Harvinaisen Kaunis Elämä: April 2022

Hello friends,

I made tiny little art journal covers for Finnabair March Art Recipe and wanted to start filling them with a tiny little journal, size approx. 7 cm x 10 cm. I love using left over bits and bobs and decided to create a sweet little something from those. (Because scraps are a force of nature every crafter encounters all the time.)

I chose some scrap pieces that were soft, gentle, and sweet looking, to match the pretty cover, and started to create. Here’s what I did…

I dyed some silk ribbon, cheese cloth, and lace with Mica Powders from Vintage Roses set (a lot of water, little colour, and some dapping between palms, a very sophisticated and complicated process, indeed, but if you need more specific instructions, I do have a video of the process here: https://youtu.be/CCPbR9oRpGo ). I let the fabrics to dry.

First, I layered some vintage paper scraps onto my tiny little journal and glued them in place, primed them with Clear Gesso or whitewashed them with white Heavy Gesso, and let dry. I wanted to have a gentle vintage look throughout the pages, so I mixed some Impastos Pitch Black and Dark Chocolate and added some paint around the edges of the pages, with a lot of water, and just a little of paint.

After adding dimension with white gesso and Iris Tapestry and Passiflora stencils, and letting everything dry, I made tiny collages with print leftovers, die cut leftovers, tiny bits of cheese cloth and lace, and primed every print with clear gesso to protect them in case I want to add some medium later.

As these pages were the first of the whole journal, I wanted to leave them in a state I always leave the first pages; I do not add as much paint or decorations at this point, where we are still getting acquainted. I leave room for them to become part of the whole journal emerging, page by page, and I will go back and finish them only much later, when the whole journal starts to emerge and take form.