All Before Breakfast - Art for Art's Sake.

For my little brother's birthday I'm decorating the front cover of an art journal.  It's A5 size so that it's easily carried about. 

This one I picked up at my local art store. Prices range from $2.95 upwards.

From the Graphics Fairy, I made a collage using this Vintage Ornate Skeleton Key graphic and this Gothic Arch engraving.

While in my photo editing program (I use Picasa) I added the word 'journal' and my brother's initials. I printed this out on the oatmeal coloured A5 card, then trimmed to size.

On the 2nd A5 oatmeal card I printed out various words using different fonts and cut them out, distressed them using the inks before mounting them onto black card cut to size.

Cutting a square into triangles makes a couple of corners to add to the collage.

Next, I cut the white card and the black card to size and rounded the corners on the right side using the punch. 

I added some gold ribbon to the black card which was then mounted onto the white card.

Some tabs were added to one of the word tags and to one side of the collage.

On the black tab the year '2011' is written with white gel pen.

Added the corners distressing with ink as I went.  I finished off the corners with gold split pins. 

More gold ribbon was added to the collage.

All elements were then adhered and layered.

With the journal, I'll include a few pencils and the gift will be complete.

Now, to have breakfast, oh dear, or is that lunch?

I'm linking this post to The Graphics Fairy Brag Monday.  Yes I know...a little late.