frog dog studio: How to create a textured art journal page

Hi Everyone! Melissa here, with a tutorial on how to create a textured page for your art journal. I have many art journals that I work in. Some are for trying new techniques, others are themed, one is for a year long project that I am working on...but my favorite journal is my "play" journal. This is where I just let loose and have fun. I come to this journal with no expectations, no real plan as to how the page will turn out.

Play is good :)

I should probably go ahead and tell you right now that this page did not start out as a journal page project. I was working with the thin canvas with the intention of just working the canvas, but as it happened, I just wasn't thrilled with how it was turning out. So I will spare you the extra 15 steps that this project started out with :)

The first thing I did was color the canvas with alcohol ink from the kit. I mixed up a slightly darker shade and dripped it along the top, spraying it with Alcohol Blending Solution to help it run. After that was dry, I used the Twinkling H20 by wetting my fingertip, dipping it into the pot and smearing it around on the canvas. Then I inked the edges with Distress Ink in Vintage Photo and laid the little chipboard bird on to see how I liked it.

In the next step, I selected the letters from the kit and chose to use the word "hi". I covered them with some scraps of patterned scrapbook paper from my stash. I then inked those edges also, and used the alcohol ink to color the heart to use with the letter "i". At that point, I thought the blue was a little dark on the canvas, so I lightened it up a bit with a light blue paint dabber. Then, the paper twine was added around the edge as a border. The last step for the canvas was to go over everything with some more of the Vintage Photo Distress Ink so it all blended together.

Now at this point I decided to turn this into a journal page, so I started by adding some texture to the blank page using Mod Podge and the dress pattern paper (which I LOVE!). I put the Mod Podge down on the paper first, and just laid the dress pattern randomly and wrinkly all over the page, never minding if it tore or got wrinkled, that's what adds the great texture! I also tore up some bits of patterned scrapbook paper and glued them down. Then I brayered over the whole page just to get everything glued down well.

The next step was to add some bits of vintage style washi tape. I just placed them randomly on the page. Then I went over the whole page with the Vintage Photo Distress Ink (to help blend in with the canvas) and really highlight the wrinkles in the page. After that I added the Twinkling H20, using a watercolor brush in the center of the page. I also used a light green Caron d'Ache NeoColor 2 crayon to tie in the color from the canvas to the background.

I'm a big believer in reusing items whenever possible, so for the background I used some Prima Flowers packaging (which is really lovely), and a tag from Seven Gypsies. I tied some of the paper twine from the kit onto the tag and also used some random bits of it around the bottom half of the page, securing it with glue dots and some mini staples.

The last steps included securing the canvas to the page using Golden Heavy Gel medium and adding finishing touches. The gel medium works fantastic for attaching bulkier items to your canvases, and it's something I recommend always having in your stash. The blue paint dabber was used again randomly on the page, to also help tie in from the blue of the mini canvas. I added a bit of lace that was hiding out in my stash and a couple of Prima flowers and the project was complete.