I have little notebooks everywhere. All of my purses, bedside table, in the car…I love them and always want to be ready when inspiration strikes or a to do list needs to be written down. Yeah, I know, I’m kind of old-fashioned that way, but I love a list!

Here’s a quick look at couple of ways that I have used my latest stencils to make a few journals.

These started out as small kraft paper blank journals from Moleskine, I like these for the paper quality and size but any little notebook will do. The paints and gel medium I used are from GOLDEN Artist Colours.

1. Start by painting your journal covers - I kept these plain and used Cobalt Violet for one, and Quinacridone Magenta mixed with Fluorescent Pink for the other.

2. After the covers were dry, I mixed some heavy matte gel with the same paint colours I used for the covers.

3. Position your stencil (Pretty as a Peacock Mini) on your cover and using a palette knife apply a thick-ish layer of the paint/gel combo over your stencil, kind of like icing a cake. It’s pretty obvious I think, but I used the fuchsia paint mix on the violet background and the violet paint mix on the fuchsia background.

4. Lift the stencil up without sliding and you should have a brilliantly clear raised impression of the stencil on your journal cover.

5. CLEAN your stencil! When you are using any of the heavy gels or pastes with your stencils it’s important to clean them off right away.

6. Wait, and let the cover dry. Because we added the heavy gel and applied a thick layer it’s going to take a lot longer to dry than before. Ideally leave it alone for a few hours.

7. Once completely dry, I just added a little bit of washi tape at the top and bottom of the stencil to add a little more flourish.

I have four mini face stencils and any of them would work great with this technique. Have fun making your own mini journals! Here’s the link to StencilGirl if you want to check them out :)