scrappy happiness, part two

i had so much fun creating my little orange and yellow scrappy journal, i decided to ride the inspiration wave and go ahead and finish the front and back covers. i tend to keep my artwork on the very simple side (sometimes almost painfully simple!), so i thought i'd keep my color palette to just two tubes of acrylic paints.....my favorite colors being quinacridone gold and quinacridone burnt orange. and boy, oh boy, does the fabriano artistico paper ever take the paint beautifully!

after the paint dried, i distressed the edges using a foam applicator and a "fired brick" distress ink pad.

next, i used a large heart shape that had been punched out of one of the decorative papers with a scalloped-edge paper punch.......and wrote the journal title using a micron pen.....and then punched a smaller heart next to the title. finally, i used a needle to poke small holes around the perimeter of the heart and did some stitching using one strand of cotton embroidery floss.

for the final touches, i glued the heart onto the front cover, used a white uniball signo pen to add some doodling to both covers, and shaded everything with a 4B pencil.

and now that the front and back covers are finished, it's time to add some sparkle to the inside covers.....more on that tomorrow!