 Okay guys, so I was gifted this little tiny address book from my dear friend Cindy Utter and I actually, she gave me one that was even smaller too. I decided when I got both of them I was going to turn them into mini art journals. So we're here working on the bigger one and because of the kind of paper it's made out of the first thing I'm going to do is give it a coat of clear gesso. I'm not going to worry too much about covering up the lines and words that are already on the book and trying to disguise the fact that it is an address book. I'm going to use that to add interest to the background of all the pages and as you can see I'm not even waiting for the gesso to dry. I'm going in with some mustard seed distressing and adding some dots to the background and then I'm pulling out one of my new stencil designs that I cut on to a piece of clear plastic from a plastic index divider, binder index divider from the dollar store and I resized it to be really small to fit this address, this little address book and I'm getting out some of my distress paints in a few different colors, a pink, a green, I pull out a blue also and I'm going to stencil this, it's a flower on to the page. Now I'm going to tell you that I didn't do the best stenciling job on here, I ended up being okay with it but if you really want a crisp, clean, clear stencil you want to do more pouncing or stippling up and down with the brush and you really don't want so much paint on it. I actually had too much paint on my brush but that's okay, I'm going to make it work. You can see you'll be able to see when I lift up the stencil, it bled under because I had too much paint on the brush. You get a clearer image if you don't have so much paint on the brush or if you use ink on one of the little sponges like the distressing on one of the little distressing tools that would work. I really wanted to use acrylic paint and I added some, I did the pink first and then I added the blue and then I'm going back with the brown, my brown was getting kind of thick, it wasn't working super well but there you go, it turned out alright and I took the leftover paint and just put it on my canvas on my table, that's what I do. Alright then I decided some of the things on my desk were in my way hanging above my desk but I wanted to get a pen out, it was just too wet so I had to let it dry so I let it dry and then I went around and did some sketchy lines with a pen and a pencil. I ended up just using a plain ballpoint pen that ends up smearing later, you'll see right here I just did some quick scribbly journaling and I like the way it looked. I like the way the finished page looks but that particular pen I should have used a different pen because that pen does smear so you know it's all learning experience, right? So I'm taking some neon watercolor pencils, these are just Crayola, no special brand, not expensive. There are some of my favorites and going in with some yellow and orange to just brighten up the page a little bit and then I've got some Derwent pencils in a pink and I have a brown and a Prima pencil in green. I just grabbed pencils that were the colors I wanted to use to accent the stencil and add some sketchy lines and give some interest to the page and then I just really decide, first of all I need to bring some of the pink back to the flower. So I grab my brush, put the stencil back on, do some more stenciling, I like the way that looks, I ended up doing it a little more, really just kind of fussing with the flower and that I like the way that looks. And then I decide I really need more flowers on there so I'm going to put a couple more flowers on there kind of trailing off the page from the right down to the left so it's a very last minute thing so I grabbed some of the paint colors you don't need too much that one's barely on the page and then I'm going to go right in I'm not waiting for anything to dry I'm doing this very quick and I get a little bit better stenciled image this time because I'm really doing more pouncing I still have too much paint on my brush. I'm adding the blue, I'm using the same colors I used before the pink I think it's a band and coral and then I don't remember what color the blue and the brown were they're all distressed paint or Adirondack paints and now I'm remembering to recap my paints I did mess up my caps there for a second but that's okay now I'm not waiting for anything to dry I'm going right in with my Crayola pencils adding some sketchy lines with the neon ones and then the regular that's a drawing pencil and adding the same kind of lines to the new flowers that I did to the one that was already on there with the same pencils in the same colors and you'll notice that I just had the flowers just overlapping just a little bit and I really like the way that looks so I like the way that looks but it still needs something and so this is where I mess it up so I add some recollections crayon and then I get a baby wipe out to smear it around the edge I want to give it a border which is a good idea and I like the way that looks but then I get it near that black pen journaling and look what happens it smear like crap and then you try to fix it it makes it worse right so then I think about well what if I go in with some more distressing that doesn't really help doesn't really help crap okay so what can I do what can I do so then I get out another stencil after I try making marks it doesn't help either so I get out another stencil from Tim Holtz and it's a very small dot stencil I don't remember what the name of it is and I'm partially off screen so I apologize for that I did pull out this quote from my word box and I do want to use it and I cut it apart I trim it and cut it apart but I know as I'm doing that that that's not going to be enough for me to add to the page and or detract from the fact that I smeared that ink all over the place so here's that little small dot stencil and I'm going to get my blue paint and I am going to stencil some dots there you go right over it so now it looks like it's just part the smeared ink and the blue dots are just part of the background and it was intended that way I add some more just messy marks kind of go over what I was writing and just make it you know even more you know crazy if I'm going to go with it I might as well just go with it right so I add some more matte medium with my finger and put my magazine words on there and just try not to touch that pen too much anymore they're moving the camera around because I realize I'm out of frame so there you go I love the way it looks and I hope you do too and I hope you give this a try don't forget to go out and have a great day everybody and do something nice for yourself because you deserve it and practice doing something small alright that's it for now talk to you soon oh I forgot I went in and added some white recollections crayon to the petals to just brighten it up a little bit I thought it was a little bit too dark and dreary it was a very last-minute thing I forgot about that and then I went in because those are water soluble I went in with a baby wipe and just blended them just a little bit and made them not so bright and shocking on the petals and it that's actually a pearl crayon so it has a you can't really tell on camera but it's got a little sheen to it it brightened it up a lot alright talk to you later guys later and don't forget to have a great day do something nice for yourself because you deserve it bye