Mermaid Art Journal

Hey, Crafters!

As a natural progression of my last blog, the Mother's day coloring book, I was inspired to bind a real, hard back book. I knew I was going to make an art journal, but I was having a hard time deciding what theme to use for the cover. As luck would have it, we received an amazing new collection of card stock this week that was absolutely perfect called "Voyage Across the Sea." How awesome are these?

To create the collage effect of the cover, I layered a few different papers beginning with a sheet of wrapping paper from Celebrations next door that I fell in love with. Once that was glued on to my mounting board I was able to start adding the images I had chosen from the voyages collection and create my spine using another gorgeous nautical map cardstock we carry.

What's a multimedia art journal without a bit of multimedia? Using a couple of BoBunny's awesome products, I added some depth and dimension to my cover by glittering it up and adding a 3D border.

With all of this done, it was time to get cracking on my inside cover. I started by adding a layer of a neutral brown cardstock, then layering on a few pieces of LBell's awesome map print tissue paper and finally accenting with a few strips of a complimentary card stock and a couple more bits and bobs from the Voyage collection.

A layer of mod podge, and I was ready to turn my cover in to a book!

Since this journal is meant to be used for multimedia, I needed to use a heavy duty paper. I picked out a watercolor paper that was to my liking, cut and folded it in to 5 'signatures,' (that's what they call each packet of papers,) totaling 50 pages. I stitched all of these on to my cover using S-lon bead cord. Here's what it looks like while in progress:

A bit of detailing with beads and cord on the spine and I have a gorgeous, one of a kind hard-back art journal made from scratch, start to finish. What could be more inspiring than working in a book that has that much creativity literally sewn in to it!? Do you love what you see? Be sure to check out our upcoming workshop where I will be teaching you how to create a journal of your very own!

-Chelsea @Mapunapuna