It's a wrap

I hope you had a fabulous Christmas day and are still enjoying all the festivities. Ours was awesome and so special having Daisy here and sharing the excitement of her finding that Santa "had been!!" on Christmas morning. We have the team staying until tomorrow and my Hb is off until after the new year so we are still in celebration mode here.

Today I am entering my final piece into a the dictionary challenge which has been running over at the Craft Barn for the whole of this year. Yes I have made 26 art journal pages from A-Z! It has been a huge amount of work and sometimes (when I was on holiday) it was really hard to get my piece made but I never missed one and I now have some lovely pages to look back on in my journal.

My very first piece in January was B for beginning........

For the first few entries I made double pages until I realised I would not have space in my art journal if they were all double spread, so I then created single pages.
I decided though for the grand finale I would create one more double page. The letter is P and I decided to use P for photograph. Photos are a huge part of my blog and my life so it seemed most appropriate.
As you well know I am firmly attached to my camera and it travels everywhere with me. Recently I was looking at some old photos on the Internet and came across little calling card photos called CDV (Carte de Visite) which were taken in the Victorian times. I bought a couple as I thought I could add them to my own family antique photos I own in some of my mixed media pieces.
Just look at this Victorian cutie.

 I cut out the page from my vintage dictionary

I decided to do use some photos of my darling granddaughter from this year but I was inspired by my recent purchases to make them look Victorian by printing them out in sepia.
You can see another CDV I bought in the top right hand corner of the photo below.

I made my final choices of  photos down to CDV size (4" by 2 1/2 ") and made card mounts just like the Victorian calling cards.

I rounded the edges and added the "initials" D and J for  Daisy and Jane (which also happens be Daisy's second name).  I also added wrote where they were taken

To create my "Victorian photo album pages" in my art journal I started to add lots of Gothic touches. I added texture paste through my flourish stencil and used old paper colours of distress inks and stamps. I also added touches such as ink splats and water marks to make the pages look antique.

As this was a double spread I also made a special gilded frame for one of the photos. I added crackle and inks to a card cut using the ornate frame by Tim Holtz.



I also die cut an inner frame and some flourishes, applying Treasure gold to the edges to make them look gilded.

So then it was time to put my pages together...here is my P for photograph page.

and some close ups

The photo below was taken in the summer in my studio, Daisy was crafting with me and wearing the necklace I had just made her....how much joy is there on this sweet face.

and one last shot

I have also put a collage together showing all the 26 letters I made this year.

Gosh when I see it together it brings back some fantastic memories of 2016. Many of them are the joyful times I spent with my darling Daisy....how I love that little sweetheart.

So it's a wrap.....all 26 letters made and I have an art journal full of fun times...and still some spare pages for some 2017 creativity.

I would like to enter my art journal pages into the following challenges;

The Craft Barn dictionary challenge P mine is for photograph
Deep Oceon absolute No 1 card or project 2016 This really is fitting for the challenge...I have loved making all 26 letters. 

                                                        The paper girls 2/3 anything goes

Cute card Thursday 2/3 anything goes

Creative Inspirations anything goes with optional sketch #265

That's Crafty 2/3  anything goes

                                               Happy Little stampers anything goes with dies

Enjoy eating, drinking and making merry and thanks for popping by today. I will be back once more before we see the end of the year with a review of Jane's Journal for 2016.

We're off to enjoy a long walk with everyone including Bear.

Bye for now,

Jane x