Inspired by Marta at Maremi SmallArt’s YouTube Video: How to Break a Blank Vintage Page
You can watch my video here: Butterfly Journal Page
Items used:
The below links (except Maremi’s) are affiliate links and, at no additional cost to you, I receive a small percentage of each sale or in some cases reward points that can be redeemed for discounts and free items.
- Papers flowers, Butterflies and words from Maremi’s SmallArt:
- Heavy Gesso (Art basics is used in video, but there are a lot of brands that all work great)
- Matte Gel/Gel Medium
- Old papers and Corrugated cardboard
- Use your stash or even todays junk mail
- Dylusions Creative Journal Square Black
- Staz-on Ink pad
- Stamps
- There are a lot of great stamps out there – use what you have, or here are a few great ones from ranger: Ranger Ink
- Tim Holtz Ideology Washi tape
- Dr Ph. Martin’s Bleed proof white
- Ranger Distress Splatter brush
- Ranger Ink or
- Amazon
- Faber Castell Pitt Pen
- Derwent sketch Pencil – Dark Wash
I created this page first, while watching Marta’s tutorial.
After creating this page, I was inspired and wanted to add it to my Art journal – so I grabbed the journal and started creating. The same process used for both this small piece plus the finished journal page.
Oh, one thing… I did forget to use a stencil on the bigger piece, so if you want to add that, I simply added white Gesso through a stencil in the background


First I covered the background with Tim Holtz Washi tape (and attached the small page into my book with the washi tape)
Then I randomly added vintage papers to the background – this adds additional depth and visual interest but doesn’t take over the whole page.


Here I added some Gesso and added some texture by drawing in the wet Gesso. Makeing sure the gesso is thin enough that I could still see some of the background images.
After the Gesso was dry I randomly stamped on the background using black Staz-on ink and a few stamps from my stash.


Next I put together the background for the focal point… using old papers, cardboard and string. I tried a few things and moved stuff around until I found the right placement.
Once I found the right placement and combination of items/paper I use gel medium to attach them together, wrapped them in string from my stash and used gel medium to attach it to the page.


Using Bleed proof white with a ranger distress splatter brush and some Dylusions Black Marble Ink spray with a little water to add black and white splatters.
I then fussy cut some images from Maremi SmallArts and added them as the focal point, added some wood cut outs and leaves. I used Gel Medium to attach all the elements.


For the Final Steps I added word stickers from Maremi’s SmallArts and outlined the words with Derwent sketch Pencil – Dark Wash and outlined the page with black Faber-Castell Pitt pen.
And viola my page is all done!! I really enjoyed this process and creating this page, please let me know what you think and if you created something similar.
