 Hi everyone and welcome back to another art journal video. Today I have some new stamps by Alancreate, this is a great european company, make sure to check them out, they have wonderful designs, the ones that I have here are designed by my super talented friend Olga Heldwein and I asked on instagram whether you would like me to use these stamps on an art journal or on a card, the majority voted for an art journal layout so here we go. Now I am using different types of art journals depending on the stamps that I like to use as focal points. So sometimes you see me working on my dilutions art journal which I absolutely love and other times I am working on this disk bound system, I switch from book to book depending on the techniques that I want to do, so here I have loose pages so I can easily use for example my sprays without making a mess of the rest of the book or use my gel plate. I tend to work on the 6x6, I find this size perfect for my card making stamps but I also work on 8x8 and for today with the size of these stamps I decided to work on a 6x6 page. Now for today I am going to put to the test a new paper to me, this is by Artisa and it is their mixed media paper, I am going to make the pages out of this one and see how it takes water and mediums, these are 9x12 in size and 110 pounds, I like that in the pack you get two of those pads, so 60 and 60 that's 120 pages of mixed media paper and all of that for about 20 dollars, I do have a coupon code down below for a 15% off, this is an exclusive offer and you can get anything you like by Artisa using this code, now this pad is perforated so you can use that if you want or just rip off the pages like I did, I am going to cut it to size so that's 6x6 and I am going to use my punch to punch out the holes for my disc pound journal. I get a lot of questions about the punch that I am using, this is by the happy planner and you will find it linked down below and now I am also going to cut out one more square out of this mixed media paper by Artisa which is slightly smaller so I will be working on the smaller one and then I am going to stick it on the main page so that I will end up having a border that I absolutely love, now for today I am going to play with pattern paper that I had on my stash, I am going to look through this and try and find a couple of them which are green, I am going for a very fun background technique today which I used previously, this is where you cut out pattern paper to get the texture from it, so here I am going to use the blue one for the sky and the greens that I picked out from the previous pad are mainly for the grass, so now I am going to leave this aside, I am going to pick this one, just look through your stash, I am sure you have lots of pattern paper that you haven't used and you are just hoarding, these make great patterns for the backgrounds of your art journals, so I am going to use my fingers and cut out little pieces, you can use your scissors if you like, it depends on the look that you are going for, I am going for a more messy look today so I am just going to rip it, I am not measuring anything I am just ripping little pieces so I have a bunch for my background, now I am going to be quite messy with my mat medium, so I am going to bring in this silicone mat by Waffle Flowers, this is really handy to use, especially when I am filming so I don't have to clean up the glass mat all the time, I can do all the gluing on top of this silicone mat and put it aside so I will end up having a clean glass mat later on and this silicone is super easy to clean up, everything dries on top of it and you can just peel it off afterwards, now to glue down all my little pieces I am using mat medium and water, I am applying mat medium underneath and at the top just to make sure that everything is nicely stuck there, at the bottom I am going to stay with a mix of the green pieces, so now I have kind of a hillside at the bottom and at the top I am mixing the different pieces of blue for my sky, once I covered up the whole area I am going to give it a quick dry and then I am going to use my scissors to cut off the excess, another plus of this silicone mat is that it is heat resistant so you will not damage it when you are using your heat gun directly on top of it, once mat medium was completely dry I used my scissors to cut off the excess paper and I absolutely love how it looks, I like the colors that I chose but just in case you picked colors that are super bright then here is a technique for you, just dilute some gesso with water and then apply a very thin wash all over your colors, this is going to help the colors fade out, I like how the colors were looking before the wash however I did that just to show you that this is an option and I'm going to show you a couple more techniques on how you can bring back the brightness of the colors if you don't like the wash, just feel free when you are playing with your mediums there are no mistakes there is always a way to fix things if you don't like them, so now one way to bring back the color is to use your big brush markers, if you don't have big brush markers just use a light wash of your acrylic paints, you can use your gelatos or your distress crayons, whatever you have works just blend them out, you can see here I kind of created some hills, I'm going to add some color on my sky as well, you can follow the lines that you have at the background, the lines of the little pieces that you already added, just make sure that you don't end up with a flat color, leave different areas darker or lighter, it really adds up to the finished look, now when it comes to our general background it's all about the layers as well as the visual texture, so for today's background I'm going to use a couple of those techniques, first of all I'm going to use my archival inks and do some stamping, I have a stamp here that I cut out from a bigger six by six one, it gives kind of a pattern that looks like canvas, notice that I'm doing second generation stamping, I don't want that ink to go very hard on top of my page, I just want to add some texture there, but not to be super vibrant, all the stamps I'm using here are great for backgrounds, like text for example, these are really versatile, I had them in my stash for ages, I believe these are now discontinued but I'm sure you can find something similar, I'm using green for the grass area and blue for the top area where the sky is and I'm super happy of how this looks, so I will move on to another technique, this time I'm going to use this stencil that has text on top of it, this is again another very old stencil that I have, I'm sure you'll have a stencil with text, if you don't it's a really great thing to add into your stash, I'm not sure if I can link to this exact one, I think this one is discontinued, but I will link down below to something similar, I'm applying modeling paste on top of it and just because everything underneath is permanent, including the inks, nothing is going to move or smear and smudge, so this white modeling paste is going to stay bright white, now here I'm going with sprays, I wanted some more variation on the color, I'm not spraying all over the background just in different areas, so this way I will not end up with a flat color and I end up coloring some areas of that white paste, so it's looking more interesting now, and by the way the sprays I used here were Distress Oxide sprays and you will find every color that I'm using linked down below, and before I put my background to the side to dry I am going to add some splashes because I absolutely love them, so blue for the sky, green for the bottom, I'm going to add some white gesso as well, white splashes all over and just a few of the black splashes, just because I feel that this is going to bind everything nicely together, since I will have black lines from stamping my focal points at the end, and now it's time to do some stamping, again I'm using the Arteza mixed media paper, it has two sides, one is a white texture and the other one is completely flat, so I am going to use the smooth one to do the stamping, I'm going to stop those adorable designs, now my ink pad is quite dry, so I'm just going to reink it once again, and while I'm doing that I'm going to let you know that I was quite happy with how the mixed media paper reacted on my background, so I applied lots of water, lots of mediums including matte medium and sprays and everything, even paste, it didn't warp at all, it stayed nice and flat, and I'm really happy with the outcome, I also tested out with stamping on the smooth side and I'm super happy with that, so I'm going to go ahead and start coloring my images, for that I will use my favorite method when it comes to our journaling, which are my big brass markers, for using those and doing the smudging technique, I do have to cover up completely all the stamped images with matte medium to turn this paper into a non-polish surface, and once everything is dry I can go ahead and start using my markers, now I'm going for a very colorful little creatures here, and after all these are my squirrels, they are going to live in my art journal so I can color them any color that I want, I wanted this to be a bright and happy page, so I'm working with oranges and reds for the first one, with yellows and orange for the second one, and with blues for the third one, I am able to smudge the ink and blend it out with my finger just for a few seconds, the moment I use a heat gun on top of it it becomes completely permanent, I always like to have a positive and motivational pages on my art journals, and I absolutely love this design as these are supporting each other to reach for the acorn, which is high above, for my page today I use the sentiments from the same stamp set but you can absolutely use any supportive quote that you can find, also notice that I'm not being careful, I go outside of the lines as I'm smudging with my finger, and I always use two colors of markers for coloring each of those squirrels, a darker and a lighter one, super simple to do, I absolutely love how it ends up making all those shadows and highlight areas, which is something really difficult to do with your alcohol markers, it takes so much time and here is just a smudge with your finger, I'm going to use my scissors and fuzzy cut it and if you find it quite difficult you can always go around it and make a thick black line, this is going to help you fuzzy cut easier, however I'm just going to go directly and start cutting, now it's time to stick everything down, I'm just going to try and decide where everything is going to go, and I'm sticking everything down with my nouveau de luxe glue here, and of course you can use your mat medium or any other type of glue, and before I stick down the acorn I'm going to make a note of where this is going to fall, and I'm going to create kind of rays coming out from the acorn, since this is their target, so for that you can either use a stencil or just draw some rays on your own, here I'm using diluted gesso, I don't want this to go super bright on my page, so I have my brush loaded with lots of water and although I'm dipping directly in the gesso jar, I am applying a really thin coat, you will see that once it dries it's not going to look as bright white as it is at the moment, and again you can create these rays if you have a stencil, I do have a few here but I decided to just do them with my brush just to show you that you really don't need to have everything, so anyway I am going to apply some white glue at the back of my branch and stick it there making sure that the acorn falls at the center of those rays, on my mixed media paper I stamped some of the sentiments from the stamp set, the one that says you can do it and the other one that says dream beaker and reach higher, I'm going to cut them out in thin strips with my scissors and then just stick them down, now when I'm making my original videos they turn out quite big just because I try to explain all the steps and the process, what I'm thinking and why I'm using different mediums, but if you find that they turn out quite big and I don't have to share as many steps as I do just let me know in the comments down below and I will make sure to make them shorter I'm adding some little details here and there, so here I'm going to use my scribble sticks to add some shadow, I also used a thin black marker to add some lines around the sentiments, now I am using this pattern paper and I'm going to punch the holes, I absolutely love that hood green design that it has and I decided that this is going to be the frame for my main page so I'm going to stick that down on my mixed media paper, just because this pattern paper is very thin it wouldn't stand nice and sturdy, so now it's time to stick this page on top of it for that I'm using my Nouveau Deluxe glue but of course you can use your matte medium or any other type of adhesive, I'm going to finish it off by adding some white highlights here and there, this is a detail that I absolutely like to do all my focal points when my page is finished, I think it gives them a whimsical look and it brings them more to life, it also helps them stand out from the background and by the way when I'm doing that I'm not paying any attention on where the light is, I'm just adding white highlights here and there, now I'm going to use some of the sentiments from the stamp set and I'm going to just stamp around just to create a darker border and I have a piece of copy paper to help me mask areas here and there, I also used my thin black marker to draw some lines here and there and add some doodling, I used black archival ink to stamp the date and I'm going to finally put my page back on my 6x6 discbound journal, so that was the layout for today here are some close-up photos where you can see all the details on the background and on the stamped images, I hope that you had fun that you got inspired, don't forget to leave me a comment down below to like and subscribe as well as share it with your friends if you feel that this is something that they are going to enjoy you will find links to everything I used down below just like always, thank you all so much for joining me today and I'll see you all next time