 Hi and welcome! Just like I promised, today I'm back with a mixed media project. This time I'm working on my art journal using lots of mixed media techniques but you can easily recreate this project into a canvas. If you follow me for a while you probably know my ongoing project that never finished. It is my art journal full of flowers. I wanted to create an art journal that has the alphabet and I have one flower for every letter. I do have some of the letters done and there are videos for each and every one of those pages. Today I'm going to create one more page for the letter S and I do have some dice that create snowdrops which are absolutely adorable flowers. Now I am going to create a page which is 6x6. This is a disc pound journal that I make on my own. I used big discs for that and I can add many more pages depending of course on the thickness and the embellishments that I decide to add. I will probably have to make a second one if I want to make all the letters but that's not a problem for me. So I'm using this watercolor paper to cut out a 6x6 page. This is by an Arteza premium watercolor paper pad which I absolutely love because it is nice and thick and it takes water and other mediums nicely. Now just because I'm too lazy to bring in my other paper trimmer I find that this one is perfect for cutting out 6x6 especially if you take out that plastic guard. I'm starting with one of my favorite and go to techniques which is stenciling with some paste. I'm using a bossing paste here but of course you can go with modeling paste, you can go with even your Jesu whatever works here. I just want to add some interest on the background. I'm using a very basic stencil with lots of dots. This is one of those stencils that you can use for pretty much every project and I'm going to add some stenciling in different parts of my background page making sure that I don't cover it up completely and I don't end up having squares or rectangles. I just want to have that looking quite organic. Now the paste is completely dry now and I forgot to punch the holes for my Dixbound journal in the beginning. If you don't want to do that you don't have to, you can leave the paper as it is so that you can frame it if you like. I'm going to play with sprays for the background and I will be using my dilution sprays because I love how vibrant they come out and I haven't used them for a long long time so I was hoping that they weren't clogged and I didn't have to go to the sink and wash that nozzle. However as you can see the yellow one was a little bit clogged so I'm just going to use it with a brush. Now if you go and wash the nozzles you will find that they will start working again but that's not a problem we can all just dip a brush like I'm doing here. Also I wanted to let you know that you can get similar looks with those sprays if you just work with your watercolors. I'm applying the color wherever I want to go and then I'm going to help that with water, lots of water and you will see that although I'm using so much spray and water on the paper and although it is warped the moment it will end up completely flat at the end. I chose to go with oranges and yellows for my background because I am planning to add flowers on top that are white so I know that they are going to stand out nicely on top of that. I could go with any color except from green because I am going to use green for the stems and the leaves. That's how pretty much how I work when it comes to colors I decide which my focal point is going to be and then I use a contrasting color for the background. I always like the backgrounds also to be quite subtle so I don't want to have things going on back there to be super busy and still the thunder of the focal point that's why I like to keep only a few colors for the background that mix nicely together. Here I did add some splashes with water this is going to react with dilution sprays and I can lift some color to get those white spots like a ghost effect and then I can add some splashes with the same orange color that I used. By the way the two colors I used from the dilutions line were lemon zest and squeezed orange. Here is a close-up look of what I have up to now. I do love creating vintage projects but from time to time I like to create something super happy and vibrant and that's what I'm going for today. I'm using spray paint to add some splashes of course you can do that with some gesso or white paint. I just want to make sure that these splashes are going to stay nice and white and they're not going to react with the ink that is underneath. Another of my go-to techniques is to stamp on the background. For that I'm going to go with a color which is slightly darker than the orange that I have there already and that's orange blossom by archival ink. I am going to stamp with a text stamp in different parts of the background. I like that you can totally see the added visual texture there but it is not super vibrant as if I did that with black ink. This way it blends better with the background and it's not looking too busy. I want to get rid of that white edge so I'm going to rub that ink pad all around the edges just to make sure that this doesn't show up at all and I would probably go with my vintage photo and a little bit of black shoot if I wanted to turn this into a vintage looking project. However I'm going to stop myself here and I'm not going to do that as I'm going for something really vibrant. I want to have a darker edge on one side that's why I'm going to bring some distressed ink and not the oxide ones because I want that to go quite vibrant on top of my paper. For that I'm going with a rusty hinge and you can see how lovely it saturates the color on that side. That's the spot where I have in my mind that I'm going to stick the leaves and the flowers later on and I wanted to have more of a contrast there. I'm happy with my background I'm going to put it aside and work on the focal points. Now for them I have this Altenew Dyset which creates those snow drops. The moment I saw this Dyset I knew this was something that had to go on my Flower Art Journal book. Now to maintain the same look and feel I'm going to create my own green paper. So again I will be working on this Arteza watercolor paper and I'm going to spray two shades of green on top of this paper. Again I'm going with my dilution sprays and the ones that I'm using here are fresh lime and cut grass and of course because I haven't used those again for a long long time maybe more than a year one of them is clogged. Again this is not an issue for me I can always wash the nozzle with warm water at the sink but just because I was too lazy now again I'm going to dip my big brush there and just apply the color directly on top. Again you can do something similar with your watercolors but the fun fact about working with Dilution's ink spray is that they end up being quite vibrant even when they dry which is not the case with all watercolors. And now of course I can use the dies on top of the paper that I created. You can see I have a lot of variation and as I die cut bits and pieces nothing is going to look super flat with just one color on top. I'm going to place the stems and the leaves there I'm going to cut out a bunch of them because I don't know how many I want to use on my Feyman page and I'm also going to cut out the petals out of white watercolor paper again so that the texture of the paper matches throughout the project. I have here all the pieces that I need the stems the leaves little bits and pieces for the petals and if you look at the snow drops you will find that they actually have two petals and a little shaped heart at the center however I'm going to stick more of them I'm not going for a very realistic look here but I want the flowers to look quite full that's why I'm going to stick more one on top of the other and you can see that the ones that are going at the back I did use my finger dabber and added a little bit of shadow with pale green by sticking one paper on top of another you do get some dimension with all those layers however if you add a little bit of shading on the bottom parts of the flower it is going to look even more dimensional. I'm going to repeat the same process that I did for the first flower I create even more and I can create different sizes of flowers with these dies which is better for the finished look you don't want all the flowers to look identical and now finally it's time to stick everything down for that I'm using my trusted nuvo del lux glue and as I'm putting everything together I want to talk a little bit about my mixed media Tuesdays so I'm planning to post our journals in a book or in a discbound journal like I'm doing today I will post more 3d projects as well as mixed media canvases and if you want me to use a specific brand or a specific project that you want to see it in action let me know in the comments below I always make notes of what you want to see so that I can come back to it some point and use it in my future videos just keep in mind that I do have so many ideas on what I want to do in the future but due to covid products don't arrive as soon as I want them there are huge delays but I know that this is a generic thing and we are all in the same boat here I have all the leaves and stems in place I'm using my scissors to cut off the excess and then I'm ready to stick the flowers on top snow drop flowers are always facing down and that's how I'm going to stick them here and I went with five flowers just because I like odd numbers they are always more pleasing to the eye and you can see here how lovely these white flowers pop against that yellow orange background now I'm going to do some highlighting one of my favorite techniques I'm using my white gel pen here and I'm going to add highlights on all the stems and leaves you also need to make sure that all these stems and the leaves are completely dry otherwise your gel pen is not going to write on top I am not pressing too hard I'm just gliding the pen on top of that since I don't want to have super harsh white lines but at the same time I want to have that highlight it really makes a difference and it helps them and separates them somehow from one another since I have green on top of green now I'm going to use this corrugated cardstock to stick it down and create kind of an area where I can nest on top the letter as well as some info that I always like to stick on these pages of my flower pages that have to do with the flower that I'm working on now I will go and do some dry brushing just by using my fingers and a dot of jesso white jesso I'm going over the corrugated cardstock which is going to give a lovely look and feel it's going to bring out all those mountains for this journal after a few experiments in the first pages I decided to use always the classic alpha petai and I cut the letter s out of black cardstock I am playing a little bit with a washi tape here which I'm not going to use at the end and then for all those flower pages I always go to wikipedia and print out a couple of phrases for the flower that I'm working on you can always use your printer to do that I find it quicker and easier for me to just use my label maker and then I can just cut out the phrases separate them and stick them down I'm also going to use my black pen and draw some lines around them and I'm going to leave it as it is I'm super happy with the outcome I'm just going to put it back in my journal and I get a lot of questions on what I'm planning to do on the back of the paper I am not bothered at all with the back even if it is quite dirty but maybe when I finish the pages I may just use my black jesso and color them completely at the back we'll see and here are some closer photos on the project that I made for today I hope that you had fun that you got inspired you will find the full list of all the products that I use down below in the description area don't forget to like the video and leave me a comment it really helps and it lets me know that you like the video and you want to see more thank you all for joining me today and I'll see you all next time