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.

Two small journals. One is painted cobalt violet with a fuchsia face stenciled on it. The second journal is painted fuchsia with a violet stenciled face on it. Both journals are framed with gold foiled washi tape

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.

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.
After the covers were dry, I mixed some heavy matte gel with the same paint colours I used for the covers.
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.
Lift the stencil up without sliding and you should have a brilliantly clear raised impression of the stencil on your journal cover.
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.
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.
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.

Image showing a trio of miniature journals all hand embellished with paint, objects and stencils. — You’ll see the same technique shown here but with a different colour palette and on a mini hardcover journal I picked up at my local art store.

Journal cover in white, black, gold and copper featuring a stenciled face with a mask drawn on that reads "2020". — Last one with this same stencil. Here a plain white background is used, the stencil is painted with GOLDEN copper mixed with their Coarse Pumice Gel instead of the Heavy Matte Gel. After it’s dried some golden paint is applied with a paintbrush and a black Micron pen to further bring out some of the details.

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 :)

Place your stencil on your page, make sure you leave plenty of room around it to add more details later. (I am using the Mystique Stencil here).

Now grab your pencil and start filling in the stencil. As you can see in the photo I'm not being too fussy about it....you can take more time with this if you wish, but you really don't need to.

Now take your blending stump and start blending. This will smooth out the pencil marks quite quickly.

Remove the stencil and this is more or less what you'll see on your page.

Now go back into your drawing with your pencil, you are going to fill in the missing bits of the gace. The line and shading breaks that you see in the lips and eyes....fill them in. This is an important step to transform the look of the work from an obvious stencil to more of an actual drawing.

Once you are done filling in the line breaks it's time to add a little more emphasis. Here I have gone over the eye lid with my pencil to darken the line as well as add the pupil to the eye.

Time to go back into the drawing with your blending stump. Soften the lines by blending into the lips, smoothing the eyelids and brow line and here's a BIG secret (so shhhhh, don't tell anyone)...by now your blending stump is covered in graphite dust...you can use it to add subtle shading wherever you want. Here I've gone in with just the blending stump to add more shadows around the nose and eye lid.

Using your pencil go ahead and draw in the shape of the face, the hairline and neck. Draw lightly so that you can go back and easily erase and modify your lines until you are happy with what you've drawn.

The finishing touches...here I've gone back and repeated all the techniques we've just covered but using my A Rose by any other name, A little Birdie told me and Free as a Bird stencils to add additional details into the headdress and portrait.