January Art Journal Page

I attended a mini art journal workshop with Kate Crane last year and absolutely LOVED it. Haven't tried the techniques out much since then so when I saw the calender challenge at http://thekathrynwheel.blogspot.com/ I decided to have a go!

You'll have to excuse the awful pic but my camera wasn't working and I had to use my mobile phone! If I had to wait for my camera January would be over lol !
 Anyway.... I started with drybrushing different blue acrylics onto the background  and used various things to stamp into it, adding more depth. I stamped 'January' onto card and cut out with a tag punch, inking the edges before adding them to the collage. The 2 magpies were from Prima and I stamped,masked and stamped to get 2 of them. They are there as we have 2 magpies out our front that have been there for 3 months now! The pirate theme is because it's my birthday this month and I'm having a fancy dress do... I'm gonna be a pirate! I doodled onto the magpies to make them into little pirates and then the pirate girl was a digistamp, (Devlish Donna) from http://www.kennykdownloads.com/, I printed it out and added a pirate hat and eye patch and then cut the original face out and added a pic of the great Marilyn Monroe behind it!! The image was coloured in with promarkers before being added to the collage. The days of the month were 4.5cm squares cut from various blue papers from my stash and I stamped various birds onto them from Crafty Individuals and 7 gypsies! It was a challenge working on such a large scale(double sheet of A3) but I really LOVED it. Can't wait to do February's pages.