In my last post I wrote about Dawn Sokol’s  on-line class called 12.31 Art Journal.  I’ve made a lot of progress the past two days.  Today I finished up the canvas cover for the journal.

This was created on a piece of green duck canvas about 10 inches by 13 inches (I wanted to use up what I already had on hand).  I covered it with a coat of gesso, let that dry overnight and then painted the whole piece using three shades of pink that I mixed.   (I used Claudine Hellmuth’s Studio acrylics because they have a hint of gloss to them when dried).  Once the pink background dried I then sketched the scene of three snowy hills with Christmas trees.  I applied dots of white paint to simulate snow and them smeared them to look like it was really storming and windy as the snow was falling.  I used my sewing machine with a heavy-duty (#18) needle and sewed a zig zag stitch to hem all of the sides.  The finished size is 9 inches tall by 12 inches wide.  When I fold the cover in half, the page size will be 6 inches by 9 inches – a perfect size to carry with me.  I had planned to add some 3-D embellishments but decided to leave it as is (at least for now).  Another tradition has begun.

Tomorrow I will be collecting the pages to make signatures and then sewing them into the  journal.  Stay tuned for more.

I hope to have some graffiti covers and papers to show you soon from Mary Ann Moss’  –  Stencilry class.  Check out her blog – Dispatch from LA – very cool.

Merry Christmas.  Keep it simple and start some new traditions.