I’ve really been making an effort to step outside of my comfort zone this year – this includes my foray into the world of art journaling. I love how many tutorials and videos are available all over the web – they’re so helpful for a newbie like me. Many of them are perfect for my 15 minute projects. Some end up taking a whole lot longer. Take for example this tutorial that the wonderfully talented Ronda Palazzari posted this morning, explaining how to recreate her card from the Cocoa Daisy blog hop. I eagerly attempted to recreate it. My first attempt:

Hmm…where’s the embossed image? Please excuse the book paper also – it was a friend’s cast-off. I think I’m going to have to find something less political for future projects! I assumed that the stamp I used had too many details so I found a bolder stamp for attempt #2:

It’s slightly better – you can kind of see the image. I’ve included a detail shot below. The swirl is on the top left:

Then I tried another tack. I was using ultra-fine embossing powder so I switched to ultra thick to see if that would help (of course my problem could be that these products of mine are 8 years old, I haven’t tried embossing in a while…). I also gave up on the book paper and just tried watercolor paper. Much better.

Of course I still don’t really know how to use my wax pastels but I’m having fun trying! Any thoughts on whether I can claim Calvinball points for any of these?