What can you do when you love a background but want to add an image on it?  Use an image transfer because it will let some of the background peek through. But some techniques are wildly unpredictable and can be a lot of work.  Granted, they look cool, but I prefer an easy no fail way to do it by using Craft Attitude.

You can probably guess what a frustrating day it was based on the stenciled word, well letters technically, that built the gel printed background of this colorful neighborhood. It was a what the flipper-doodle kind of a day.

Watch Easy Image Transfer Cheat in an Art Journal on YouTube.

The background was built using a piece of the Teenage Angst stencil and a gel plate. Thwaping that plate on the page with those letters was very cathartic.

Ever write in your journal and instantly not like it? I scribble journaled and the split second I was done, I didn’t like my writing.  It was even scribble writing, but it still bugged me.

A  little paint could cover it right up. I used yellow and O.O.P.S.  It is notoriously the most translucent color so it didn’t cover a thing. That O.O.P.S. was just an Outstanding Opportunity Presenting Suddenly that led me to get the white paint out to cover up the writing.

An entire neighborhood of image transfers was added using Craft Attitude and a glue stick. When I want that translucent, see what is below it kind of an image, my go to is this way.  I’ve tried all sorts of image transfers and they are either too much work for me or I don’t get good results.

But print out and attach with a glue stick? That is a reliable and speedy way to get the look of an image transfer. The hardest part is remembering to get glue all the way to the edge.

Who designed those houses? It was Tumble Fish Studio.  As of the writing of this, she has retired from digital design however, the shop she used to be at, Mischief Circus, has all sorts of funky and fun digital kits.

The Craft Attitude might be a plastic film, but it is not shiny at all.  It blends into the the page and more can be added on top of it.  Watercolor crayons wrote on it effortlessly.

When this page started, life felt frustrating. By the end of the page, life looked much rosier. That is one magical side effect of art journaling, the processing and releasing of feelings.  Another side effect is a journal full of color and fun.

This page is nearly finished…but not quite…maybe.  I’m on the fence…should I leave the white space there or add more?

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!

Ever just see something in a store and you knew it was meant to be yours?  Like love at first sight?  That’s what happened with this huge ledger. Even though I had no rational idea of what I was going to do with it at the time, I had to bring it home!

Thank you Kristin for curating such an amazing treasure in your store, Ephemera Paducah and Terry for helping me carry the almost 150 year old tome!

But what was I going to do with it? Turn it into an art journal but what kind of art journal will it be? Would there be a theme or at least a plan?  The first page better be good after all this is a one of a kind journal…can you hear how the pressure to make “good” decisions was building up?

There was going to be zero play with all that pressure.  That pressure had to GO! How did I get rid of it? By giving myself permission to play.  And you can laugh at the O.O.P.S. that felt so huge to me…but was actually really minor and almost impossible to see.

Watch A 150 year old ledger becomes an art journal on YouTube.

Join the free workshop, Permission to Play to download and print your own permission slip.

Once the permission slip was printed out, it was cut into strips and glued to the page with gel medium.  I made sure to get a thin coat on top of the words too. This will seal them so the inkjet printer ink doesn’t smear or run in the next step.

OOPS! It turned out there was a typo on this one. The good news is that I’ve got it fixed now so when you go to download your permission slip, yours will be grammatically correct.

Using Pitt Pens, each word was colored in a repeating pattern.  Why the repeating pattern since I am not usually a pattern person?  It was just faster than trying to decide each color each time.  Imagine my surprise when I broke the pattern and it felt huge to me.

O.O.P.S.!  Then I had to laugh at myself, after all, it was just an O.O.P.S., an Outstanding Opportunity Presenting Suddenly. What was the opportunity?To be reminded that the initial feeling of “I screwed this up” might not be accurate.

The “horror” of the broken pattern was nearly invisible the next day.  Turns out it wasn’t such a big “mistake” after all.  If you’re looking for it, it is the purple then red (instead of orange) near the top of the photo.

To create a softer color for the background, the ink from the Pitt Pens was used to make pastels by mixing the color with white paint.   Color on any non absorbent surface, then with a brush, mix in the paint.  The most important thing about this is to be sure to keep the pen out of any wet paint because it will ruin the pen.

I was torn using the paint to create the pastel background around the permission slip since I love the lines of the old ledger pages.  But I wanted a background…and I wanted all those lines.  This journal is going to be quite an adventure.  I can already feel the conflict of wanting color and wanting to see the journal page below it.

This is just the beginning of this art journal’s adventure. Get signed up for my newsletter so you’ll know each time I have a new video playing in here.  In the next video, I’ll be sharing the theme for this journal.

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!