Has anyone seen the Smash books lately? I just saw them for the first time in a Target, and was fascinated and so inspired by them. If you haven't seen them, check out the video below to get an idea of what it is! As much as I really wanted to buy the Smash book, I fought the temptation because I had literally just made my own art journal about a week before hand. I was inspired from tons of pictures on Pinterest, but since seeing the Smash brand, I've become even more inspired! I ended up buying one of the Smash sticks, it's a hot pink ink pen on one end, with a glue stick on the other! This is perfect for on the go, and comes in different colors.
Anyways, I made my own Art Journal / "Smash" book not too long ago. It's about time I showed the step by step process of it!
First, I took a simple old spiral sketchbook that had been sitting around my room. Unfortunately, I didn't think to take a picture of it at this stage. After that, I glued a couple pages to the cover and covered it with gesso. Then I took a ziploc bag and filled it with gesso, snipped off a corner and then squeezed the gesso onto the cover in a scale like pattern. I used cardboard to help shape some of the gesso.
It took overnight for the cover and gesso to dry. The important thing is that you shouldn't move it! Or else the gesso will slide around and turn into a mess. The gesso does crack, but I used some spackling medium to fill the cracks.
Once the gesso was completely dry, I gave it a coat of Mod Podge to make sure it wouldn't keep cracking. Then I watered down some acrylic paints and created layers of colors before coating it with brown. It turned out beautiful and took on the appearance of wood. (I was going for leather, but the wood look was pretty amazing too!)
It took several layers to fill in all the cracks of the gesso, but after the paint dried I dusted sections of the book with silver and gold dust. The silver went over the scaley portion of the book in the top right corner, I was aiming for the look of dragon scales. Then I covered the dusted parts with mod podge to seal them in.
Almost finished! Just time for some finishing touches. I added a few semi-precious stones and mardi-gras necklace using mod-podge. I also took a leather cord and began to wrap it around each and every spiral.
The last thing I did was take some of the remaining leather cord, a piece of scrap gold metal and feathers and created a book mark. I absolutely loved the outcome!
It turned out gorgeous, and I love that it is completely 'me' and no one else has anything quite like it!
I hope to get some pictures of my first entries. My goal is to enter something into this every day, it's so much fun and calming that I don't think it will be a problem. I think it will actually help me during all the stress of moving and finding a job.
So tell me, have you made your own art/smash journal? Tell me about it! And if you're thinking about creating your own, my tip to you is to have FUN! Make it completely yours, and don't be afraid to expirement with it!
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