What’s the play for today?  It’s art journaling in the giant, jumbo, vintage ledger- which finally has a name!  As I’m painting the page and tree, you’ll see why acrylic gouache was so handy plus how the Scribble Scratch stencil made leaves on the tree too.

At the end of the video, you’ll see how to deal with a logical left brain squashes the play.

Watch Using Acrylic Gouache in an Art Journal on YouTube.

Acrylic gouache is a combination of watercolor and acrylic paint.  So if you add water, it behaves like a watercolor and spreads over large areas easily.  If you use it straight from the bottle, it behaves more like an acrylic paint.

Once it is dry, it is permanent so it makes it great for layering in an art journal.

What stencil is making the leaves?  That’s Scribble Scratch, one that I designed for StencilGirl. There are no leaves on it, but that doesn’t matter one bit.  It’s going to make great impressionistic leaves!

The final touches to the tree came courtesy of the all-purpose studio supply, the baby wipe.

After the tree was finished, my logical left brain started to ask a lot of questions.  Questions like, what will you add next?  How are you going to finish it? Being pestered and hounded by these questions was taking the fun out of the play.

I not so politely reminded that logical left brain that just because I start a page does not mean that I am required to finish it that same day. And I stepped away from the page.

If you leave it be, step away, and come back with fresh eyes often it’s clear what you want to do next.  What you’re doing is taking the pressure off which makes it a whole lot easier to play!

So what is the name of this big journal?  It’s been a long journey to decide and I so appreciate all the help, suggestions, and ideas that have been shared with me.

It was easier for me to name my children than this book- but I finally have it. MoJo.  It means 2 things to me.  First, Mother of a Journal- this thing is huge. Second, it’s where I go to play when I need to get my mojo back.

Thanks again to everyone who shared their ideas for a name!

Here are the supplies used. Some of these links are affiliate links which means I get a small percentage. It doesn’t cost you anything extra and it helps keep the free tutorials coming!

Handmade Christmas cards.  I wanted to send them this year, and I had a rock solid, easy to make, guaranteed to work plan in my head! Easy to cut, quick to make.

You know what that means- things definitely won’t follow the plan!  And then there was the over thinking. Oh, was there over thinking! O.O.P.S.!

Watch on YouTube.

Start by cutting the canvas off the frame using a craft knife.  The sharper the knife, the safer it actually is since dull knives take more effort to cut and hence are more likely to slip. Be safe and use a fresh blade. Okay, that’s the public service announcement for this blog post.

The plan was to cut a simple triangle shape to be a tree.  But as you can tell, that plan didn’t last long.

I started adding more of a branch look to the edges, and in the video, you can see how one looked like a poop emoji before it became the Charlie Brown Christmas tree.

And yes, there was way too much thinking going on about the tree shapes. More than one pattern was attempted before I just decided to stop thinking and start cutting! Yup, that’s in the video too.

To attach them to the canvas, I usually use a glue stick. Except that I am totally out of glue sticks.  I don’t like to use gel medium for this as it tends to warp the paper a little bit so I reached for the double-sided tape.

But not any tape, there is something special about the Crafty Power Tape that made it work better on the canvas.  The backing paper that you peel off is larger than the tape, so that means it is much easier to remove.  That’s important when putting tape on canvas because any double-sided tape has a tough time sticking to canvas.

I have to laugh at myself because the O.O.P.S. tree, that Charlie Brown tree, has really grown on me and now might be my favorite!  Once again, a “mistake” takes me somewhere even better than I had planned!

If you’re new to my play, an O.O.P.S. is an Outstanding Opportunity Presenting Suddenly. I make all sorts of OOPSies and you can see more of them here.