Index Card Journal

Today I want to share a project I made as part of the Art Party Weekend. Except I just made mine a couple days ago. This particular project was taught by Marjie Kemper. She teaches a lot of mixed media and collage type classes online. For this project she used a series of eye stamps she had on hand. I had a bunch of these Lavinia Stamps that I had never used before and thought they would be perfect for my little journal. 

We started with five 4" x 6" pieces of mixed media type paper. I used Bristol Illustration paper from Hahnemühle. The bottom three cards were not tabbed to start with. I cut those spaces away from the 4x6 card and created my own tabs. All pieces were coated with gesso, then painted with acrylic colors. On both sides. 

I folded one of the extra pieces in half. (I did not use the second extra.) Then all pieces were scored on the bottom, 1/4" up. To do this easily, I used my Scor Pal. I have had this sucker for probably 7 - 8 years and have never used it before this. But I remembered where it was - hahahahaha! And it worked great! 

Stamping came next. I had enough of these Lavinia stamps to do something different on nearly every page. One tip is to remember to work outside of that 1/4" folded area. 

And I did a lot more. Let me show you the pages. I used a black Archival ink pad to go around all the edges and grunge the pages up a bit. I used stamps, word strips, jewels, dazzles and some washi tape and staples to bind the edge. I don't like that part. We put all the pages together tightly and stapled within that 1/4" space, then covered the spine with washi tape. Not the best, but it worked for a quick project. This is my cover.

I used a variety of Tim Holtz and Art by Marlene word strips. I really do love how this book turned out - apart from the binding. Six inches tall and about seven inches wide when opened. 

Aren't these little fairy stamps awesome? Here you can see the page I folded in half. It makes a smaller flap. 

I primed each of these stamps before I used them, but they still stamped out sketchy and splotchy. I figure it just adds to the texture of the page. Hahahahahahah! I love these words strips! 

I didn't realize these two tree pages would end up together. Oh well. It is all good. It's like a little forest. An awesome little forest because it has dragons! 

And the back. I had that wording all spaced out well and then I read it. And it didn't make sense. I had dropped the "and forget" bit on my desktop and the other pieces were already adhered into place. So I just squished it right in there anyway. Hahahahah! I love this snail rider stamp! It reminds me of the dragon riders!

Not part of the book but I wanted to show you anyway. This piece of card stock was originally used for rolloff color when I was using a gel plate. It was just sitting in the drawer. When I started priming - or test stamping - the stamps before I used them for real, I reached for something to practice on. And this is what I grabbed. These are all the practice - or priming - images I made. No thought involved, just stamp here and there and see if it worked. And now that I look at this page I see several scenarios happening. And I just know there is some way I can use these bits and pieces in my daily journaling. What do you think? 

And hey, if you make a little index card art journal of your own I would love to see it! 

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Bristol Illustration from Hahnemühle can be purchased here.