These Pages Make me Happy

 Hi everyone. Happy Thursday. 

     Today I have an art heavy post; it's my penultimate pieces for Matilde's What Makes You Happy challenge at Art Journal Journey. 

       My pages today are from my Greece travel journal, which now just needs to be bound together. Hurrah! 👍😀 ❤Usually I bind the journal and then work on it, but the problem is (as you probably know if you're an art journaler) is that when you have a wet page, you can't turn it to work on a further along page. However, if you haven't yet bound pages, you can work on a lot more of them because if something needs to dry, you just put it aside and move on. I don't have a lot of free counter space in my art room, so often there are pages all over the floor while I work. 

        These pages  make me happy, as I must say, finishing a journal does too. ❤ 

This first page is made by recycling some items I brought home, and I like it, even if it is a bit rough. The main image on this page is the side of a  bag something I bought came in. I liked the blue and the images, so I glued it down on some white watercolor paper that I first quickly and roughly inked. The words and sun came off the top of another bag from the trip, as did the word Greece in the middle of the slightly crooked die cut. At the bottom I added a bit off of another bag, and then added some washi tape across the bottom. I’m not sure the flowers were the best choice,  but the blue matched the blue of the page.

     I like various papered background of this next page. I also like the layering and all the die cut lemons. I don't usually buy dies with a project in mind, but I bought the lemon set because I wanted to add lemons into my book. The Corfu image in the middle is a sticker. This is a very neat and organized page for me. 😏

     All the kites on this next page were doubled stamped. First on this page to lay them out, and then on white paper in  various colored inks. It took me awhile to fussy cut them out, but after I did that I attached them to the original stamped kites. I drew in the strings and the tails.

     The focus of this page is an old postcard taken with a view  of Delphi and also the  olive groves and the far off village that I could see from our hotel room. I used some old punch out paper arrows to label where things were in relation to the photo. Those arrows actually lift up so you can see the unblemished postcard, but I photographed my page with the arrows laying flat.

     You might remember the photos from the mountain village I visited. It was where my friend's grandparents had come from. There were lots of stone buildings, all old and  many a bit mossy, so I stamped this rock background and inked it appropriately. The shutters are closed because most of the village houses had been turned into summer homes.  I thought the fragment phrase described the village today compared to what it had been years ago.

 

And here's my final page for today's post.

    I like all the bits of pieces I used on this page. There's a bit off of a bag, some fabric trim, a painted sky,  a bit of lace, some metal screw "dots", an image off a sheet of paper, some stenciling, and even a few die cuts.  The window image  looks a bit crooked as I tried to fit it in and cover up the map. (But it's only crooked in my photo-of course. 😏

     That's all for me today. I hope you enjoyed these pages. and that you're having a lovely week.