I do love a good challenge .......

Hello there .... me again!

What a horrible day it's been here ...... it's rained all day!  Good thing I didn't have to go anywhere, I got all the boring household jobs done this morning and then I spent a lovely afternoon in my craft room. I should have been tidying the place really but, you know what it's like ...... easily distracted.

Do you fancy another challenge to finish off the week?  How about the Happy Little Stampers Mixed Media Challenge.
It's an easy one this month ....... we want you to use LAYERS

Now that could be layers of paint, ink, stencils. Texture pastes, use your designer papers or even add embellishments ........ the choice is yours.

Like all HLS challenges it's sponsored by the Happy Little Stampers store

And the winner will receive a $15 discount voucher to spend in the shop.

I'm so excited about this challenge ..... I've finally plucked up the courage to get some ink and paint into one of my Dylusions journals ..... whoo hoo!! and I'm loving it!!

Here we go with the first page ......... there's quite a few layers here.

I started with a thin coat of gesso over the page then used PaperArtsy's Fresco Finish Acrylic paints to add the colour ...... I used a pink, a blue, and a green plus a touch of white.  Not sure that the colours come through well in the above picture though ... sorry.

Once the paint was dry I used a couple of stencils to add more detail to the background ..... the honeycomb with distress ink and the dots with white paint.  The large word is also a JOFY stencil and I've used Black Archival ink for that.

I stamped the flowers on the bottom of the page using one of the stamps from the new HLS Especially For You ..... I love this large daisy.

I heat embossed the images with a clear powder and then coloured them using the Fresco Finish paints again.  The embossing does make it easier to colour with the paints, it acts as a resist so you don't loose any of the outline ..... it means you don't have to go over the lines with a black marker pen once you've finished painting!

I added a bit of texture onto the page next using another stencil and some fine texture paste

Once the paste was dry I added some silver highlights with a Moltow Liquid Chrome marker pen. Love this effect ..... it's so shiny

The words were stamped onto a piece of white tissue paper, and then added to the page with a little bit of IndigoBlu Slap It On

To finish off the page I did a little bit of splattering here and there with some white paint, black gesso and I added in a few dots with a gold glitter gel pen

Well .... that's page number one done (in fact pages 2, 3 and 4 are also done and 5 is under way ...... well I have been in the craft room all afternoon! If you're interested in seeing those watch this space!)

The inspiration behind all this and the reason why I'm so excited is a new group on Facebook called Creative Journaling 365.
Started by Jennie Boxall ....... from The Artistic Stamper,  its basically all about journaling, every day. As usual I'm playing catch up ..... but hey it's only Day 6  today so I'm not that far behind. I am going to try and keep up however so we'll see how that goes.
I've been trying to get into Art Journaling for so long ..... now I have no excuse.  It's the kick up the backside that I needed .... thanks Jenny.

Thanks for popping by .... enjoy the rest of your day and have a lovely weekend.

Cheerio until next time .....