Carry your heart with mine

I’m thrilled and honoured to be over at Altered Book Lover with Bleubeard and Elizabeth today as part of her 22 days of recycling leading up to her happy bEARTHday.

One of my goals this year is to recycle and use up leftovers on my art journal pages, so I was delighted to be invited and very happy to join in the fun – thanks so much! 

The background and main images for this page were created using recycled materials; they just seemed too nice to throw away (grin!).

For the background I collaged strips of recycled tissue paper, brown paper packaging and some of the card that I place under my journal pages whilst crafting to catch any excess paints, inks, modelling paste etc; like all the paper elements they were stuck in place using Liquitex matte gel medium. When dry, I outlined the edges of these collaged pieces using a black Faber-Castell Big Brush marker smudging the ink with my finger. I also added some gold embossing powder to highlight the texture of the tissue paper and to match the gold on the main images. I fussy cut the cute dogs, heart balloons and patterned foreground from a beautiful anniversary card that my mum and dad kindly sent us; I had fun fussy cutting everything which took quite a bit of time. I arranged them on either side of the page and then I added the Kaisercraft sticker wording which reads “Wherever you go, no matter how far, I carry your heart with mine” which finished the page.

I hope that you’re inspired to recycle and repurpose materials for your art creations; there’s lots of inspiration this month over at Altered Book Lover too (grin!).

The little dogs on my page reminded me of this pottery dog that sits on our mantel in the lounge which was from a local gallery. It’s Raku pottery which is my favourite type of decorative pottery and derives from a traditional Japanese process where the fired raku piece is removed from the hot kiln and is allowed to cool in the open air. I believe that this spotty dog was decorated with coloured slips, glazes and metal leaf before it was Raku fired.  

Hope that you’re all staying safe and well!

Thanks for joining me today! If you have any questions or comments, I would love to hear from you.

Here is a list of the materials that were used to create this art journal page:

• Recycled white tissue paper
• Recycled brown paper packaging
• Recycled card that I place under my journal pages whilst crafting covered in paints, inks, modelling paste, stencilling, scribbles, washi tape, sticker off cuts etc
• Liquitex Matte Gel Medium
• Faber-Castell Big Brush Pitt artist pen (Black 199)
• Versamark (Watermark Stamp Pad)
• Ranger Embossing Powder (gold)
• Recycled anniversary card
• Kaisercraft Sticker Sheet (Havana Nights SS354)

Challenges I’m pleased to be able to join the following challenges today which are: Art Journal Journey where the theme is Inspired By in honour of Eileen from The Artful Crafter’s Blog who picked the theme and was supposed to host this month but sadly passed away shortly after her heart surgery last month – I miss her greatly! I’m so pleased to be able to her challenge and was inspired to recycle; I think the wording “I carry your heart with mine” is perfect to remember Eileen by too! MIUCB#48 – Anything Goes + optional No Stamping challenge over at Mix It Up Challenge Blog with my recycled page which contains no stamping. Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge Blog and their Not a Card challenge with my recycled art journal page. LTCCB#57 – April Anything Goes over at Love to Craft Challenge Blog with the recycled materials on my mixed media page.