California Journal

 Hi everyone.  Happy Friday. I hope you've had a nice week.

Today I'm back with more of my California journal. Yes, I am getting close to finishing it. In fact I am ready to be done with it and  to move on. I didn't bring home as many bits and pieces from the latter end of the trip, so making pages actually became harder to do. Not hard in the sense of making the pages, but trying to figure out what I wanted to put on the pages to represent the trip was a challenge.

Today's  pages have to do with the drive up the Pacific Coast Highway-route 1 from Ventura to Carmel. Here's 3 photos (I've shared these before) just to refresh you memory what my pages are referring to. 

One item I have repeating through the journal is circles. In my emptying of my studio closet last week, I cleaned out my little sticker shelf, and  I found a few chipboard stickers that would work well in the journal. You can see them on my page below, as well as an acetate sun I had. Sorry about the glare on the California route 1 sticker.

I put the above page next to this page.

It took me forever to make this page (above). I might have been a bit too ambitious. I was trying to catch how there is a big drop off from the road along this stretch of route 1, and how there are mountains on one side of the road, and how the road gives you some amazing views.  I didn't have a photo from the trip in front of me when I laid this out, so this is more a collage of what I remember of many views, not one actual view.

I used acrylic paint, Gelato crayons, water color paint, stabilo pencils, white ink and a regular pencil.

Drawing the drop off was tricky, as well as making the steep mountain sides have a bit of texture. It works for me though, even if it did slow me down as there were so many steps that needed to dry before I could move forward.

My pages in this next spread  is about driving along this section of the California coast.  The left page is made with lots of torn pieces of some sheets of printed paper. You'll see this technique and style again a few photos down this post, and that next page was actually made before this page. I liked it so much I decided to copy it here.

I stenciled the quote, added a few stickers as well as stamped the month.

I made the writing tag by stamping  a line image a few times on white paper and cutting all the lines out as one piece. Then I hand wrote in my story.

Below I made a pocket to hold the info page I picked up when we stopped to see the elephant seals.

To make the pocket I used a strip of kraft paper, and added a scrap of this photo paper to it. Then I doodled in some lines and added the stickers. I stamped bits of the arrows  and added the dots.

And lastly, here's my other page made with torn pieces of printed paper.  I added the acetate hummingbird (found while cleaning out the studio closet) because  I had watched an Anna's Hummingbird while walking in Carmel. Hummingbirds and flowers in November was such a treat.

I can't say my pages all flow because their similar, but since these pages are a few examples of my various styles, I am linking up to Elizabeth's "What Your Style?" challenge at Art Journal Journey.

Have a great start to your weekend!