2022 – Let your dreams soar – Art Journal Page

Happy New Year lovely creative souls!! Tammy aka Tambarambaa with you today sharing an art journal page inspired by the year ahead.

I always find those days between Christmas and New Year a lovely time to press pause, take a deep breath and reset. Yes it’s time to realign my priorities and head into the year with positivity and a desire to be authentically ME!

Art Journal Page with a fresh bright floral background and grungy circles and a butterfly

TCW provided me with some amazing goodies to play with, but the art and goodies are my own.

Colorful art journal page with a rainbow floral background, circles and grunginess

I began by laying stencil TCW810 Blooming Garden (12×12 size) over my page ensuring that all parts of the page are underneath the stencil.

I then used a spatula to swipe TCW9011 Matte Gel Medium through the stencil, ensuring that I cover the entire page. Now I gently lift the stencil and allow to dry thoroughly. This is a good time to wash your stencil. As you will see in my process photos, I don’t generally clean my stencils, I just keep adding paint and ink – some of them are gorgeous works of art! However, whenever using any of the mediums, I immediately place in some water to clean.

swiping gel medium through a floral stencil

Once thoroughly dry, it’s time to add some color. I haven’t played with my Dylusions Ink Sprays for so long, so I decided to grab those. I just love how vibrant they are.

I began with the palest color, yellow, and spritzed a spray through the center of the page. DON’T go nuts, just one spray is enough. Now I grab a wet baby wipe, and gently rub the yellow outwards. Doing it this way gives you some control, and makes the color blending so easy.

adding spritzes of ink spray and spreading with baby wipes to create a rainbow background

I repeated this process with pink, fuchsia and teal. I love the pops of green and orange that appear – happy little accidents! When rubbing the color outwards, you don’t need to go all the way to the edge – of course you can if you wish, but I like to leave a bit of white space. It gives the page a more artsy feel.

This looks gorgeous just the way it is. It would make a beautiful card by adding a simple sentiment. BUT those who know my work, know that I just can’t help adding a touch of black. I love a bit of grunge (PLUS there’s one little muddy area that I want to cover up – yep there’s some method to my madness – a strategically placed circle or butterfly covers many little oopsies).

So I grabbed a few stencils with smaller patterns. First, I used TCW936 Messy Writing, and sponged some black paint through a section of the stencil onto some white cardstock. I then repeated this using the stripes from TCW886 Shape Landscape, and then some of the mini patterns in TCW539 Patterns. This part doesn’t need to be perfect as I will cut circles from these sections.

Once dry, used TCW926 Bubble Rebound Stencil to trace some different sized circles and then cut them out.

sponging black paint through stencils and trimming these into circles to create handmade embellishements

I then added some texture to the background using TCW384 Well Rounded Stencil and black paint, sponged through using a makeup sponge. Plus I added a few mandatory flicks of paint.

This prevents the circles from looking just plonked on the page. It grounds them and helps pull the layout together.

adding painty splats and rings to the rainbow background using a stencil and black paint

Now it’s time to adhere the circles. I then scribbled around the edges with a black paint pen.

Next – a focal point. As I said I’d been thinking about the year ahead, and as butterflies represent growth, I decided to stamp one onto white cardstock using black archival ink. Stamp TCW2210 Uplifting Sentiments was perfect for this. I cut out the butterfly, and adhered just down the center stem part, allowing the wings to have some dimension.

I then stamped a few sentiments around the edges of the circles. TCW2210 Uplifting Sentiments has some quotes that are curved which sat perfectly around the edges of the circles.

I also stamped a larger sentiment ‘Let your Dreams soar’ from TCW2209 Beautiful Sentiments onto white cardstock and cut this out in a circle shape, adding some scribbles as my title.

stamping a butterfly and adding to page as a focal point

I also added a touch of journaling around the edges of the circles.

close ups of circles and stamping and journaling around the edges
recording dreams and goals for 2022 onto a rainbow butterfly art journal page

There you have it! A bright colorful page to mark the beginning of 2022.

art journal page celebrating 2022. Rainbow background in blue, green, yellow, orange and pink with black grungy accents

Wishing you a wonderful 2022 – I hope that it brings you good things especially in these uncertain times. I hope spending time with your art and creativity allows you to process things and sparks joy in your life, bringing you much needed comfort.

I know how grateful I am for my art. It allows me to block out the rest of the world and lose myself, and I also love that it connects all of us! So I’d love you to leave me a message or comment and let me know if this inspired you, or if you have some creativity goals for yourself this year – in fact anything, I’d just love to hear from you all.

Much arty love,

Tammy Klingner aka Tambarambaa – TCW Design Team Member

PS Don’t forget you can find me on my BLOG or on Instagram, and don’t forget when sharing your creations add the tag #tcwstencillove to allow us to see it!

6 thoughts on “2022 – Let your dreams soar – Art Journal Page

  1. Tammy you are as always inspiring and I love your page and process. Yesterday i created a page from a December retreat, using butterflies in part, with a similar message, that we need to allow our selves to fly and grow, just because we can ..

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