Pause, Relax, Unwind

I have recently been trying out art journaling as a way to just create and try to unwind. I started with Everything Art's 5 day re-boot. I enjoyed having a go, so signed up for their 100 small steps. I have completed a few of the days, but have come to the realisation that I am not enjoying the process at all, and that the journaling side is really not for me. I also was falling out of love with my spiral bound journal, as I just wanted to cover the whole page with colour - and that was virtually impossible. It also meant that the two pages did not flow together. Don't get me wrong - I LOVE the Pink Pig journals, and have invested in both an A4 and A3 version so that I have scope for much larger areas - but, for this, I wanted something fairly compact and not spiral bound. I have ended up with Arteza's 14cm square (roughly 5 1/2 inches) watercolour sketchbooks. The paper is 230gsm - and seems plenty heavy enough for what I want to do.

Rather than trying to follow a prompt - which I think was another thing I was struggling with - I decided on a colour palette, and just spent some time looking through my stamping stash to see what jumped out. I ended up with the mandala - Spectrum Noir Colorista Background 3 stamp - texture stamps from Crafter's Companion Textures collection, and words from Crafter's Companion Destinations.

I used Antique Linen, Tea Dye and Ground Espresso Distress Oxides for the background. I stamped the mandala with Harmony Waterproof Ink in Pebble (was meant to be Rustic Brown but picked up the wrong one). It didn't stamp very well, so I went over it with a brown Sharpie. I then painted it using my ancient watercolour tin. 

I have to admit to being happier with the outcome of this than perhaps I was with previous pages. We'll have to see how it goes - and whether I can follow my own advice to pause, relax and unwind. 

Happy crafting,

Cxxx