February Calendar Journal Page

Hi Everyone hope you all have been keeping well in this cold weather!  I hope that summer comes soon LOL.

I have my sister visiting me this month for a few days (I was at hers last month) and we did our calendar pages together again - however in my rather cramped corner of a small room rather than her lovely large roomy airy new craft room.  But despite the cosy quarters we still both managed to come up with a great calendar page each.

This is my effort for the month of February. 

Most people think of valentines day when they think of February but to be honest I find it the most dismal month of the year. After all the festivities over Christmas and New Year, then I have my birthday to celebrate the middle of January, then comes February!! So to say I always feel flat this month wouldn't be understating the issue and to top it all usually the weather is miserable and cold!! Ok moan over LOL!

So I think my page this month rather reflects my feelings toward the month. The dark and dreary background is a great backdrop for the hope of the coming spring!!!

Don't get me wrong, I didn't plan it that way, its just the way it turned out!!!

I started this month knowing that I wanted to do some sort of shadow box so that seemed like a good place to start.

I inked a spare piece of paper with Dylusions sprays and did some water splatters on in and dried it off.  I then cut it into 1.5" squares and drew on my inner lines to create the illusion of the inside of a box.  Then I used Black soot distress ink pad and a black pan pastel to darken the intner surfaces!!  I was well pleased with this as a start but was stumped as to what do for the background.  Obviously with my day squares being so bright I wanted a contrast so ended up spraying black and brown Dylusions inks onto my page and sprinkled it with rock salt!!  I love this technique every time I use it!! then as it was drying Ispritzed some perfect pearls mica spray over the top.  I finished drying it with the heat tool and gently brushed off the salt!!

For what was suppose to be a dreary background it ended up looking rather lush!! Isn't it always the way!

So I glued my squares in place and was rather pleased with the effect.  

Then it was a case of finding a focal point and that's where this lovely character from Rick St Dennis digi downloads came in.

I Coloured her (well I think of it as a her!?!?!) with inktense pencils and various other colour pens so that she was bright and cheerful! (A quick layer of glossy accents on the eyes is always a lovely finishing touch!)

Last but not least was the stamps for the month and year and I used the lovely sets from Tim Holtz but didn't want them too in your face so did them in black archival and outlined them lightly in white.

I had thought to put more on - my usual quote and other embellishments but I decided in this case that less was more.  

So come on February - bring it on!!!!

xxxx hugs xxxx