Compose Your Life Journal Cover - Part One

The Autumn weather here in the UK has changed into Winter over the last few days, the winds are bitter. So it's a perfect time to catch up with some crafting, and feed my addiction of creating journals.

I die cut Eileen Hulls Journal from mount board and adhered the two pieces together, ready to work on. I adore these papers from Aga Baraniak, they are so beautiful, and could be used for any time of the year. I chose four of the Tattered Angels Glimmer Mists to co-ordinate with them. Golden Lime, Sterling, Driftwood and Festival.

I sat in front of the fire, with hot tea and set about cutting all the gorgeous flowers and leaves from the Red Flower Pieces 12" paper. It didn't take long at all, and I now have all the embellishments ready to use with my journal.

To add texture onto the cover of the journal, I glued some strips of muslin, pulling at the loose threads to create even more texture.

I painted the entire cover with Golden Lime Glimmer Mist and before it was dry, splattered Sterling Glimmer Mist into it. It started to blend into the green, and with a little help from a clean paintbrush, I worked some of the larger splatters in a little more, then cleaned my brush along the muslin, as I wanted to create some shadows behind where the flowers would sit.

I love doing this technique, and then knocking the colour back using white gesso. This gives a beautiful soft, shabby feel to the project.

I decided the cover needed even more threads adding for texture, and to create a nest for the flowers to sit on. As you can see my roll of thread started life as white, but is now many shades of blues, greens and a hint of gold :)

I swirled the threads round, making sure that sections would still be seen after the flowers and leaves were added.

All that was left then, was to arrange the flowers and leaves, following the lines of the calico for a guide.

I finished the cover by adding a sentiment cut out from the Compose Your Life 8x8 paper pad, cut out and inked around the edge with a little Black Soot Distress Ink. And to finish the cover just a few black sequins, you know I just can't resist them.

So there you have the completed cover, I love how rustic but pretty it turned out. I'm off to work on the inside now, and add some more of Aga's beautiful papers to my pages.

Happy Crafting.
Elizabeth x