 Hi, it's Vicky here and welcome back to another art journal video. Today I'm going to play all my dilutions art journal and I get a lot of questions about that. I don't stick two pages together and I work back to back. The pages are exceptional, they are quite thick and they take nicely the mediums that I am using. And for my background today I am planning to work with my oxide sprays again. I just grab these lately a lot. I find that I make really quick and easy backgrounds and in my mind today I have this dye. This is a big dye designed by Tim Holtz, it is called Baggage Clay and it is one of those thick dyes which means that you can use other materials, thicker materials, than just paper to cut it out. Now the new Distress color is coming up in a few days but before this is released I decided to experiment a little bit more with the previous one. So for today I am going to combine speckled egg with old paper. I just want to see how these two colors combined together are going to look. I am going for a very subtle background today. I always like to prime my pages before spraying with water and I am not applying too much of that water. I also need to add something to protect the page at the back. So I am just going to use a paper towel there and I am going to continue with speckled egg. I love the outcome, it was just what I was going for, very subtle. I am going to speed up the drying process and now once everything is dry I can play with my go-to techniques. So first I am doing stamping, this time I am stamping with Jet Black archival ink. This is something I don't usually do but notice that I am not pressing the stamp too much so that I don't get a very vibrant outcome. I am also going to use one of my favorite stencils. This is a favorite by Tim Holtz. I am going to spray by using speckled egg, not introducing any new colors, just like always. So this is going to make sure that I keep the background subtle. And if you follow my art journal adventures you know what's coming. I am going to ink up the edges first with vintage photo just because I love that vintage vibe that it gives on my pages. And then all the way to the edge I am going to use black soot just to darken them up a little bit more. Another one of my go-to techniques is to use a stamp that has some text and to go all around the edges. This adds a lovely frame. For that I am using Jet Black archival ink and a text stamp that I don't even notice if I am stamping upside down. I just want to have some black text over there. It doesn't matter if it is readable. To make that frame even more interesting I am going to switch to another stamp. This is a round one. And I am also going to switch to a bigger font. Finally I need to add some splashes before I say that my background is ready. So I am going to use a little bit of black soot diluted with water and just add the splashes there. And before I leave this journal aside to dry I am going to show you the difference between this color combo which is speckled egg and old paper. And the previous one where I used speckled egg. But with vintage photo you see the difference. So these are both sprays and I did make another art journal where I did use speckled egg but this one is from the ink pad. So you see even if you have limited colors in your stash just combine them differently and you will get completely different looks. Now it's time to play with my focal points and I am going to cut out all those shoot cases. I absolutely love the color combo on the packaging and I am not going to be creative I am just going to follow that same color combo. So in my dimholds pad I am looking to find similar colored cardstock for all 3 of them and for each one of those shoot cases there are 2 parts where you stack one on top of the other. This creates kind of a dimension. And there are also little bits and pieces that you can use to decorate them like the handles or buckles and little corners, stuff like that. So you see on the right I have plenty of all those elements, way more than I need but the fun part about using scissor big dies is that you can add lots of layers of cardstock and it cuts out through them beautifully like butter so you don't have to run it again and again. Now I did cut out some of the little elements out of black cardstock and the rest out of gold cardstock just to add a touch of extra shine. I am inking up all the pieces all around this is going to help when I stick one layer on top of the other to show even more you can see the shadow there and you can tell that there is a second layer. I am going to do the same thing for all 3 of the shoot cases and then I am going to play and decide how I am going to decorate them. There are also a few buckles with a slit so you can thread through the little long strips of paper so you have a little belt there. I absolutely love playing with die cuts and this process is really satisfying for me. The good thing is that I do have that embellishing wand which is really helpful when it comes to picking up all those tiny little pieces. If you notice I am not sticking anything down, I am just playing with the little pieces, decide where everything is going to go and once I am happy I am going to stick them down. And with the magic of video editing here are my shoot cases, all ready to go, I absolutely love them, I think they are super adorable and I love that touch of gold they have on top of them. And this is where I decided that I wanted to add something extra and as I was looking through my stash I found this older die by C6, I have never used this one before and it is absolutely stunning, look at all that detail so I am really happy that I found a way to incorporate it in my art journal. Now I am going to cut it out in two parts making sure that I am not going to cut it in the middle. So this is going to look more interesting, the plan is to have this globe across the two pages but not in the middle, I don't like sticking things centered. So for the back I am using my mat medium and I am going to stick that on one page and I am being very careful here making sure that I don't make a big mess with my mat medium because mat medium may react with the ink that I have underneath. I did the same thing with the other part of the globe and I did place it close together so that I look at a continuous piece but it is going to allow my page to open and close with no problem at all. I am sticking down the suitcases one on top of the other and they do touch the globe so this way I have a continuous cluster at the middle of my page. Now just because I don't like this to look as if it is floating I am somehow going to ground it by using washi tape. So I have a few tapes of washi tape which I am going to stick underneath and if you want to make sure that these are not going to peel off if your washi tape is not very sticky always make sure that you add a line of glue underneath. Now just to make sure that once I open and close the book again and again this washi tape is not going to stick out I am using my craft knife to cut it at the center. It looks continuous but it's actually not. For my motivational quote today I am going with life is a journey make the most out of it and I am an alphabet stamp collector I absolutely love alphabet stamps. So here I am going to stamp the word journey using my MegaBrassAlpha stamp set by Altenew. This is a great big scripty stamp set which is going to help your titles really pop. I like to combine different phones so for example I like to use big letters for the main word in my motivational code and for the rest I am going to use my label maker and print out the rest of the code and just stick it down. Using my label maker for phrases like this is quick and simple but of course you can print them out. Notice that my cluster of focal points is across the two pages and that's the same thing with the word journey. I also stick down the two phrases on one page and on the other. I'm also using my white gel pen to add some highlights on the word journey. I did add some black lines around the two stickers and I stamped the date. Here are some close-up photos on the finished project. As always you will find a list of all the supplies that I used down below in the description area. I hope that you had fun today that you got inspired. Don't forget to like the video and leave me a comment and thank you all so much for watching.