November journaling for Country View challenges

 Well hello November, you have snuck in very quietly. Wow just one more month until the festive season really kicks off. 

Winter really is just around the corner but life is still going on down at the ponds and I spotted some swans have recently arrived.

with a single sweet cygnet who still has his juvenile feathers. 

This month I am hosting the challenge over at Country View Challenges and chose the theme of "Anything BUT a card". So just as it says on the tin I would like to see you sharing any crafting projects at all, papercrafts, knitting, sewing etc etc but NO cards this time. 

As always there is a fab £20 voucher up for grabs for one lucky randomly selected winner to spend on the website. What a cool pre Christmas treat that would be. You can find all the details of the challenge and more examples made by my talented teamies here.

For my first design team inspiration for the challenge I decided to open up my art journal which I had for Christmas last year and had yet to use. I thought I might try to make a page a month to record Mother Nature and my thoughts. For this first page I decided to record the colours of late autumn in my garden. My acers are just glowing with colour and are still holding onto their stunning red foliage.

Here is my inspiration, with my beloved studio in the background.

So I opened up the first page of my new journal and added some washi tape for a little background interest.

Next I used mat texture paste through Tim's autumn leaves stencil and left it to dry. 

I used one of my very old but loved Tim Holtz sentiment stamps which I embossed so that it would resist the inks I was about to use.

I used several distress stain sprays , including my new crackling campfire and drying between layers, built up some colour. I also added some script stamping here and there.

I altered some die cut leaves using stamps, stains and distress glazes

I also die cut a couple of spiders' webs and added these to my pages.

Finally I covered over the sentiment and added lots of flicks of tarnished brass stain spray.

After adding a couple of tiny talk stickers I was all done.

Here is my finished November journal page 

with some close ups

and one final shot.

So in the future when I look through my journal I will be able to remember the colours of autumn 2020, one good memory from an unforgettable year. 

I hope I may have inspired you to join in with our November, "Anything but a card" challenge. You can use any stamps/products, the choice is yours. 

You can enter our challenge as many times as you like and combine with other challenges. There is also a £20 crafting voucher up for grabs to the lucky randomly selected winner to spend over on the Country View Crafts on line store. Remember that UK postage and packing from CVC is free on all orders over £7.50! Once again all the details for the November challenge can be found here.

I will be back this Tuesday, 3rd November, to share something very different, and with a definite festive feel. 

Thanks so much for stopping by today.

Back soon

Bye for now

Jane x