One of my favorite clothing brands sent me their newest catalog and the weight of the paper they had used was so great, I decided it would make a perfect recycled art journal. I have enjoyed working on the pages and I’ve shared a how-to of one of them below…
The Crafter’s Workshop provided me with some product to create this project. This post also contains affiliate links. The opinions I share are solely my own.
As usual, I gathered up some of my favorite stencils (I didn’t use all of them), acrylic paint, white gesso and matte gel medium…all from The Crafter’s Workshop collection of products.
A quick, messy layer of white gesso gave me a more neutral background on which to work. It also gave the paper a bit more tooth.
Next up was some mark making and journaling with Jane Davenport’s Mermaid Markers
. These watercolor markers reactivated with each layer I added but I loved the result. However, keep that in mind for your pages if that bothers you.
The 6×6 Fantasy Sphere stencil together with green paint gave my page a restful focal point.
My word for the year, Flourish, is always resonating in my mind. So the 12×12 Jungle Vines stencil helped bring the concept onto the page even though that is not what I was focusing on! Love that about art journaling…
Some doodling because it doesn’t seem like me if I don’t include a bit somewhere!
I used a few Neocolor II crayons
to deepen the background color here and there, and also to add a gray shadow to the leaves.
I usually add any wording directly to the page I’m working on but this time I used a trick for those of you that hesitate a bit at doing that! I stenciled the words onto a piece of deli paper
. That way, if it came out poorly, I could redo it as many times as I needed! I used the 12×12 versions of Julie’s Words and At The Beach to create my own phrase that fit my sentiment for the art journal page and what I was feeling at the moment. I then used matte gel medium to adhere it to the page.
As a bonus, here are two more pages I created in my recycled catalog art journal. The paper is just great to work on. Next time you need a new art journal, try your recycle bin! You just never know…
