Saturday Showcase - Junk Journal featuring Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 Stamps and Stencils

Hi everyone and welcome to another Saturday Showcase, the Design Team's chance to share tutorials and products available from The Funkie Junkie Boutique with you. As part of the current 'Positively Pensive' challenge I put together a junk journal featuring the designs of Wendy Vecchi and some ways of using ballpoint pens to decorate the pages.

If you just want to take a look at the junk journal in more detail here's a short flip through video to show the pages inside - for those who want to know how it all came together I've added a tutorial below;

The Tutorial

As mentioned in my challenge post I took to YouTube to find a way of decorating stamped images with ballpoint pens and found a brilliant tutorial by Alphonso Dunn HERE. Armed with this new found knowledge I stamped and coloured a heap of Wendy Vecchi designed flowers.

To show you this stage in more detail here's just one of the flowers from one of Wendy's older stamp sets, stamped with a couple of coordinating Archival Inks and shaded at different stages with the coordinating ballpoint pens. It's worth checking out the range of Archival Ink colours that Linda has in stock as it's a great alternative to the black ink I am sure we all reach for instinctively.

And here's a close up of some of those flowers, trimmed and inked around the edges with Walnut Stain Distress Oxide Ink.

Next up I used blue, pink and green Dina Wakley Media Acrylic Paints with my gel plate to create a bunch of coloured papers ready for use on the tea stained pages. As well as using regular copier paper I also pulled prints on some of the white tissue and brown paper that our orders come lovingly wrapped in. It's also well worthwhile looking through some of those scrapbook papers you may have in your stash - I found a couple in mine that worked well once tea stained.

And so now it's on to creating the junk journal - I began by cutting two Pocket Notebook cover pieces from regular cardstock using Eileen Hull's Sizzix Scoreboards Die. After gluing them together along the spine I covered the outside with one of the gel plate prints. To add extra decoration I stamped the beautiful lacy flower from Wendy Vecchi's stamp set 'Friends & Art' randomly across the back and front. To strengthen the inside I covered it with fabric, frayed around the edges, before stitching along the edge of the cover. Since at this stage the coloured paper on the outside was already starting to tear a little along the scorelines I embraced that and used a pair of scissors to scuff the paper along those lines.

Below you'll see how I layered a few of the painted papers beneath one of the stamped flowers. Adding a little fabric and some stitching is really effective, as is stamping onto some of the painted tissue before applying it over the flower with Distress Collage Medium Matte. I'm definitely going to be doing this a lot more in future.

Eileen's 'Pocket Notebook' Die has a section for cutting basic pages so I made a few from tea stained copier paper, stamping them with lines ready for someone to journal on. Use the Archival Inks that have been used for the flowers and you get a coordinated look throughout your journal. I would also mention at this stage that if you are not a fan of tea staining paper and card you may prefer to use Seth Apter's 'Tea' Izink Dye Spray. To make more sturdy pages I used a couple of long envelopes, glued together at the top and trimmed to fit as shown below.

Pockets need things to go in them so I stamped the flower images onto the edges of tea stained index cards and postcards with 'Acorn' Archival Ink. Since there was no margin line on the index cards I added one to each of them with the pink ballpoint pen.

Below you'll see how I attached punched strips of patterned paper to the outside of the envelope pages to create pockets. These can be decorated with a mix of the coloured paper/tissue, design tape and lines drawn with ballpoint pens.

Turning to the inside of the envelope pages I added gel printed paper to one side, adding a smaller pocket and part of a stamped flower image. On the other side I stuck down a medium glassine bag from Linda's store and stamped a Wendy flower and phrase onto it with Archival Ink. Since the bag is translucent you can see the tag that's been added inside.

More interactive pages were created using an A4 sized piece of tea stained graph paper; I folded it up to fit inside the cover and then folded it roughly in half. After cutting down the fold line on the folded up piece I glued down one side to create a large pocket for a tag (the page on the left hand side). I left the piece on the right hand side so that it could be folded down to reveal a hidden panel. The right hand flap was stamped with Wendy Vecchi's 'Tiled' Background stamp whilst the pocket on the left hand side was trimmed with a piece of book paper. Flowers were added to both along with more paper, design tape and ballpoint pen lines.

And here's how I decorated one of those hidden flaps with gel plate printed paper, a flower and ballpoint pen marks made by using a stencil from Wendy Vecchi's 'Thank You' Stamp/Die/Stencil set.

All those pockets need filling so I made a bunch of tags, adding gel printed papers, stamping with the 'Tiled' background and design tape to them.

And just a final idea for another pocket to be added to the back of one of the graph paper pages - I found these brown wage packets ages back and decided to decorate a few in the same way as before with papers, tape and hand drawn ballpoint pen lines. I also added a checkerboard pattern to one of the tags using the stencil in Wendy Vecchi's 'Flower Pot' Stamp/Die/Stencil set.

Now here's a reminder of how just a couple of the pages looked when assembled;

Thanks for visiting to catch today's Saturday Showcase tutorial - I hope you've enjoyed seeing some ideas for using Wendy Vecchi's gorgeous designs in combination with ballpoint pens.

There's still time to enter the current Funkie Junkie Boutique Blog challenge 'Positively Pensive' to be in with the chance of being a Guest Designer here. We look forward to seeing your amazing creations.

Jenny

Products used to create this junk journal are available from The Funkie Junkie Boutique and are listed/linked below.

Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 Stampers Anonymous Stamp Set - Friends & Art
Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 Stampers Anonymous Stamp Set - Funky Flower Art

Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 Stampers Anonymous Background Stamp - Tiled
Wendy Vecchi MAKE ART Stamp/Die/Stencil Set - Thank You
Wendy Vecchi MAKE ART Stamp/Die/Stencil Set - Flower Pot

Wendy Vecchi Studio 490 Stampers Anonymous Stamp Sets

Ranger Archival Inks

Dina Wakley Media Paints

Tim Holtz Ideaology Design Tape - Salvaged

Eileen Hull Designs Sizzix Scoreboards Die Pocket Notebook

Saturday Step by Step - Not Too Shabby

Hi everyone and thank you for joining me today. Jenny here with a new step by step to get you in the mood for some weekend crafting. And here's the not so shabby chic card I'm stepping out for you (don't forget, just click on the images to get a closer look at the detail)...

I started with two squares of card (there'll be a fair bit of media going onto this so it needs to be of a heavier weight). Using the 'Basically Bricks' stencil I added Pumice Stone Distress Paint to the 'mortar' sections. Rather than waste paint I stencilled onto one piece of card...

... then flipped the stencil over onto the second piece of card and used a brayer to press the remaining paint into place. The first piece of card was reserved for use on a later project.

Tattered Rose and Wild Honey Distress Inks were blended on top of the stencilled paint after it had dried completely.

Petroleum jelly was smeared onto the ink in random patches.

Then I brushed a combination of Picket Fence, Antique Linen and Tattered Rose Distress Paints over the top. It was resisted by the areas covered in petroleum jelly to reveal the ink underneath. By heat setting the paint with a heat gun it allowed the jelly to be dissolved.

Using the 'Tic Tac Toe' background stamp unmounted with Watering Can Archival Ink I applied a little detail in patches, for that random feel.

Having blended Frayed Burlap Distress Ink lightly over the whole card I flicked a generous amount of water onto it, allowing ink to react before blotting it all dry (you can see why you need a heavy weight card!)

Next attention turned to the flowers. Using the flower stamp from the 'Build-a-Blossom' Stamp it Stencil it! set I stamped out the flowers in Watering Can Archival Ink onto white card. Having cut out them out (including cutting in between the petals) Wild Honey and Victorian Velvet Distress Inks were blended onto the flowers before they were shaped with a ball tool. I layered two flowers onto each other, then coloured some acrylic gumdrops with Cranberry Alcohol Ink and glued them into the centres.

I arranged the flowers onto the background to work out where they would look best. Then I used the stencil from the set to mark out their final placement.

The Watering Can Archival Ink was used again, firstly through the 'Dots & Stripes Borders' stencil and secondly on the lace edging stamp from 'The Beauty of Art' stamp set.

Getting back to the stencil, I applied Crackled Texture Paste through the leaf shape and allowed it to dry. To finish the card some seam binding (coloured with Antique Linen Distress Stain) was added across the stencilled stripes before I glued the flowers into place using the marks to guide me. I tucked some bronze leaves into the bouquet and splattered the whole card with Biscotti Perfect Pearls Mist. Finally I added a sprinkle of Chit Chat stickers - if you draw around these with watercolour pencils or Distress Markers and use a water pen to soften the marks you can really help to make them stand out.

And here are some close ups of the finished card... 

I hope you've got some ideas from this tutorial and feel inspired to get creating yourselves this weekend. The links for all the products used on this card are listed below with links to The Funkie Junkie Boutique.

Don't forget, the current Frilly and Funkie challenge 'A Haunting Halloween' is looking for Halloween themed vintage and shabby chic projects and there are prizes up for grabs so make sure you enter. And we'll be back on Monday September 29th to announce the winners of the last challenge - did you win?

Have a great weekend and take care of yourselves,

Jenny x

Friday Focus - Sizzix Word Play and Cargo Numbers Dies

Marjie Kemper here, happy to be hosting the Friday Focus.  I've used the Sizzix Word Play die on this art journal page:

This die can cut through card stock, chipboard, fabric, foam, leather, metal foil, and more. My letters were cut from heavy pre-embossed grungeboard:

I  really like  the alphabet - it has a mixture of different fonts and the letter sizes vary from about 1-2".  Here are some other pieces I've made using this (and the companion, Cargo Number) die:

 Calendar page (details)

 Standard tag on an Oversized tag (details)

8 X 8 Canvas (details)

 Oversized tag (details)

12 X 12 Scrapbook layout (details)

Oversized tag (details)

Thanks for visiting us today.  Remember there's still time to play along with our Chipboard and Metal challenge.  It's open through Tuesday, November 27, and all are welcome to join!

Sizzix Alterations Tim Holtz Word Play Die	Sizzix Alterations Tim Holtz Cargo Numbers Die	Sizzix Alterations Decorative Strip Tim Holtz Washer Border	Tim Holtz idea-ology Tissue Wrap - Melange	Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad - Black Soot
Ranger Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pad - Aged Mahogany	Ranger Archival Ink - Jet Black	Claudine Hellmuth Multi Medium Matte	Ranger Adirondack Acrylic Paint Dabber - Pitch Black