art journal adventures

One of the hobbies I've picked up lately from watching YouTube is art journaling.  One of my biggest enablers to date is Tanya McGuire, who made and sent little journals to several of her subscribers last year.  In Sunday afternoon live stream events, she works on hers and many people work along.  Sometimes I'm logged in and working along, but more often I'm working later.  This month I've been additionally inspired by Lost Coast's 31 days of Halloween and their Furry Friends Challenge:

I used Stampin' Up! inks for the background and the Carmen's Veranda Small Witch background.  The rest of my page is various papers and die cuts from mostly unknown sources.  The black cat image came from PixelScrapper - she reminds me of my cat Smudgie.

After this page, we had two pages left, so it was time to think about making new journals if we wanted to continue to play along.  Most people used 6"x9" envelopes from Dollar Tree for their cover, and I intended to.  The local store only had yellow ones, and I didn't really want to paint the whole thing.  Also, the original journal had a wrapped cover that I really liked, and the envelope flap wasn't going to be long enough to wrap around to the front, so I was thinking about alternatives.  One idea was to glue scrapbook paper to the envelope; another was to make a piece of "frankenpaper" out of security envelopes and glue it to the envelope or just use it as is for a cover.  In the back of the box where the security envelopes are stored, I found an old gift bag that was provided instead of a plastic bag when I made a purchase at the local (but since closed) Hallmark and stationery store.  I've always wanted a handled journal, but never had a reason to make one, since I rarely use journals these days.

It's not a full wrap closure, and I still have to decide how to hold the flap down, but I'm really pleased with it.  I went with two signatures of various pieces of paper I just have sitting around.  I attempted to machine-stitch them but the tension was wrong, so they're hand-stitched using the machine punched holes LOL.  

The flowered paper was folded in half like a greeting card and only printed on one of the four sides - I have no idea where it came from!  The music paper is a digital file I printed; I don't even know whether it's from a real piece of music.

This was the penultimate page in the original journal:

I used Stampin' Up! inks again, and the background trees stencil is from the Basic Pattern Decorative masks.  The tree is Sizzix Tim Holtz Alterations Scary Tree cut from cheap (probably Dollar Tree) construction paper and the quote is something I found online somewhere.  

I'll be working on the last page this evening so I'll be caught up with the group and ready to start in the new journal!