 Hi everyone and welcome back, it's Vicky here and today we are going to create a really colorful and fun art journal as you can see here, but first we are going to take a close-up look on a new art journal collection by Art by Marlene, now before I start I need to let you all know that this is not a sponsored video, I wasn't paid to do this, Marlene is a friend of mine however and she sent me the whole collection, so you will take a close-up look on all the products in this video and hopefully you will decide which art must have for you, you will find links to everything down below in the description area, so first let's start with a new art journal book, this is quite big, for my European friends this is an A4 journal and for the US friends it is about a letter-sized journal, the cover is a faux leather, it is quite thick but flexible and as you can see it has an airing binding system which is going to allow you to take out any page you like to work with and it also comes with a zip lock bag as you can see here where you can place inside your stencils, your collage papers, little elements that probably you want to use on your pages and so on, now the airing binding system gives you the freedom of working on a page outside of this book so you can place it on your stamping platform to get a good stamping impression, you can of course use it with so many different techniques such as on your jelly plate there are actually 50 different pages in this book which are a lot and it is watercolor paper, it's not very thick but it is designed to work with lots of water on top of it, of course with acrylic paints, with your rings, anything you really like and you will find that just because it is of this great quality is going to stay flat and of course there is a lovely elastic band on the outside to put everything together, now let's take a close-up look on some of the stamps so these are four stamps from the same range as you can see they are quite big they are about four inches in diameter, you can use them for your backgrounds but of course you can use them as your focal points, I am going to take one of those out of the packet so you can see how big it is the grit on my mat is actually inches and I am actually going to use one of those stamps as a background element on the page that I will be creating in a bit and I have to say that this flower is just gorgeous, probably my favorite from all four of these stamps, however I will be using the one on the left on your screen here in the page that I will be creating later on, now let's take a close-up look on some of the background stamps, these are big they are about five and a half by five and a half inches which means that they are easy to use to cover up your backgrounds no matter how big of a page you are working on, now there is the one with the circles this is one with the scribbles and again you will find links to everything I'm showing you down below if you like something and I will make sure to leave links to both UK and US shops so you can easily find everything this one with a geometric design and the last one is the one with the leaves which is slightly smaller than the rest of them you can always use parts of them only on the edges to create lovely borders so many different ways to use those now let's move on to something really unique yeah I'm sure you will love those these are the chubby cheeks there are four stamps of them and I'm sure you will find all four of these ladies adorable they have that quick design of Marlene this one is has her hands up which means that you can play around a lot with that you can give her things to hold and of course you don't have to use her as she is with her swimming suit you can dress her up if you like give her clothes with beautiful pattern papers and collage there are four of these ladies and this one is wearing a dress and she is also holding a bunch of flowers he has her hair up but again if you just buy one of those ladies only one be creative you can use her in so many different ways you can dress her up with a longer skirt you can turn her hair by coloring without your acrylic markers into long hair now this one is swimming and this is a great idea that if you buy one of the other ladies remember you can do that as well just chop her off and put her inside the water so many different ways to use those and here is the last one of the four ladies this is actually the one that I will be using today on my Argerna I love her hair and I love the fact that she has wings and again you can be creative with this lady as well you can place here inside water you can make her fly along your page and at the back you can see all four of these ladies all colored so you can get inspired and now let's move on to something else now Maril has come up with two blocks of collage papers there are ten different designs in each one of those blocks all colorful all beautiful and you get two of those designs in each block now I'm going to browse through all of them so you can see all the designs the paper is very thin which means that it is great to stick on top of your Argenal pages with mat medium I will be using actually this beautiful background paper for my page today now of course remember that you don't have to use the collage paper as it is just cut out elements from the papers that you like most and put everything together on your page now this is a black and white one you can color it with your favorite colors and turn it your own and this is a great example on how you can use these stamps just place them all together for a beautiful background here's another colorful one and again you can cut out just the flower and place it as a focal point on one of your pages so many different ideas this is a lovely one for underwater scenes just beautiful I think I will be using this next another black and white one that you can color with your favorite colors another beautiful colorful background these are great for beginners also because you can just stick one of those down and you have already something on your paper and this collage paper gives you another inspiration on how you can use these beautiful flower stamps just stamp them all over the place and color them with beautiful bright colors to get the similar look and here is the last one of the designs again you can just cut out the leaves and use them as your focal points on your paper you don't have to use them as they are just think more creative with those collage papers and here's the second block now again you get two designs from each and I'm just going to browse it quickly for you so you can see all the ten designs close up and to tell you the truth these look as really finished beautiful original pages without you having to do anything on top of them so that was a close-up on all the designs and you will see later how I'm going to use one of those collage papers now let's move on to some fun products these are actually elements that you can pop out of these pages and stick them on your layouts these are called die-cut blocks and again you will find those quirky lovely designs by Marlene and you get flowers wings little shapes ladies when you pop out all of these elements they have a white border around them but you can always use them as they are or you can use your scissors to cut out the white border if you want to incorporate them on your page better I am going to do both techniques on the page later today so you will see how I put everything together you can see that you get faces glasses eyes trees birds so many different designs here they have there are actually two different books with these elements and each one of those books has 20 different pages in it which means that you will end up having tons of these elements to use on your pages again these are great for beginners because you can just use elements from here and there and collage them on your pages to create beautiful designs in minutes and also notice that you get quotes for your pages as well and these were all the products that came in my box lots of fun so now I'm going to put some of them together just to inspire you and show you how I can create something unique now I'm going to start with a collage paper and one of my favorites is this one so I'm going to use my mat medium and stick it on top of my page by the way I'm not using the art by Marlene journal to work with just because I'm trying to finish an 8x8 art journal now so I decided to go with that I applied a thin coat of mat medium on my page then stuck my tissue paper on top and then I'm going to completely cover it up with mat medium just to make sure that everything is nice and stuck there now I'm also going to use my scissors when everything is dry to chop off the excess now I'm going to use the punch to put back those holes on my page since this is actually a page from my disc bound journal and you see I ended up having a beautiful background in no time now I'm going to do some stamping I will use one of the chubby chick ladies and I'm going to stamp here on mixed media paper I'm using my stamping platform to get a great impression and as you can see I will not bother to stamp her all together for what I have in my mind I just want to use the top part of her and just because I am planning to use my watercolors to add color I will stamp everything with my black archive valing which turns permanent and it's not going to smudge for coloring here I'm going to use my watercolor pens just in colors that match pretty much the colors of the background and just because I have there a look and feel of watercoloring I want to keep this look so everything looks nice and consistent on my finished page the pens that I'm using are actually the aquaflow pens by Novo by tonic studios they have a real brush and they are really easy to work with these are actually watercolor pens but of course you can use your favorite coloring medium to color in your chubby cheeks after coloring here I am going to use my scissors to fuzzy cut her so I can pop her on my page now I'm going to put on some music so you can see how I colored her and I will cut you back when everything is ready okay now I have my lady done she's ready and colored now I'm going to use one of those big stamps and I'm going to stamp with black ink on top of my page so for getting a good impression I am using again my stamping platform and I'm going to stamp with black archival ink and the idea behind of what I'm doing is that I want to have this chubby cheek lady to pick the focal point on my page and I'm trying to create a little window there where I can pop her in now I'm going to use my craft knife to create an opening there and then with my scissors I'm going to go all around and create a little window I don't want this to be perfect nothing in this page is perfect it is it has that watercolor vibe to it and I deliberately didn't color my girl to be super perfect as well with all those perfect shadows and such so everything pretty much is goes nicely together so I didn't use my die to cut it out completely and perfectly so I don't have the perfect circle there just like the rest of my stamp now I'm going to use a black marker I'm going to go all around that circle that opening just to get rid of that white edge now my girl is supposed to go inside that window and coming out from it and I want to find a contrasting background for her so I will go with that yellow tulip there which I think goes nicely there and you can see how I mix and match different tissue papers and you don't really need to use the whole paper as it is just cut out parts of it and make them your own be creative so all I'm going to do is to just cut out a piece of that I'm going to stick it on top of my back there this is just a circle that I have cut out which is larger than the opening on my actual page so it is going to cover up the back and it's going to look nice and sturdy and also notice that I can stick this tissue paper with white glue this is nouveau del luxe and it works great and of course you can use your mat medium as I did on the main page so lots of ways to work with this tissue paper now I'm going to place this at the back and I don't know if you noticed but the glue is all the way at the outside of my backing so I will be able to still nest inside this little lady without any problems at the bottom of my lady I have glue but at the top I have some foam squares which is going to help her pop on my page so I get a little bit of dimension and I'm going to curl up her wings it is really difficult to catch the dimension that I have on my page right now but it looks awesome in real life and I just love all the colorful background now I'm going to use the same stamp again I'm going to stamp out two more times around my paper and notice that this time I'm not using my stamping platform because I really don't care for the perfect impression these are not going to be my focal points and now I am browsing through my die-cut blocks and I'm just picking out different elements mainly little circles since I do have kind of a circle theme on my page right now so I'm going to take out some of them I'm not going to use all of them though on my page just need to have a bunch on hand to work with and I have also took out a little heart and a crown which I am going to collage later on on my chubby chick lady now before I stick all those little elements down the die-cuts I mean I'm going to use my acrylic markers and I'm going to do some coloring on my stamped images I am using my deco markers by Pebio I like those because they are acrylic markers and they are opaque which means that they are going to cover up completely the underneath color and the color that I am adding now is going to pop at the same time this is going to cover up the black line so you need to be quite careful I am working with a 1.2 nib here but these markers come in all different sizes of nibs that you might want to now my kids are on a school break since it's summer and leaving in Greece means that we are heading at the beach later today but for now I did have to finish off this voiceover and hopefully they are not very distracting as they play at the background and again notice that I'm not being very neat I just move quickly I don't care if I go outside of the lines or if I don't cover completely an area there with my marker just keep everything look loose so that everything binds together with a beautiful loose background the exact colors of the markers that I'm using are pollen which is the yellow one the bright green and Caribbean blue but you will find links down below to everything I'm using as well as the exact colors of these markers I'm also using a white postcard marker here and there which is going to brighten up my page now I'm going to do some shading for that I'm using the marine scribble stick from the second set of the scribble sticks this is a product by Ranger and these are actually water soluble pigments so I'm going around my stamped image with this stick and then with a wet brush I'm going to dilute it a little bit which is going to create a lovely soft shadow and it's going to help this stamped image pop against my background and I will repeat the same process for the other two stamped images and now it's time to play with my cutouts now as you can see the cutouts come with a white border but you can also use your scissors to cut out the border just like I did with this heart and I'm also going to do that with the crown I'm going to fuzzy cut it making sure that I don't have any white border so just because my lady doesn't have a white border I want to incorporate those elements and everything is going to blend nicely together if they don't have a white border however you will see that later on as I'm going to play with all those little circles I'm going to spread them out and try to decide where everything is going to go but this time I'm not going to cut out the white border actually this white border works great for me since it's going to help all those elements stand out against the background so you can mix and match the looks and just to go quickly with this process I'm just using my white glue at the back but of course you can use your matte medium your glue sticks everything works here now I'm going to call this a layout finished and all I'm going to do is to stick a quote I always like to add quote motivational ones on my original pages so again I'm going with one from the quote chips by team Holtz that says choose to shine now I'm going to use a fan brush this is Jesho diluted with water and I'm going to add my white splashes that I cannot stay away from and then I'm going to call this page done so this is the page for today I hope you had fun as we went through the whole collection of my friend Marlene and hopefully I have inspired you on how you can put all these wonderful products together to create beautiful layouts here are some close-up photos on today's layout thank you all so much for joining me today and have a lovely day