New Handmade Journals

This week I completed four journals for the boutique. I used some paintings I had done with texture and acrylics for the covers, and I think they turned out pretty cool! The painting techniques are from Mary Todd Beam's book Celebrate Your Creative Self, which is a LOT of fun. The beads on the book marker cords are my handmade papers beads, and the end papers inside are my metallic papers, both of which are shown in previous posts.

Here are the fronts and backs of all four journals.

September Postcards

This month's postcards were a bit of a challenge. The colors were royal colors: blues, purples and gold. I saw this really cool technique on someone else's blog using bubble wrap, and I though, oooh, bubble wrap is sort of symbolic of how royalty is insulated from the masses.

Well, it took me forever just to pop all the little bubbles, first squishing and twisting, then rolling with a brayer, stomping on it, you name it. Then layers of gesso, acrylic paint, spray colorwash, and gold leaf that each had to dry before I could move on.

So here's what it ended up looking like:



After all that, I didn't want to cover up the bubble wrap to much, so I kept the postcards simple but tried to go with the royalty theme:







Next month's colors are orange and indigo. Hmmm . . .