Christmas Collage Junk Journal Style Pocket Notebook for Eileen Hull Designs

Hi everyone and welcome. Over the next couple of months people will be celebrating a number of holidays so Eileen Hull's Inspiration Team have been creating projects with those in mind using her fantastic dies. You can find details all their informative and inspirational posts on Eileen's website.

It's been a while since I've made a junk journal so this new holiday notebook gave me the perfect opportunity - scraps of paper and card are ideal for recording all those holiday memories and lists on. I also wanted to play with some collage ideas on the cover using Kay Carley's beautiful Christmas stamps from PaperArtsy. The style of collage is heavily influenced by the work of the incredible Roxanne Evans Stout - find out more about Roxanne and her art on her website here.

I've put together a step by step tutorial to show you how it came together sharing a few tips and techniques along the way.

Tutorial

Cut two covers from mount board using Eileen Hull's 'Pocket Notebook' XL Scoreboards Die from Sizzix. You can choose how wide to make the spine depending on where you glue together the scored portion on the end. I went for a slim style notebook, overlapping just two of the strips as shown below.

I went on to add a die cut piece of mount board to the centre of the front cover (using an old Tim Holtz Movers & Shapers Die). You could add any shape you like for this part or even leave it flat. Scrape patches of PaperArtsy Grunge Paste over the front of the cover using a spatula and allow to air dry. Add a coat of gesso to the inside and outside of the cover before applying a layer of PaperArtsy's 'Cloud 9' Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint. Stamp the large holly branch image (from Kay Carley's Eclectica stamp Set EKC32 by PaperArtsy) onto tissue using permanent black ink. Tear it away from the sheet around the edges and adhere it to the front cover using Matte Distress Collage Medium.

Apply 'White Fire' Fresco Finish Metallic Acrylic Paint from PaperArtsy mixed with water (about half and half) to the front cover and allow it to settle into the uneven surface, heat setting when you are happy with the look. You can repeat this process if you want a stronger look - for this project I just wanted to highlight the surface rather than make it a focal point.

Mount board (or Matboard) can start to split along scorelines if subjected to a lot of wet media so I like to reinforce the spine in a couple of ways. Firstly you can run a thin bead of Matte Distress Collage Medium along the scorelines when bent into their eventual shape; it dries clear, matte and shrinks back so creates a seal against wet media. Secondly glue a layer of fabric or muslin to the inside of the cover, ensuring it is eased into the folds along the spine. Once dry you can trim the edges or leave them ragged as I did in this case. If the fabric is thicker you can also re-punch the holes in the spine. To finish I painted the same diluted mix of 'White Fire' Metallic Acrylic Paint over the fabric when the glue was dry.

I didn't want to cover the stamped holly branch up but needed some colour applying and so opted to add transparent/translucent layers over it. The tiniest amount of PaperArtsy Infusions 'Golden Sands' was diluted with water and painted onto single layers of torn tissue. It was heat set to allow it to wrinkle in places. It could then be added to the cover using a generous amount of Matte Distress Collage Medium.

After adding a piece of torn dress pattern over the top it was obvious that the Collage Medium had removed the sheen left by the paint over the rest of the cover - of course, that's it's job! To make the area blend in with the painted cover I added a thin layer of PaperArtsy's Pearl Glaze.

The art of collage is about seeing what each layer looks like and deciding whether you need to add more. In this case I felt it needed more colour, so diluted a tiny amount of 'Blood Orange' Fresco Finish Chalk Acrylic Paint to another piece of torn tissue. This was then applied with the Matte Collage Medium and a little more of the Pearl Glaze was brushed over the top.

As a final focal point I melted several layers of Eileen Hull's 'Polished Silver' Molten Dimensions Embossing Powder from Emerald Creek Craft Supplies onto a piece of torn card. Whilst still hot I covered the smaller snowflake from Kay Carley's stamp set with black permanent ink and pressed the image into it. Once cool the stamp could be peeled away from the embossed card to reveal the crisp image, one of the many benefits of using good quality red rubber stamps.

To finish the notebook and add even more colour I filled in the holly branch leaves and berries with Sakura Glaze Pens and added a small piece of torn lace under the embossed snowflake. A length of thin white elastic was painted with more of the 'White Fire' Acrylic Paint before being looped through the holes in the spine to create space for two signatures.

Here are some close up photos of the finished cover;

In keeping with the Junk Journal style I created two signatures with lots of different scraps of paper and card; below you can see just two of the pages made from tea stained graph paper and an offcut of wallpaper. I also added pages cut from tea stained copy paper, old Christmas scrapbook paper, vellum. tea stained ruled paper and brown packaging paper. Most of these papers have no pattern on them, ideal if you want to write or draw on them. Since Eileen's die cuts pages easily from pretty much anything folded in half this is an easy job, and you can do several at a time depending on their thickness. They can be of varying widths too as in this case where I added a total of 18 sheets to each signature (creating 72 pages in all).

That's it for this month's Eileen Hull project. For lots more from the Inspiration Team don't forget to check out Eileen's website.

Thanks for visiting,
Jenny xxx

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