Lunar paste – Stamped Smiles

Hello friends! I hope you’ve had a great month so far and staying crafty while also trying to keep warm and cozy! Thank you for your kind support with my crafting journey and I’m so happy you’re here however you like to follow along.❤️

Today is the start of another year of art journaling and I’m thrilled that my crafty friend Carol (from Crafty-Stamper) is collaborating with me again this year to “SMASH OUR STASH”! We get creative trying to use up our never-ending stash piles along with a prompt for each month. I know she always has great inspiration to share, so please check out her blog too! Here’s my AJ page with the “SMASH OUR STASH” January prompt of “NEW” (challenge/technique):

As you know, we are forever trying to “smash our stash” and included within that stash are possibly some “new” stash or something that hasn’t been used before. But if that’s not the case, then that’s totally fine too because there always seems to be a new “challenge” to over come or something like a new “technique” that you’ve always wanted to try and using up your stash helps with that too! I’ve done this on my page in several ways…

NEW = art journal book used here. I have a few AJ books that I haven’t used at all, so I pulled this one out which is a 5.5″ x 8.5″ spiral mixed media book. I’ve never worked from a book before and not sure I like it as the pages do curl up on me and you can see that I’ve clipped it along the side to keep it from curling. Going forward, I might make a separate page and then attach it to the book. I’ve been so used to making my own book, so this was a new “challenge” for me to try. If you art journal, how do you like to compile your pages together?

NEW = technique used for background with distress crayons. I have a tin full of those distress crayons and I’ve barely even touched them, so I found a fun technique to try by taking a dotted stencil and applying gesso over the blank page. I used several colors of the distress crayons to rub over the stenciled paint and then blended it together with a baby wipe. It was fun! (I’ve also used a black distress crayon around the edges of the page and went over the words inside the heart with a white distress crayon to mute it a bit.)

NEW = Lunar Paste colors used through a stencil. I bought several colors of these metallic/shinny pastes last year and never broke them open, so I thought this would be a good time to see what they look like and they’re really pretty!

NEW = alphabet die letters used. I got these set of alphabet dies with upper and lower case and haven’t had a chance to use them until this page. I like that it includes both upper and lower because it seems you always have to get them separately.

A closer view of the heart that I die cut. I pulled out some cardstock in coordinating colors to match up with the distress crayons in the background and made strips with stamping words and then placing them together on the heart that I cut off the edges to keep the shape.

I was going for a “happy” rainbow style with all of it, but not sure after looking at it as I think it may be a bit too much/busy. But, I’m just going to go with it and be happy! LOL

I hope you’ve enjoyed my page today or at least have been inspired in some way! Thank you for stopping in and I’ll see you soon!

Challenges: