A Little Holiday Journaling

Last week I was on holiday in the lovely Yorkshire Dales with my parents (and the dog!) in a cottage and I took with me a fair amount of crafty supplies including art journaling and bible journaling supplies.

And before you ask, no I didn't lock myself in a cottage and just craft! We went walking a fair bit, took some time out at a nearby lake. As most of the days I had time either first thing in the morning or while tea was cooking to do some art journaling.

I took my distress oxide inks to have a play and experiment with plus some stamps that I knew could give a look of texture.

The weather was so amazing and such a blessing I decided to try out a bright distress oxide-based page to see how it turned out. Overall, I'm not that happy with it, but I enjoyed the process and learned a few things along the way.


My art journal is really a scrapbook that I bought at an artisan market in Sydney, Australia a few years ago and I never scrapped in it! Because of that, it has thick black pages with a thick tissue paper-y insert between each page.

I used a mini ink blending tool to spread some Cracked Pistachio on the bottom for the grass (obviously) and some Broken China on the top (sorry lost that photo!)

There are lots of dry-stone walls in the fields around where the cottage was and as it happened, I had this honeycomb stamp (it was a freebie a couple of years ago from a DoCrafts magazine) that I knew would at least give the impression of the walls. I layered Iced Spruce Distress Oxide, a gold inkpad plus a brown-y IZink ink pad I got as a freebie with a magazine. I don't really have any other greys so I thought triple layering the Iced Spruce over the gold and brown might make it look near to the walls I saw everywhere!

I used yet another freebie stamp (from the same mag) to give a hint of the wild flowers we saw on our walks. This time in Cracked Pistachio, Candied Apple and Worn Lipstick distress ink. I only applied ink to random areas of the stamp.

I then decided to use a fern stamp (another freebie from one of the many papercraft magazines, I've had it about 12 months and can't remember where it's from!) I was going to only use Cracked Pistachio and then stamp, but decided that it might look good with pink tufts too, so I inked it up with Worn Lipstick and stamped! I actually ended up creating this page across the main black page and the white tissue-y insert I felt the pink was lost a bit in the darker page so stamped on the lighter side!

I also needed to do hills. Loads of hills around (that is why its called the dales after all) and found a couple of stamps I'd brought with me with hills on - believe it or not, these are from a Christmas set, I think from Crafts Beautiful mag last year, but they were perfect for what I wanted! I used a baby wipe to remove where I didn't want the ink to go and stamped above the wall-line

Then I used the green colour to add more ferns!

Never think your seasonal stamps should stay there!

I then sketched in a little tree using my Inktense Pencils as well as the  title Summer In The Countryside. 

Sadly, I think it looks very flat and almost a contrast page (night and day) which it certainly isn't. I've realised that if I want colour to come through with the inks I will probably need to prep the page first. I'm going to keep it in, for a lessons learned/experiment page.