Ciao Bella Inspiration: Creating Stunning Art Journal Spreads in Minutes

April 25, 2025

Ciao Bella Inspiration: Creating Stunning Art Journal Spreads in Minutes

Ever feel like you don't have time for art journaling? I'm here to show you how to create beautiful and inspiring pages in minutes! Okay minutes maybe stretching the truth a little but this double page spread took 20 minutes for start to finish. The time consuming part of those 20 minutes was probably the cutting out.

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Something NEW from Ciao Bella Paper

At the start of this year, Ciao Bella brought out a new concept - Ephemera and Junk Journal Books. They have everything you need to get you creating art journal pages. Alternatively use the elements in your scrapbooking or card making. For this post, I am using the Secret Garden Junk Journal & Ephemera Book.

The books are a mix of ephemera pieces, stickers, backing papers, tags, pockets with everything being around one theme. Ciao Bella have now released 8 books in total and they have proved incredibly popular. Possibly one downside is that you do have to cut the different elements out as they are not kiss cut Myself, I don't mind this but understand if others do.

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Sharing an idea ...

I have created a reel showing how the two pages came together using the Ciao Bella Paper Secret Garden Ephemera Book and have added it to this blog post. I wanted to show when making the pages, how everything worked beautifully together. Further down the post, you can see close up photos of the page and I have added additional description.

In the reel I show -

Adding a little ink with a blending sponge as a starting point
How I used the page to both frame my pages but also "set the scene"
How adding the additional elments give the illusion of perspective
Adding the stickers takes your eyes away from the cut out edges and makes everything blend
Adding the focal image and choosing a quote that matches the pages, finishes the look

However if loading the page is slow, please pop over to my YouTube Channel as I have also uploaded the reel there too. Watch the reel HERE or click on icon below.

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Describing the pages

In the Secret Garden Ephemera Book there was one page that really sparked my mojo. It was of a complete scene but I could see the potential of cutting into the page to create two focal elements - ie, make the page go further. You can see how I did this in the reel. Also placing each side on opposite pages makes two pages become one.

When I create pages like this, I do not always stick the images down fully as it gives me a chance to tuck other elements in to then make a new scene. I did just this with the beautiful summer house/arbour image and then added a wonderful fountain image to complete the look.

I added a few stickers as another layer, an ephemera ticket and also a lantern. The latter was from the initial page design and it felt a shame not to use it. Adding the stickers also takes away from the cut edges and helps with the perspective.

On the opposite side, I added lots more flower stickers, a beautiful focal image and a sentiment/quote that I thought worked with the theme of the page -

Her heart was a secret garden and the walls were very high.

Because the stickers are transparent, they blend in beautifully with the inked background and suddenly appear as if they are part of the whole garden scene.

I also decided to stick to the one ink background colour - distress oxide twisted citron - as I thought that the imagery did not need to be over shadowed by lots of inking. This was added using a blending sponge. Also I didn't go for seamless blending but embraced the light and dark spots.

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Have you seen the ephemera books from Ciao Bella Paper? If new to art journaling, they are perfect way to get you hooked on to journaling.