Create Denim Magic

Are you having a creative weekend?

We have a special treat for you today! :)

My super talented friend Riikka Kovasin agreed to guest post on my blog again and this time she is going to inspire us all to open our art journals and create some magic.

You will love the video showing how she created her beautiful journal cover. But that's not all - Riikka's also hosting a giveaway on her blog so there's a chance you too can play with my Denim at home. Good luck all! :)

Hi there! I’m honored to be guesting here at Finnabair’s blog again. She’s always such an inspiration but boy, do I love her products as well! For this post I created a cover for the Denim Art Journal and played with some of the newer mediums as well – like the Sculpture Medium and the Art Stones. 

The great thing about Finnabair's Denim Journal in my opinion is the material and the way you can add and remove the pages from the journal. The denim material is sturdy but also allows you to treat the surface with various techniques and make the journal really your own.
And as the journal is put together with ribbons you can always add and remove pages with ease. Great if you are for example journaling on the go and then want to make the pages into a mini album or store them in another way.

As my idea for this journal was a traveling sort of thing – easy to take out with you to travel the world, far and wide, the cover also needed to fit the idea. And this time I’m not talking about the design and colors but more from a practical point of view. So that’s where Sculpture Medium comes handy.
As you can use it on any porous surface and turn that into rigid and sturdy I chose to cover the whole cover with the medium and also turn those flowers into leather-like or even a bit harder. So even if your journal is having a rough time traveling at the bottom of a suitcase in the middle of jungle, the cover will stay fresh looking! :)

What the medium does, is that it absorbs into the material and when drying turns the material rigid. What this also means is, that the surface of the piece is then coated with a plastic-like, a little bit shiny coat. Such a non-porous surface then needs own kind of paint medium to work. Like acrylic paints, which I used here. If you’d like to color the project with mists or watercolors for example, you’d then need a coat of gesso first to little bit help the coloring part. Another way is of course to color the elements beforehand and then adding the Sculpture Medium. (If you happen to be living in Finland, there’s a tutorial on the latest Ihana magazine about this with the cover shot as well)

I created a video to show you my process with the cover and also share a sneak of the inside of the journal and how it’s made. This is my second voice-over video and I do hope you like it and find it inspiring! 

Thank you for your time! Now if I could ask you to visit my own blog as there’s a raffle there.
I’m giving this journal away so please stop by, leave a comment and be in for the draw!

Xoxo
Riikka

Materials used: