Ireland Travel Journal

What a nice welcome (!) to come back from my holiday to my blog, a number of messages from pesky spammers!  Luckily blogger are on the ball and deleted them all by themselves, the clever things.

I'm pleased to say we had a thoroughly good time in Ireland, out and about seeing lots of things that my Brother and Sister in-Law (who live in Ireland) had organised for us.   The only thing I regretted is that we were so remote we had no internet access, not even a phone signal, so I wasn't able to share our adventures with you there and then.  I couldn't even use Instagram, which is what I had planned to do.

No matter, because since I have been back, I have been crafting with vengence!  In between the fabulous but nerve racking events of the Olympics this weekend I created this 'shabby chic' scrapbook/travel journal: 

(Warning - lots of piccies!)  

The book I used is a Paperchase kraft ringbound book. For the cover I covered it in green crepe paper and used paint and glitter.  I edited the title picture using Picmonkey and Word. 

I started making this journal in a conventional way with nicely lined up photos and lines of written journaling but then changed my mind, what I really wanted was a bit of style!  Out came the gesso, the black ink and the alphabet stamps and the theme of the album was made. 

True to form, when we arrived in Ireland it was pouring with rain! (I used just a bit of artistic licence on the windscreen pic). 

This one has lots of feely texture on it.  I layered gesso as a background for the pool effect and then added a swirly stamp on top.  (I hate waiting for things to dry though so watched Olympic events then). 

More gesso and a camera rubber stamp.  I spread the gesso with a spatula, my new favourite tool of choice. 

This one ended up a bit more 'chic' than I planned, but ink splattering can be a tricky technique to control.

(The Right Hand page to the above) 

Splatter, splatter fun.

For the background of these pages, I dripped black ink down the page from the top.  It was to give a 'reptile' type of background.  

Which matched the theme of my page.

...And that is where I am so far.  

I'm not sure my inlaws (who were there with us) will appreciate the style I've used but I feel that it is more authentically 'me' - and that is really what counts, isn't it?

Thanks for looking and for any comments,

Nicky