Artist’s Bundle Junk Journals

Hey, everyone! Danielle Robotham, one of our amazing Junk Journal Design Team Members, created a fabulous Artist’s Bundle Junk Journals for us this week. As you know, we feature one new Junk Journal project each week created by one of our creative team of artists. Our Design Team Members select from the 100’s of Vintage Image Bundles on our Premium Membership Site, for their creations, in order to show you beautiful ways to use those images. We hope you will be totally inspired by this series!

Therefore, please make sure you check out the video tour at the bottom of the page…please scroll all the way down to see it. Are you ready to be inspired? I will step out of the way and let Danielle tell you all about her incredible project…

Hello lovelies, my name is Danielle of Evelyn & Sage Ave. and it’s a pleasure to be back with you, sharing another design team project for The Graphics Fairy! My journey usually begins by sitting
down with a cup of tea to browse The Graphics Fairy Premium sight, hunting for inspiration, always spoilt for choice. Often, it’s sparked by just one image and this time was no different, a beautiful portrait of a young lady with a soft smile stole my heart, I just had to use her. She takes pride of place on the cover of one of four journals I created for this project, I’m calling ‘The Artist Bundles’

I was delighted to discover the lady was part of a bundle called ‘Little Women’ where I discovered three additional beautiful portraits. There was no question I obviously had to use all of them, it
would be a shame not to right!? To me these portraits were so pretty I had to give them centre stage on the covers, each with their own charm.

I originally explored the path of oil paintings, as the floral landscape imagery available on The Graphics Fairy is both beautiful and plentiful. After printing off a few of my favourite painted
landscapes and cottage fronts, I felt I had two separate ideas which weren’t in harmony, an overload of gorgeousness, if there is such a thing. No fear rather than the oil painting/art element being the undertone, why not bring it to the forefront. So, I paired down my images allowing the lovely portraits to shine, which propelled me to introduce the ‘artsy’ feel in other ways.

I felt the Little Women portraits deserved to be framed and with one of my absolute favourite pieces of ephemera to create being cabinet cards. Naturally just as child would in a candy shop, I started to fill my digital candy bag with all the cabinet card images I could find of The Graphics Fairy website… what a treat! Following the difficult task of narrowing down to just four of my favourite cabinet card frames, not worrying about the pre-existing images that were in some of the frames, as these can easily be covered/swapped. I digitally layered each ‘Little Women’ portrait onto its best suited frame and printed them at various sizes, to correspond with the cover bases I had selected. If you aren’t able to collage digitally, you could just as well print your desired frames and portraits to collage by hand, piece of cake! Once I’d backed each portrait on to card, I distressed the edges. Jack Ravi shares a lovely tutorial detailing some easy distressing tips, you can find this in The Graphics Fairy ‘Handcraft Tutorials’ section of the Premium Website. If you’re looking to explore digital collage, they also have you covered! In the ‘Digital Tutorials’ section.

To mount these frames, I gathered an assortment of natural toned papers from my scrap bin. Intentionally avoiding colours and patterns as to not veer away from my minimalist idea however,
using various textures and paper types, helped create interest on the covers.

Yes, I’ve never met a journal I haven’t wanted to add hardware to! Depth and texture are key, texture can come in many forms, scrunch and crunch your papers edges and there you have yourself some textural interest…lining paper never looked so good. I create my depth by introducing hardware, seeing everyday elements used in journal making just gives me the feels! What better way to accent my artsy theme with some hand distressed paintbrushes.

I wanted these journals to be a sanctuary for your experimental soul, your creative juices, all that good stuff us crafters and journalers are excited by. I created a natural canvas for mixed media, mark making, stamping, painting or just plain old beautiful experimental MESS! A place not to be afraid to try something new.

Who doesn’t love a bag of goodies, I wanted to create some faux glassine bags to fill with materials to get you started on your experimental journal. What better images to create these bags from than wallpaper prints! I used the ‘Fall Wallpapers’ and ‘Tattered Papers’ kits printed onto tracing paper, to create these goodie bags. Heather of Ruby&Pearlxo, a legendary former member of The Graphics Fairy design team I might add, has a tutorial that broke the internet, where she demonstrates how to create these faux glassine bags.

I needn’t look any further for imagery to accompany these bundles than those found in ‘The Artist’ bundle. From the sweetest cabinet card of the little girl painting at her easel to the Winsor & Newton Colour Chart, these images married with these journals perfectly.

The colour swatch papers within ‘The Artist’ bundle inspired me to dig out my long-forgotten Winsor & Newton watercolour palette from my university days, to have a play. I came up with the cutest watercolour samples, each mirroring the colours of the ‘Little Women’ portraits. I applied the water colour to some vintage lining paper, which took the colour perfectly. I find lining paper is a fantastic material to using in any journal making project, it’s super versatile.

I’ll let you guess which one of these beautiful ‘Little Women’ portraits sent me on this creative journey, resulting in four junk journals waiting to be filled with creativity. I had a such a peaceful time creating these journals, I hope you were able to find some inspiration too! Thank you so much for joining me, until next time ciao!

ARTIST BUNDLES JOURNAL SHOW & TELL VIDEO TOUR

Premium Membership Bundles I used:

Antique Portraits
Fall Wallpaper
Genealogy
Instant Ancestors
Little women
Masculine Elements
Sunset Hues
Tattered Papers
Tattered Paper Treasures
The Artist
The Author
The Dancer

You can find me here:
Danielle’s YouTube
Danielle’s Etsy 
Danielle’s Patreon

Thank You So Much!

Danielle

Check out the Graphics Fairy Premium Membership Site HERE!