March Art Journal Pages inspired by 12 Tags of 2015

Good Monday morning to you. I hope you start off your week crafty!

I decided to jump in on Tim Holtz's 12 Tags of 2015 and begin another art journal. Here is Tim's awesome tag above.

This is my March layout.

While I'm still a bit of a dabbler in the art journaling world, I LOVE to try. And I need as much practice as I can get. I'll be honest: when I open my art journal and see those blank pages in front of me, I sort of panic inside. How weird is that? Once I get going, it's usually okay but I still have this thing about something going wrong, or not liking it once it's done. I really need to just get over it, I know.

I think I've found a simple solution for myself: I got a second journal. A practice journal in essence and it really works for me. Now I use one for experimenting, testing, and trying. Then use the other one to do my actual pages from what I learned from the first one. This takes a tremendous amount of pressure off and allows me to play around. No one has to see the first one. Ever.

In my practice journal (not shown) I dabbed the paints right onto the page and spread them around with a baby wipe. It gave a soft blended look to the page, but seemed flat and boring. So for my "real" journal, I tried dabbing the paints onto a small piece of a non-stick craft sheet (I cut an old craft sheet apart into four equal sized pieces) then picked up the sheet and mushed it onto the pages. Whoa! It was bright, but I liked it better than the softer blended one. So I stuck with it.

I did some stamping of hearts next, then did Tim's technique for the March tag. I love that big butterfly and I also love using his masks. 

Great technique with the embossing paste and powder too!

I ended up not liking all the stark white spaces, so I filled in with Mustard Seed and Abandoned Coral Distress Inks with a blending tool. Much better.

I stamped the phrase onto white tissue paper (the cheap gift wrap type) with black archival ink, let it dry, then glued it onto my page with mat medium. Once dry again, I colored inside the word "Discovering" with a white gel pen.