I had a few sheets of watercolour paper lying around that I had sprayed with Dylusions inks a few weeks ago for testing. I wasn't sure what to do with them, until inspiration hit me this morning. I cut them into small cards, slightly larger than ATC size, and stamped some flower images on them in black archival ink. I used Rangers Jet Black ink pad, but there are lots of other similar products that would be just as good. I outlined the stamped images with a white Uniball gel pen and added some text and borders as well. You can use letter stamps instead of hand lettering if you prefer. I like how the black and white designs stand out against the coloured background. These cards are super easy to make and I find doodling very calming and therapeutic.
A word of caution about the Dylusions inks though: you may find that some of them fade rather quickly when exposed to sunlight. I left a sheet of paper originally sprayed bright pink in the conservatory about 4 weeks ago and it has gone completely pale! Therefore, be careful not to use these inks on projects exposed to bright sunlight - it would be a shame to see your hard work disappear in front of your eyes within just a few weeks. They should be safe inside your journals though, I assume.
I recently bought a pad of A4 watercolour paper to experiment with. On the same day I also received my order of Dylusions ink sprays. It didn't take me long for me to put the two together! The results were amazing! I loved blending the colours and let them mingle on the watercolour paper. Some of the colours are so vivid, they almost hurt my eyes! I wasn't quite sure what to do with my inked papers though. In the end I decided to turn them into mini journals. I also cut up a sheet for bookmarks to be decorated later.
When cutting the sheets for my journals, I was careful to make sure that the grain runs parallel to the spine, which seems to be quite important in book binding to ensure it lies flat. My A4 watercolour paper had the grains run along the long side (in portrait orientation) so I just simply cut the A4 sheets in half to make 2 X A5 sheets and then folded them in half again to make an A6 journal. I also cut some of the A4 sheets into DL size strips and folded them in half. Here's a better explanation of sizes: A4/A5/A6/A7/DL.
Then I pricked 4-5 holes along the spines and sewed three pages together (using regular sewing thread) to make 6-page mini-journals. I'm not very good with needles and I didn't follow any sewing pattern - just went up and down the holes until I was sure my pages were held securely together.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do with these journals yet. I'll probably use them for some quotes and doodles. I'm thinking along the lines of black and white designs, as they already have too much colour on the background. We'll see. At the moment, I just like looking at them the way they are!
Here's a brilliant tutorial on YouTube by Sea Lemon, that explains this journal binding process much better than I have done!
