I came into the world of papercrafting and mixed media via scrapbooking and I guess if I am truly honest with myself my first love of all of the products that are available are papers - they offer infinite flexibility for those who may not to or have the time to spend time with inks and paints crating their own master pieces for bigger projects. I hope my use of an art journal base from That's Crafty! encourages others to use things for purposes that they may not have been originally intended for. 

I have chosen to work with Craft O'clock Creative Reverie 12 x 12 and A4 Papers. The mix of a bright green with purple and touches of duck egg blue is really fresh and uplifting.

To begin my project I covered both sides of each panel of the book with paper using That's Crafty! Glue used a craft knife to trim close to the greyboard and then a file to neaten all of the edges. Extra detail was added using Ranger Distress Oxide Dusty Concord through Studiolight Grunge Stencil 28.

The edges of each page were stamped with one of the floral images from That's Crafty! Flowers Collection 7 using Ranger Distress Oxide Shabby Shutters before edging the pages with more of the purple ink.

I decided that I would add some extra pages using printed acetate 13 Arts Printed Acetate Rhapsody cutting one 12 x 12 sheet into three pieces and interspersing them through the album

To decorate the album I fussy cut images and topper elements from the paper packs and selected some purple flowers and plastic greenery before adding them to the pages along with some pieces of torn muslin cloth.

For the front of the journal/album I selected a Prima resin frame and added Prima Finnabair metallic wax in electric violet to bring out the detail. I adhered a piece of paper to the aperture and then adhered it to the journal using a piece of greyboard to lift it up slightly allowing me to tuck muslin and fussy cut element underneath it. I then added my decorative elements before cutting apart a  Chipboard word element also by Craft 0'Clock which was coloured with the purple Distress ink. To protect the elements on the cover I covered them with That's Crafty! Acrylic Liquid Wax. Finally I tied lots of ribbons to the book rings that hold the album together and also to the tag piece pages.