May Calendar Journal Page

Hi again everyone - I promise this is my last post for May!! but I had to get this one in before the clock turned midnight and it was June already!!! Lol!

As I told you with last months calendar journal page I have been struggling with my creativity at home and I forced myself to do the calendar journal page and then wasn't so happy with the results.  This month I decided to try not to force it so much and just see what happened!!

So for once I started with the day spaces - I had bought a box of A4 sticky labels a while ago and came across them at the beginning of the month and suddenly wondered if they would take ink well. So one day when I had a few minutes space I started blending some distress ink onto one of the sheets with a blending tool. My thinking was - sticky backed so will be easy to put on the page.

It took the ink beautifully and even let me ghost by dropping water on it and blotting off!!!

So I cut it up to the required number rounded the corners and edged them with vintage photo distress ink!!

Step one completed - no sweat!!  I was very happy as I usually do this step at the end and struggle with it!! 

These are the colours that I used!

Next came the background!!! I decided that I wanted the page to be very bright as lately all my work seems to end up getting very dark and grungy!!  Seems easy!!! Well not so much so!!

Attempt - one!!

 Nice bright similar colours (mica sprays for some bling) - but really didn't work with the space squares!!!

Attempt - 2!

So tried something darker so it would be a contract to the spaces. (used masking fluid dribbled on to created the lines and splats then Black white and grey Dylusions ink sprays and a gold mica spray! threw on some rock salt while it was drying)

 Loved it but again didn't really work with the squares!!!

The background I eventually used was a mop up page (done a few months back) which I added some yellow spray to and added some water splatters which I blotted off!! Dylusions inks of course!!

this one worked!!

So this is what it turned out like.

After randomly adding the squares (taking the backing off wasn't as easy as I thought it would be - note to self - bend a corner backwards and the backing slides off a little bit so you can get an edge lol) I found there was a couple of strips of the paper left so they got stuck on to!!

For the month I had been playing around with chip board letters which you got the letter and the surround and I had used the surround as a template to add crackle paste to the black/grey background to create May!  while I was playing with the crackle paste I had added it to the letters!!

So while trying to sort out my craft desk so that I could finish this page I came across the letters and they worked perfectly.

In the same sorting out session this butterfly fell out of one of my journals ( I had coloured it in on one of Kate Cranes classes and hadn't used it yet) onto this page and It looked so good I just glued it down!! Love it when that happens!

So the final touches were to colour May with some distress ink using a blending tool and then rubbed on a bit of Stickles to make the letters shine.  I also added some to the butterfly wings (they aren't stuck down so flap when you move the page) and put some clear crackle on its body to add dimension - none of these show in the picture!!

I did play around with the idea of adding the year and a quote but I decided I liked it as it is!

So it was finally done - last day of May! but I'm happy with it and I feel like my MOJO is slowly coming back.

I hope you all have a MOJO filled Month!!

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