Well, here I am again..and what a summer it was. I’ve moved to a new home, turned a year older, sent my girls back to college and now I’m ready for some art making… .and what better way to begin again? By doing a blog hop with StencilGirl designer, Mary Nasser. Mary just designed 4 new stencils. I was so excited to participate in this hop with many other artists you can see below, in a minute. What a fantastic crowd to hop along with. Thank you, Mary, for asking me to participate.
I chose this stencil:

A journey came to mind when I saw this stencil… and how perfect for me since I just moved to a new city. I decided to make a journal with covers out of polymer clay. A “Journey Journal”. This measures about 3 1/2 ” x 4 1/2″.
Let’s begin our own journey with this process, shall we? Hang on tight, grab your favorite comforting beverage and enjoy the ride, cuz it’s a lot of pictures. Hey, it’s my comeback.. I’m going big. Chop chop.
I started with, of course, Polymer Clay, in my favorite color, turquoise. Condition it until is soft and pliable. I used my pasta machine, that is only used for clay (not food). As a matter of fact, anything you use for clay from your kitchen, should never be used with food again. Click on pictures for close ups.

I took the stencil and the clay and ran it through my machine together so the map would impress the clay.

Cool, huh? I did this twice for the front and back cover of my journal.
Now, I needed a book template to follow, so I took my trusty coasters.. the ones I collect from restaurants and made sure the clay was as big as the coaster. Now, these are my covers.

Next up…making the pages to go inside. I used Bristol paper and traced the coaster onto the paper and cut out about 8 pages.


I stacked the pages together, but had to make them a bit smaller than the covers. So, I scraped the sides with scissors and roughed them up… you can see the edges below (a “Distrezz it All” tool would be perfect for this). Then I had to make the holes for the binding. I took my awl and poked 3 holes on the top side using the coasters as a guide. In the meantime, I baked my covers in my clay dedicated oven. Let cool once done.

Once i had all the pages aligned, I clamped them together. The used my big puncher (god, what is that called), to punch the holes in the clay covers.

With me so far? This is not even the fun part. Stay with me now.
Once the clay covers had their holes and lined up with the pages, it was time to antique them. What is “antiquing”? Well, it’s taking brown acrylic paint and pushing into the grooves of the textured clay. Then you wipe it off and leave the paint to sit in the textured valley’s, if you will. So, it looks old and vintagey.


Now, once you get the paint to where you want it, then let it dry. Time to make it shine. I used “Future” floor polish. I know, right? Just brush on one coat with a soft flat paint brush, let dry.

Nope, not done yet…more fun coming your way.
It’s time to make those covers come to life. First, I glued one page to the front and back cover. I made a bunch of my “button n’bellishements”, cuz I needed more… especially hearts…. then added a few metal charms. I used glitter glue to highlight a couple of the highways and I even cut out the route sign shape from Mary’s map and made a clay piece from that. I also took a text rubber stamp and stamped onto the covers. I used Elmer’s Squeeze Caulk to adhere the paper down and Helmar Glue for any embellishments.. I just love that glue.

ABOVE: With a small alphabet stamp set and with white acrylic paint, I stamped the word “journey” on the cover over a black acrylic edge. Let me say that this journal went through many transitions. I had ugly moments, or as my friend, Carolyn Dube says.. an “OOPS”! Oh yes.. many of those.
I had a piece of suede leather rope to tie the book together, but then I thought it needed a solid binding edge to grab onto. I made this twisted piece of clay,.. baked and antiqued it. Then tied 3 separate pieces of the suede through each hole.


That’s it, my friends. I really hope you enjoyed this “journey” with me.
Now, it’s time to go visit the other blog artists to see what they did with Mary’s stencils. I can’t contain myself. I’ll meet you there.
StencilGirl Talk
Mary C. Nasser
Mary Beth Shaw
Jessica Sporn
Janet Joehlin
Heather Haymart
Judy Shea (that’s meeeeeeeee)
Pam Carriker
Nancy Wethington
Talk2TheTrees
Corrine Gilman
Rose Wilde
Nancy Curry
Kristen Powers
Carolyn Dube
Maria McGuire
AND.. that’s not all… screeeeech…. halt…… There will be a give away for this hop. Yup, it’s true.
Mary and StencilGirl will be giving away a set of four of her new map stencils. ALL the comments on each blog, above, will be eligible for the drawing. Just leave a comment by 11:59PM Central Time on October 4th. The more blogs you comment on in the blog hop, the more chances you have of winning!
As always, thanks for stopping by. I love hearing from you and appreciate your comments.
Judy ♥ ♥ ♥