Welcome to today's Guest Designer, Jennie !

Today we are welcoming Jennie Atkinson of Live the Dream  as our Guest Designer. Jennie, I'm sure, is known to many of you and her work is beautiful. So, without further ado, let's move on to hear from Jennie.

Hello! Jennie of Live The Dream here and I am very honoured to have been asked to share a project with you today as Guest Designer for the current challenge Happy Holidays. Like everyone else my style has certainly evolved over the years and I really love where I am at the moment reaching for stamps, stencils, paste and gesso for everything from scrapbooking to card making. Gone are the days when everything was clean! Those of you who know me will know that I love making flowers and I love experimenting with new dies and inks to create different shapes.  They are normally the signature style on my shabby chic projects, but today I am sharing an art journal page with you celebrating a wonderfully happy holiday I had in New York back in April - so no flowers!

I really enjoy this crossover style of art journalling and scrapbooking, creating a mixed media background for a photograph and paper collage.

I started with two pieces of cardstock to fit my art journal which I taped together with tissue tape to keep the two pages unified. Texture paste through a stencil came next and then everything got a coating of gesso.

Then the exciting bit! I used Faded Jeans and Broken China Distress Spray Stains. I use plenty of water and mop up a lot before drying with a heat gun. I used Faded Jeans Distress Ink through another stencil for the lettering and also stamped with it here and there.

Then it was stamping with Jet Black Arcival Ink and a bit of spritzing. I find now is a good time to separate the pages and scuff the edges.

Well I was finding the colour a little too strong for the elements I wanted to put on the page, so ………. I sprayed everything with water…… mopped it up …. and hey presto I got a more subdued look.

Whilst everything was drying I put together the items I wanted to use for the collage - all things which remind me of the wonderful time we had.

And then I started layering. A little stamped flourish creeping in there when I thought it looked a little bare!

Finally I sat and dry brushed gesso over the metal and added a little blue and brown ink to tone everything in. 

A fun page bringing back some lovely holiday memories. 

Once again thank you to Sue and the team for the invitation to be here with you today.

Jennie x

Absolutely stunning page Jennie! Thank you so much for sharing it with us and providing even more inspiration for the current challenge, Happy Holidays. If you would like the opportunity to join us as Guest Designer make sure you play along, you still have plenty of time !