Travelling Art Journals For Australian Art Swap Group- Creatures of the Bay

Hello again!  I am part of an awesome swap group that have a Facebook page an a blog and I was due to do an entry in one of these gorgeous Journals. I love the feeling of getting one in the mail and opening it up and checking out all the varied entries and interpretations of the theme.

Joan's Journal was so interesting as it was an old photo album that had been recycled into an art Journal. There were many pockets protecting our journalling and also heaps of magazine cut outs and maps etc that we could use with the theme. There was a strong recycling theme going through but Joan said we didn't have to stick with it and to just have fun so I did.

I am a little mermaid obsessed, and so I thought well they could live in "The Bay" too right?

so I got some gesso and some background colour down. I originally wanted spirals in the background in blues, but I didn't get the results  I wanted so I smudged it all with baby wipes. while it was wet I pushed pieces of Tulle into the page.  I had a trim that looked like roses on tule and I thought they looked a bit like underwater weeds so I put them onto the edges of the pages.As I am very impatient, I got my heat gun out and started drying, but then the tulle started to crinkle up and shrink and burn and I LOVED it! I had a few Beachy type embellishments from a swap years ago and decided to put those in as well.  

I them put some embossing paste over a stencil and dropped some midnight sparkle coloured embossing over the top of it... Instructions said "wait till it dries before heating".bahahhahahah...Me? Wait?? Heatgun attack! and it Puffed up beautifully to give the page more texture. 

My little mermaids are layered stamps and the Queen of the Bay is a Prima/Julie Nutting doll stamp. I stamped her on one of the pages from the back of the book , cut it out and then attached sequences to her tail. I then glued her down onto the page. 

I used my really old dymo labeller to punch out the quote and then stuck that down too. I love how some of the mini mermaid tails lift off the page. I hope you enjoy this Joan! Happy Crafting everyone!