Darcy's Monthly Journal Challenge

In January Darcy started a journal challenge at Paperartsy, using some of her just now released new stamps. She was using a fabulous square paged journal which I loved. So, when I was at Stamperama this time last week, I managed to get hold of one.

This is the result of the first page. Not completely satisfactorily, but I'm happier with it today than I was yesterday... I followed Darcy's instructions (for the most part) in her post here  though I did leave some parts out.  The stencilling under the page I abandoned as I couldn't get any more paint off, so used one of Jo Firth-Young's new stencils on top.  Paint colours are the new Limited Edition Frescos.

 GP mixed with Amethyst and Dusty Teal (love love love!)

 like it at this stage...Lake Wanaka and a Snowflake layer

 hmmm perhaps made a bad choice next... Limelight and Sage, my final neutral layers were Irish Cream and Nougat.

 started rubbing back - hard hard work, by artificial light it didn't like as if much of the paint was coming off... but coming back to it this morning, it was better but I was still very unsure...

 but I went in with stencils anyway - this is one of JoFY's and I used Seaweed and Toffee to highlight the edges. Love this stencil

 I knew I wanted to use this little JoFY mini, on my border but rather than as Darcy had, I just stamped and painted it on the journal not on card too. I used Amethyst and Dusty Teal again, and Chartreuse mixed with a little Chalk to make it more opaque.

 happy now!

final step was some words - one of Lin B's new ones, stamped on card and cut out to paste across the spread.
I know I didn't follow all of Darcy's steps (like the underpage stencilling, or the silhouette image, but this was a great, fun challenge to take part in. Looking forward to next month - well later this month actually - and the journal is fabulous, strong strong paper - all those layers and no holes created even when I scrubbed and scrubbed!
Off to link it to Darcy's journal challenge here now!