Pawmade presents

Well hello there. It's Horace here with you today to share some pawmade pawsomeness with you. Being unable to work means we often have a lack of pawket money with which to buy presents, but of course we still want to give to our friends. After searching Youtube for tutorials of pawmade gifts, we came across Jenniebellie's videos. She is passionate about using what you have to make beautiful gifts. If you haven't heard of her before, check out the link. We've watched almost all her videos and have been collecting the card from latte boxes, cereal, snack bars... Well, anything that comes in a box, to use as material for art journals. I thought we would have enough saved now to make a journal or two and get us started on birthday pressies for next year.





Jenniebellie's tutorial is ace, easy to follow and inspirational too. I made a start while I watched her Cereal box journal tutorial. I started by sealing down all the flaps, as Jennie suggests, for extra reinforcement.


Voila.



Goodness. I've made a fair few


I then added a coat (well it is winter) of Gesso as a base. I left this to dry completely before adding any other paint.



Then it was on with the decorating. For the journal below I scrunched brown paper then adhered it to the box with PVA glue, and added paint over the top, making sure to brush between the scrunched paper so there were no brown patches.


I then brayered some orange paint on. That produced a great effect as it only caught on the bumpy bits of the cover. Over that I went a bit Gesso mad, and flicked it from a paint brush, at a great height. Unfortunately, when I looked down, I found I'd also Gessoed the laminate floor. Oops!


I painted the rest of the journal covers in acrylics. First adding one colour, then using a scraping knife effect to add the second colour, in random scrapes.


I then sat and watched paint dry!


Here's one I made earlier, this has collaged papers and a stamped effect for the front cover.


The inside is made from unused envelopes,


12 x 12 patterned papers cut to size,


And a page from our Art Journal Love book, which we decided to rip out and use as journal paper rather than fill the book in as it was. I've started a sketch in this already. I was a bit keen!


The other journals are all sitting patiently on the desk. I'll let them dry overnight then use surplus patterned papers, scrapbook card and any other papers that can be cut to fit for the inside pages. Jenniebellie uses decorated card from cereal boxes for her journal pages (which are known as signatures) but we only had small boxes, and as the pages need to be folded in half to make the signatures, mine would have been teeny tiny. We have a plentiful supply of patterned paper and card here anyway. More than enough to fill these journals and several more besides.

If you have time, pop back tomorrow when we will be posting our annual Guess How Many Bears competition. It's a must do tradition and there will be crafty candy prizes for the winner. I might even include one of my pawmade journals.
With love from the bears