Do you have any old scrapbooking papers that you may not love anymore or that you never did but they were part of a larger collection of papers?   Well I do, actually quite a few. My style has changed over 10 years – no shock.  I decided to experiment with them.  Since I might never use them there is NO FEAR of ruining them!  The bonus is I might end up with more drawer space if I use them!

I grabbed a can of white spray paint, a bunch of stencils, and old scrapbooking papers.

Add spray inks – I used Tattered Angels chalkboard inks and Adirondak color wash.  The ink pools on the spray paint so it was easy to wipe off so the white would “pop”.  Now the stripes I didn’t love have been pushed deeper and I love them now.

The paper was drenched and it was just thin scrapbooking paper so it wrinkled in places.  I loved, loved, loved the texture it created.

If you haven’t done 21 secrets yet – you should!  It is a huge value and they’ve extended it this year!  Dirty Footprints Studio is the place to find out all about it.  In celebration of all her big news she’s challenging us to all come clean with our art journaling secrets!

My big secret is I have all sorts of thoughts – often unproductive gremlins saying useless things.  So, to quiet the gremlins I write what they say.  I never want to read it again later so I use my messy handwriting.  This is frequently in the background of my art journals.  Here I used watercolor pencils and wrote on top of the words with different colors.

Spritz with a little water and mush it around with a dry paintbrush.  Now I have silenced those gremlins.

Here’s the finished page with my current favorite – umbrella man.