because I have them and they are quicker. I don't have to dip the brush again and again on the palette. All I have to do is to just squeeze a little bit and a lot of watercolor comes on the page. I love how the two colors bleed on one another and you can even turn your pages in different directions to help them blend. You can even add more water on top but I'm just going to leave it as it is. I think it looks just fine. I'm going to clean up my area so that I can move on to the next page while the first one is drying. For the next one I'm moving on one color in the color wheel so this time I'm going with orange and yellow and I'm repeating the exact same steps. I did spray all over the page with water and now I'm going to use the two colors just blend them on the page. You will see that my yellow is a little bit dry. I didn't have enough in the barrel but it is going to work at the end. Now you can see that these don't blend so well just because my yellow was a little bit dry that's why I will use a little bit of the water to help them blend in one another and I'm going to leave this aside to dry. Moving on to the next page again the same steps this time with yellow and green. This is a great exercise if you're just starting with arginal ink. I'm going to show you some tips and tricks on what you can do on top of those watercolor backgrounds that we are creating now and then you will end up with a colorful background booklet that is ready to go. All you need to do is to just stick a quote on top a motivational quote and a focal point and of course you can find focal points everywhere if you have already stumps you can use those if you have dyes you can die cut things and stick them there but you can always print out images from the internet cut them out and stick them there or you can even cut out images from magazines. As you move on creating those pages you will find it easier more and more and you can see here I'm creating two pages with one go. Remember for this technique to work you need to have plenty of water on your page upfront this will really help those colors blend together now we didn't like these colors so I'm going to move on on a darker shade of purple and I'm going to tilt them help them blend with water and leave them aside to dry. You can leave them aside to dry naturally if you are impatient like me you can always use your heat gun. Always remember that depending on the brand of watercolors that you are using they may end up paler than they look when they are wet. I used my Nuvo aquaflow so I know that they are going to stay nice and vibrant. So here is my booklet ready to go I didn't do the back of all the pages because the video would take forever but you can go ahead and do the back as well. Now let's do some go-to techniques on top of these watercolor pages just to add some visual texture at the background for that you can grab any stencil that you have at home if you don't have any stencils you can grab something with texture and the design for example a lace I'm spraying water over the stencil not all over the place in some areas and while the stencil is still wet I can place it on top of another page I can switch stencils just for some variation or if you just have one you can go with it all over for all the pages. You will find that this effect that we are going for is going to be more visible on top of the darker colors and this is natural so don't worry if it doesn't show too much over yellow which is going to be the case for me as well. Now use a clean paper towel and remove any excess water this is going to lift some color and you will end up with a ghost design of your stencil on top of the darker areas of your paper. You will see that on my yellow it didn't work that much but this is not really a problem I can always go back and add even more water if I want to. Now the next step is super easy just go ahead and add some white splashes or even black splashes if you like those you can even use the same color as your background the darker one for each and every one of those pages so that they blend nicely. I like to keep my backgrounds quite subtle I don't want them to be very busy because I always like to stick on top a focal point and I want that to pop. For these splashes I'm using a spray paint which is going to stay nice and vibrant and super white but you can always dilute with water gesso white gesso or even white paint and even wash. The next step is to do some stamping. For that we are going to use borders as well as patterns. I am going to demonstrate this technique with this stamp set which is new by Tonic Studios. It comes with lots of borders and patterns on top they are quite generic these designs so they are really versatile and perfect for pretty much any page. I'm going to use all of them today and there is even a giveaway on this stamp set as well as the matching ties so make sure to visit my blog to find out how you can enter the giveaway. Now I'm going to pick up different patterns and borders to stamp on top of the background making sure that every time I am using the darker color that I have on my background so here I have orange and red so I'm stamping with red. This way I'm keeping the colors to be only two again. I'm not introducing any new color and I end up having visual texture at the background without turning it into being super busy. Every time I'm going to use a different pattern from my stamp set but always using an ink that is the darker color of my paper. Now there is always a method in my madness so if you follow these tips you will end up having lovely designs no matter which stamps you decide to work with. Always remember that there is no right or wrong in our general link I am showing you just the way I am doing my pages so that you can start from somewhere and then you can build your own style. You can always go ahead and stamp with different colors you can stamp with black if you want which I'm going to demonstrate later on so you can see how that looks. Always remember this is something that you do for yourself to have fun there is no our general police so just do what makes you happy. If you are already a card maker just keep in mind that this is not about having the perfect impression on stamping. Having imperfections is just lovely when it comes to our general link actually we are after them since things are going to look quite organic at the end. So for the first pages I went quite subtle for this one I decided to go with a slightly darker shade of blue. Again without introducing any new color however I went with darker shade so you can see it is more visible here that's why the visual texture that I get is not that subtle as the first examples. Also notice that I'm not trying to get any impression of the whole stamp just bits and pieces of the stamp here and there not everywhere making sure that the finished look is going to be random and organic. That was the last page and I'm going to zoom in so you can see a close-up look on all the patterns that we created. Now the orange and yellow one was quite subtle you cannot really see that texture at the background that's why in this example I'm going to go with black and I'm going to stamp one of the patterns included in the same stamp set using black archival ink and you see this looks equally beautiful as the other background so there is no right or wrong in our general link just do whatever makes you happy and let's take a quick look on the other backgrounds here is the yellow and green one this is the green and bluish and this is the last one with the purple. The plan for this video is to just create the backgrounds and stop here however I couldn't stop myself and I had to turn two of those backgrounds into art journals. One way you can go with those art journal backgrounds is to use dyes to demonstrate today I'm going to use this dye set which is the matching one with the stamp set that you saw before with all those backgrounds and borders you can use a dye on top of your paper and run it through your dye cutting machine to create different patterns and little windows just to add something extra and fun on a page this way you will be able to look through to the next page. Another way to use the dyes to dye cut different elements and stick them on top which is something that I'm going to do for the other page that I'm working on so for this one I decided to go with this large one which I'm going to dye cut and stick on top at this stage I don't even know what I want to do for each and every one of those pages I'm just playing here creating backgrounds that I like and it turns out that on my yellow green page I do have a theme I'm working with hexagons there so here you can see I did all the dye cutting I'm using again white watercolor paper for all the dye cuts and I decided that for the first page I can go with something simple just create a flower there if you have stamps you can stamp it cut it out and stick it there you can always print out a flower stick it there or cut it out from a magazine I'm going to create my own focal point so I do have a circle this is a watercolor circle watercolor paper and again I used my watercolors to add a couple of colors there yellow and orange orange only on one side and I helped those colors to blend together on one another by spraying water directly on top I'm not going to fuss around with that at all I'm just going to leave it aside to dry and I'm going to move on and color that border that I did for the other page now my uh black watercolor brush is quite dry so I'm going to bring in another one that I have again use your watercolors with a simple brush notice that I'm not covering everything with my brush and I'm going to spray water on top just because I want to have the same look and feel as my backgrounds this way I will end up having some variation on the color nothing is going to turn out super black all over and variation really helps in our general link it makes elements not look super flat which adds lots of interest that's what I'm doing here for those hexagons and I'm going to spray water on top to help them blend and now let's work on the first page and make a focal point for that now I do have this circle which is going to be the center of my flower and I'm going to create a daisy so I'm going to draw the first petal so you can see about which shape I'm going to cut out again working on watercolor paper I'm going to fuzzy cut that and then I will go ahead and cut out even more petals I'm not going to draw all the petals I can do that nothing has to be perfect after all this is an art journal remember just cut out as many petals as you need to go all around that circle you can always create a template and draw all the petals if you like so that they are identical I don't like to have identical I like them to be more organic like that so that's the style I'm going for I use my nouveau deluxe glue to secure all the petals at the back then I'm going to place my daisy on top of my background to decide where I want this to go top bottom left right whatever works fine if you have some petals coming out of the page it's okay this is an art journal it's fun to have elements going out of the page but you can always use your scissors and trim them out if this is a card for example you can always trim it out to fit inside an envelope you can draw your own stem or cut out a thin strip of green cardstock I decided to go with the stamp that was included in the porters and backgrounds that you show me used before and I'm going to color every other one of those little areas black and the ones in between with white now I'm going to use my white gel pen and you may find that white gel pen reacts a little bit with the color underneath so it's not going to stay super vibrant and white however you can use a post cap pen if you have or any other paint marker or even go with gesso on all these areas if you want to have that super bright I'm also going to bring the pattern of the stem on a couple of edges just to bring everything together and again I will color it the same way black and white I can have some dimension on this page since this is going to go inside the discbound journal and even if this is a card front you can add some foam tape at the back of the flower just to pop it on top of your card on all my art journals I like to have a motivational quote which is uplifting so it makes my day when I see the page for this one I'm going to cut out the word love again the die comes from the same die set that I used before I'm not going to use black cardstock I'm using only the same techniques from the beginning so here I'm working with black watercolor on top of watercolor paper I'm going to spray to help it blend and have some variation on the color and after this is completely dry I'm going to cut out the word love of course if you want to add your motivational quote you can print it out and cut it out and stick it on top of your background you can even write if you love your handwriting or even you can stamp if you have a quote that you love in my case I'm going to compile the word love with a sticker this is a booklet with lots and lots of quotes by Tim Holtz I'm going to use one phrase that includes the word love which I'm going to replace with the die cut love that I have on my page already I like those stickers because they are quite forgiving you can always lift them and move them around until you're happy with their placement and I always like to add a dub of glue at the back just to make sure that they are going to stay put later on I'm using my black pen to draw some lines around the stickers helps them pop against the background and you can call this page done one of the hardest things to do in our general link is to know where to stop so here I don't know where to stop I'm just going to go and add more doodling around the petals that I created which I think binds it better with the rest of the look and feel of my page one of my favorite finishing touches is to add some highlights here and there and you can see here some close-up photos on the finished layout and of course this can be an art journal or a mixed media card since it's exactly four and a quarter by five and a half don't punch out the holes and just stick it on top of a standard card base and now let's work on the green and yellow background and finish it off For that I did cut out this border with my dies I'm going to stick it down and remember I did color it with black watercolor and then on top I'm going to stick those hexagons I like to work in odd numbers that's why I decided to go only with three of them and I'm not going to cover up all the hexagons on my page but I didn't want to leave that black space empty that's why I decided to go with flowers I used a basic flower die that I hide in my stash you can always draw your own flowers and cut them out fuzzy cut them with your scissors let's just like I did with the first page and now here is how my pages evolve just because I have that black border on my page I just wanted to have a little black on the edges as well just to balance that out that's why I'm using again one of the border stamps that I had been using for the background and I'm going all around that here I'm using nouveau drops to add the centers on my flowers and of course this should be the last step since from now on I have to be super careful not to touch that center but anyway I'm still not happy with how this looks so I'm bringing in a white pen this is a paint pen I'm going to color in some of the areas in the border and then not happy again so I'm bringing in one of my text stamps so that I can stamp here and there and I think that looks better now now just because I am working with hexagons the next idea that came in my mind was to use a B and you probably have a B stamp on your arsenal I do but instead just because I promised I will create my own focal points I'm going to draw one so you can see how easy it is and nothing has to be perfect again I'm working on watercolor paper I'm drawing a novel with my pencil and then on one side I'm going to draw a triangle then draw two droplets which are going to be the wings later on so I'm going to draw how this is going to show but I'm going to color it in later on with my watercolors use your scissors to fuzzy cut all those elements and then use your eraser to make sure that you don't have any pencil lines now I'm just going to use a black marker to draw in all the details on my B super simple and quick no need to leave space white space for the eye I'm going to add the eye later on by using nouveau drops I'm going around my focal point with a black marker to get rid of that white edge and now it's time to add some color on the B and the wings again by using my watercolors these are my aquaflux brushes for the wings I added a touch of blue on one side of them and just sprayed with water to help it blend out for the B I did use orange and blend it with yellow if you like projects like the one that I'm creating today where I make backgrounds and then create my own focal points let me know in the comments below I can always make a second part for this video for the next three pages that I haven't shared today and I can even share on future videos even more 101 art journal link with methods step by step that you can easily follow again for my focal point I'm going with foam tape at the back to add some dimension I'm using white nouveau drops to give an eye on my B you can always use your gel pen I'm also going to draw a couple of antennas and now with my pencil I'm going to draw a swirl as if it is the trail of the B and then with my black pen I'm going to draw some dots I will leave those to dry and then later on I will use my eraser to erase completely that pencil line and since I'm using today only one stamp set and one die set I'm going to bring this one again and there is the word you that you can cut out which again I'm going to combine with one of my stickers so I'm going to look for a sticker that has a motivational quote an uplifting one that includes the word you and I'm going to replace that small you the printed one with the big you that I have died cut I picked a sticker that says you can never have too much happy I'm always using uplifting messages on my art journal pages and again I'm going to add some glue at the back just to make sure that this is going to stay put I did add some highlights with my white gel pen I'm also going to draw some lines sketch lines around my quote and I'm going to call this page done I'm so happy with that page I absolutely love that B that I created I think it looks super adorable and here are both the pages that I created for today I hope you will try this method to create colorful backgrounds with just two watercolors you will have lots of fun let me know in the comments below if that video was helpful for you and if you want to see more videos like this one using basic supplies and drawing your own focal points if you did enjoy the video don't forget to like and leave me a comment down below as well as share it with your friends don't forget that tonic studios is giving away this stamp set and the die set make sure to visit my blog to find out how you can enter the giveaway you will find links down below on everything I used I hope that you had fun today that you got inspired thank you all so much for joining me today and I'll see you all next time