Ciao Bella Lu Mania Meaningful Memories: Two Art Journal Projects

I've been having a bit of a tidy-up on my hard drive and discovered something I'd completely forgotten about - a collection of Ciao Bella projects from their Lu Mania Collections, I've made over the last couple of years but never properly shared.

I recently wrote a blog post about using rice paper as ephemera (HERE) and, when I came across one of these projects, I realised I'd been using rice paper as an embellishment without really thinking about it. I suppose it's just something I do!

Ciao Bella created Lu Mania with mixed media and art journaling in mind, so when I first saw the different collections, I knew they were right up my street.

The first collection that grabbed my attention was Meaningful Memories. The main reason? It's all black, white and grey, which meant I could add my own touches of colour.

Dancing

For this page, I dusted off my neglected black square journal and began by adding a backing paper as my starting point. I added a little soft pink to the flower elements. It's a beautiful paper with lots of layers and detail, and I didn't want to take away from that.

I mentioned above about using rice paper as an embellishment, and I really wanted to use the ballerina figure from the A4 rice paper selection that matched the Meaningful Memories Mixed Media Book.

I chose the rice paper image because it was a larger image than the one in the main book. I added it to white card using Cadence Bond & Seal in a satin finish. This was a deliberate decision as I wanted the image to stand out against the matt paper background. I could have used gloss, but I felt that would have created too much contrast.

Once it was dry, I added some colour to the image in pinks and soft green. I'm not entirely sure why green - it just felt right! I thought it would also work as a shadow element against the black and white background.

After cutting the image out, I layered it onto the background, raising it slightly with gel medium.

Whilst the page was drying, I realised it needed a little more colour. Not much, just a few touches. Rather than colouring them myself, I used some Ciao Bella Art Stickers. Because they have a transparent backing, they could blend into the background while giving me those little pops of colour I wanted.

I also seem to have a recurring theme at the moment – not giving my art journal pages a finished quote. I think for this page, the image should be the focus.

Caught on film

When I made this art journal page, I really wanted it to be a complete contrast to the page above.

I used a different journal for this one – an A5 mixed media journal. I took several of the different topper elements and tore them from the pages to give them a torn edge. I did the same with the backing paper before sticking it to the art journal page.

I edged each of the torn toppers with black ink and coloured the images. These were then layered over the backing paper in a staggered pattern.

As you probably know if you follow my blog, I do love a bit of fussy cutting, so I couldn't resist cutting out the film strip and every centre panel! I added this to the page where it also helped frame some of the coloured areas on the top topper.

Like before, I added a few of the Art Stickers. This time they helped to extend the design while adding contrasting imagery – numbers, words and labels.

I do like to push both myself and the products to create different looks. I suppose you could say it's about getting value from the products, but more importantly, it's about expanding what we think we can do creatively.

And looking back at these projects has reminded me that sometimes those ideas happen without us even realising we're doing them.

Until next time, take care,

Lou
xxx