Wanderlust Travel Journal

How appropriate to create a travel journal for a course called Wanderlust!  And how appropriate for me in a year when it now seems I'm going to be away more than I'm home... (exciting, but bad news for my crafting time).

Today I'm sharing some pictures of the accordion album I created in response to Kate Crane's tutorials in the second week of the course.  (Well, there are quite a lot of photos, in fact - so I think for once I'm going to stick to the simplest course and put them straight down the middle of the post!)

I loved the construction of the journal, and I think I rose to the challenge of doing at least some of my own mark-making...

... but the finished piece is really quite a long way from the original in style.

But I think that's one of the joys of courses and tutorials... to be inspired and to let that inspiration interweave with your own creative instincts and pleasures.

Obviously, I don't want to give away Kate's secrets, so in this post I'm just making my way through the pages of the album, sharing some close-ups as we go.

As you can see, my colour palette stayed close to home (but then I've got to be inspired to journal in this, so it's no use having lots of colours which don't feel like me)...

... and it was also very natural to me to create lots of texture when I applied my gesso originally.

I love what that gesso texture adds to the whole feel of the piece.

I didn't go for as much colour variation as in the original, but I think different pages still have different atmospheres.

Some are quite moonlit and bluesy with plenty of Prussian Blue Hue.  Others are much bolder and fresher with the bright Green Gold taking centre stage.

And there are some where cloudy whites soften the whole look...

Lots of lids and other implements (both ends, sometimes) were pressed into action to create the circles and bubbles and dots.

For my own mark-making, rather than the geometrical doodling Kate does so well, I wanted to build a palette of more organic, natural doodles.

The stamps and images I return to again and again are the nature ones, so I thought it would be good if I experimented with creating some nature imagery of my own.

I love a good wild grass stamp, or bare tree branches... I think my doodles are somewhere between the two!

They're done with paint/paintbrush for the thicker lines and ink/dip pen for the finer lines.

And I came up with a leaf shape which was no more than a single placing of the paintbrush tip.  I added some pen work to create the veins of a basic leaf skeleton.

Obviously, I couldn't resist including some of my much-loved word stamps... in various shades of green Archival.

One thing I had an absolute ball with was the scribbling.

As I said when I shared my first Wanderlust pages, putting my own handwriting there felt really scary.  But the scribbly version is so freeing...

... whether scribbling words or just plain scribbling scribbling!

In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I scribbled in pen, in coloured pencil and in paint in different places.

I started to feel that I wouldn't want to journal over the top of all my lovely layers, so I layered blank pages in every section.

Obviously, I distressed the white page edges to give a more textured look.

I do like how you get hints of all the different colours, doodles and mark-making in the layering of the pages.

I also think the white framing effect of these inserted pages sets off the busy doodled pages rather nicely.

There's a pocket built in to the whole thing too, so there are some more gesso'd pages tucked in there, ready to be journalled on.

I have a troubled history with sewing machines (though I'm about to have one final try), so I did my bookbinding by hand with a simple pamphlet stitch.  I left the knots perfectly visible because I think the bookbinding thread is beautiful in itself!

For my looped fastening, I gesso'd some burlap ribbon (this is the back cover - texture paste and drybrushing = happy place).

I love the look of the gesso'd burlap, and it makes it pleasurably stiff and chunky.

So, having been a little wary to start with, I ended up having an absolutely wonderful time creating this.

And the end result really makes me happy.  I call that a result!

Of course, if you're tempted to come and join the Wanderlust journey, it's never too late.  All the videos are always available for viewing and download.  So far, we've only scraped the surface of what's on offer throughout the year. If you want to know more about the many amazing teachers involved as well as all the other benefits, take a look at this post, and as an affiliate I can also invite you simply to...

Click here to sign up for Wanderlust 2016

Thank you for bearing with me through all those photos.  As you know, I like to get everything recorded here in my virtual scrapbook, and when a project has this many pages and details, there just have to be a lot of pictures!  I hope you enjoyed travelling through my travel journal, and I'll hope to be travelling around to visit you in the next few days.

These are my scribbled words (which may have altered slightly in the scribbling!)...

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.

André Gide

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - 

I took the one less travelled by...

From The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost