 Hi everyone and welcome back! Today I'm going to share a new page for my yearly project which I have called a year in flowers and Altenew has just released a new stamp set which is called Japanese Mooms these are chrysanthemums and they are absolutely gorgeous there is a die set that you can use if you want to and as you can see there are four different layers on this stamp as well as leaves and a few sentiments all Altenew stamps now come with a leaflet at the back you will find the guide on how you can put those stamps one on top of the other and on the inside you will find some inspiration on how you can put some cards together but these are not just for cards today I'm going to use these flowers to create a lovely art journal page now you can use only the outline and color it in with your favorite medium or you can use the outline along with all the layers I'm going to show you before I start with my page just an example of how you can get different looks so here I'm not using the first layer which is the outline I'm only going to use the three next layers one on top of the other and every time I will use slightly darker ink all the layers are going to add lots of depth on the flower and I will end up with that uh no line coloring look now if you are wondering why I'm switching from one stamping platform to another I just use all of them and I place one layer on each one of the stamping platforms this way I can create lots and lots of these flowers switching to different inks without having to move anything but keep in mind you don't need a stamping platform to do that you can just align them and stamp them with your stamping block now look how gorgeous this one looks however I'm not going to use it today I will go for a more artistic approach and I'll show you another way of using this stamp set so I'm going to stamp the flower on top of watercolor paper that's why I have to stamp it a couple of times just to get a good impression and I did stamp three of those flowers as well as lots of leaves I am coloring my images with my Altenew watercolor brushes here I'm using two shades of green and remember I'm working on watercolor paper so it is really easy for me to move those colors around I will continue coloring the leaves in the same manner so first with a lighter color then adding a little bit of the darker shade and I'm going to blend them together sometimes I even grab my watercolor brush that has only water inside and I will continue with the rest of the leaves now I'm going to use two different ways to color the flowers first I'm going to show you the slow one so here I'm using two shades one yellow and one light orange to color all the little petals I'm going petal by petal every time I apply the lighter color and then at the base of each petal I'm adding a little bit of shading with the the darker one although it is a little bit time consuming you will end up with a beautiful result which is going to look nice and neat now I'm going to show you another way which is the super quick way you will end up with a more archy look and at the same time you will get a beautiful result this is the outcome of this second technique I am going to put this to side and let you know how I did it so I stamped first the outline of the flower and now almost on big platform I have the third layer so not the solid one the one after that and I'm going to go over it with my watercolor brushes I'm sparing it once with water and now I'm going to close the door of my misty again I'm working on watercolor paper and this is very important for this technique to work so now I will grab my water brush and I'm helping the color move along the petal I'm making sure that I don't touch the tip of the petal this way I have some highlights here and there the fun part about this technique is that you get all that color variation by using just one watercolor brush so I just wanted to share a few techniques on how you can work with those layering stamp sets you don't need to use all the layers at once you can do that you can omit some of them you can use just the outline so many different looks that you can get just from one stamp set so by using these techniques I have three of my chrysanthemums ready to go you can also use the matching die to cut them out but you will end up with a white border all around them I didn't want to have that sticker look for my art journal today so I decided to do it the hard way and I'm going all around the petals with my scissors now my little flower journal has only one page for now but I'm hoping that by the end of the year it's going to be filled with flowers and that's why I'm calling this project a year in flowers now for my background I'm going to use my new distressed oxide sprays and I'm using two colors remember you need to shake them well before you use them this is really important to help the pigment and the dye mix inside the bottle my page is a six by six page that I created for my own discbound journal and it is a heavy watercolor paper so I'm spraying with my colors and the ones that I'm using are faded jeans and wilted violet you can apply water if you want in the beginning on your paper before you apply the sprays and this way you will get more of a watercolor wash look however I went directly with the sprays on my paper and since this is distressed oxide spray you will see that it's going to fade out slightly as it dries and now I'm going to apply some water to help the ink react and create that beautiful chalky finish and I'm going to continue playing with my background adding splashes with water or splashes from the sprays themselves I'm also going to do some stenciling and for that again I'm using the same colors that I used for the background I'm not introducing any new color I'm going to leave this to dry and I'm going to stop playing with the background because I can go on and on with that forever so now I have this piece of a scrap paper and I'm going to cover it up with this beautiful white washy tape it has that lovely color as well as a detail of gold on top of it and at the back I'm going to draw some lines I'm going to cut them with scissors and this is supposed to be a vase for my flowers the fun part about creating my own vase is that I can make it as big or as small as I want to and just because I have black lines all around my flower I need things to be too much so I'm going to use a black marker around my vase to give it a black line now one thing that brings all the elements that you create together is if they have a touch of the same tint on top of them so that's what I'm going to do now I'm using Distress Oxide ink and that's a vintage photo I will go around the leaves the flowers as well as the vase this way they are going to look as if they are part of the same image although I created them completely differently and with different techniques before I stick everything down I'm going to give my page a little black border this is going to help the center to pop even more and it's going to give a nice frame and a finished look on my page I am coloring my frame with a black marker this is a big brush marker by Faber Castel but you can easily do that by using your black acrylic paints I'm also using my PBO white acrylic marker and I'm going all around the frame just to add a touch of highlight there and now finally it's time to put everything together I am playing around a little bit with my flowers and the leaves try to decide where I want everything to go and then I'm going to stick everything down for some of the flowers I will go directly with glue while for other cutouts I'm going to use foam scores at the back to add some dimension I love dimensions on my projects and especially when you are not working on a book with a spine and you work on a discbound journal you do have some freedom in terms of dimension and you remember you can always use bigger discs for your discbound journal to accommodate the bulk now if you haven't seen the first page of my here in flowers journal you will find it linked at the end of this video the idea here is to create a dictionary of flowers all the way from A to Z so just like I did for my first page I print it out on my computer this is just a printer paper there I print it out a definition of Japanese chrysanthemums and in this art journal I want to be consistent so you can see that in the first page I do have the definition of the flowers which I'm going to continue throughout the whole book I inked up the edges of this piece of paper with a vintage photo which is the same color that I added a touch of it on all the cutouts now before I stick that piece on top of my page I decided to add a few more splashes of gold since I have that gold detail on the vase this is going to bring everything together and it's going to give a more finished look on my page the spray I'm using is anti gold by Altenew and although it looks orange at the moment you will see that once this is dry it's going to look shiny and really gold and since I'm trying to create a large journal which is an alphabet of flowers I cut out the letters H and J I used the classic alphabet die for that they have big beautiful letters and I'm going to use those letters throughout the pages so for today's page I'm going with J since I'm working with Japanese moms now here I just came up with an idea to cut out one more J out of gold cardstock so that I can layer them offset slightly offset one on top of the other and end up with a little bit of shadow now I'm not sure if by the end of the year I'm going to make it to have one page for every letter but the truth is that this is such a fun project I'm having so much fun creating those pages and I can't wait to work on another letter and I love that it is a great way to use the stamps that I have been collecting throughout the years especially from the build a flower collection where you know exactly which flower it is and since I had this idea of adding the letter on each and every page I need to add the H on the other page that I created with the hyacinths I'm going to put my book back together and I will not worry about the back of the pages for now so I'm really happy with the outcome I hope you had fun that you got inspired here are some close-up photos on today's project and this is actually part of a blog hope make sure to visit my blog you will find all the details there about the blog hope and the giveaways thank you all so much for watching and I'll see you all next week have a lovely weekend