Joggles 2018 AJA - Week 3 and an optional twist

Hi everyone! It's week 3 of the Joggles Art Journal Adventure and this week, the prompt is the number 7...and there is an optional twist to which you may or may not wish to respond. The optional twist is to Create a Border around your page. This one took me a while to come up with what I wanted to do...I had lots of ideas around the # 7 but I only wanted to use one 6 x 6 inch page instead of a two page spread and many were just to complicated for such a small piece of real estate. I'm not complaining...I'm loving the challenge of this size of journal and also of keeping it simple.

I decided to punch 7 flowers from my mop-up scraps and place them on a Distress inks background. The centers are these little black discs with white numbers and I like how they contrast with the flowers and tie in with the doodled stems. To create the sky portion of the background, I applied Broken China and Mermaid Lagoon Distress Inks with a mini ink blending tool. The grass portion was created using Mowed Lawn and Twisted Citron. I used a hand cut mask to divide the two sections and then blended the colours a little where they met so I didn't have such a distinct line. More of the Mermaid Lagoon DI was inked through Carabelle Studio Weft Fabric and Numbers stencil as well as onto a Crafty Individuals text stamp on both the green and blue to tie them together.

The optional border was created by drawing a wonky border on another 6 x 6 inch watercolour page from the disc bound refills so that the holes lined up. I then lined off squares and used my black Faber Castell Pitt pens to fill in every other square and edge the inside and outside of the border once it was cut from the page.It was then glued onto the Distress Inked background page using Aleene's Super Thick Tacky Glue. I love that it is raised slightly from the background. Because I wanted to emphasize the number 7 and the counting aspect, I chose three Tim Holtz Remnant Rubs featuring the numbers 1-7. I love the size of these and they form a visual triangle that moves the eye around the page.

The flowers were staggered across the sky, varying the heights and closeness to others for more interest. Pitt pens were used to doodle in the stems and wonky leaves but I wanted to stamp some Jet Black Archival grass tufts lightly at the base of each stem to ground them. I looked through many stamps but they all were too large or too distinct until I came across Joggles Loretta stamp.

Her top knot was perfect for what I wanted and it was a great reminder to look at my stamps with a fresh eye for new uses :)

The final steps were the wording printed on white cardstock and matted with black as well as a little extra doodling on the flower petals to bring in a little more detail. I also punched a wee butterfly which I edged with Mermaid Lagoon and used Black Diamond Stickles for the body. This page was pure play and I loved how it turned out. Whimsy makes me happy :)

Thanks for joining me today. If you haven't already checked out our Joggles Art Journal Adventure Facebook group where we post the weekly prompts and our fabulous members share their responses, I urge you to join. Not only is there an absolute ton of inspiration each week but the company and encouragement are delightful. This is our third year...hard to believe. I love our little AJA community!

Life is good; so is art.
Bonnie