Having some fun with a Polaroid Art Journaling Tutorial today. Art Journaling is such a fun way to practice different skills and techniques to use in creative journaling. In today’s tutorial, we are creating a fun layout with a polaroid stamp and some stencils and stamp inks. I have listed all of the supplies down below, and as always, you can find the YouTube video here. Let’s get started!
Polaroid Art Journaling Tutorial Supplies
- Yellow Paper House Junque Journal
- The Sassy Club Say Cheese Stamp Set
- Studio Calico + In a Creative Bubble Stamp Set (discontinued)
- Versafine Pigment Ink in Onyx
- Ranger/Tim Holtz Distress Oxide Inks in Abandoned Coral, Worn Lipstick, Fossilized Amber, Twisted Citron, and Carved Pumpkin
- Ranger/Tim Holtz Distress Inks in Festive Berries, Mowed Lawn, and Wild Honey
- Tim Holtz mini blending tool
- Dylusions Small Stencils “Holes” stencil (discontinued)
- Dina Wakley Media Stencils Lined Circles
- White Sticker Paper
- Acrylic Stamp Blocks
- Pigma Micron Pen in 01 and 08
- Tombow Dual Brush Pen in N15
Polaroid Art Journaling Tutorial Steps
The best part of art journaling is playing and experimenting with different techniques and mediums. For my Stamping Art Journal, I stick to my basics – Distress Inks and Oxides, stencils, and of course, stamps. I shared the stamps I used but you can use any stamps you want. If you don’t have a polaroid stamp, you can definitely draw the boxes yourself.
1. Choose a colour palette
Take a look at your supplies/Pinterest/Magazines, etc, and decide on a colour palette you want to use. I am using orange, yellow, and a yellow-green colour, with bright pink as a pop of colour. Specifically, I am using Worn Lipstick (Distress Oxide – DO), Abandoned Coral (DO), and Festive Berries (Distress Ink – DI), for my background. For the polaroids, I used Fossilized Amber (DO), Wild Honey (DI), Carved Pumpkin (DO), Twisted Citron (DO), and Mowed Lawn (DI). I like to mix the Distress Oxide and the Distress Inks as they are slightly different formulas and can create some interesting visual elements.
2. Choose a Background
Next you are going to want to choose a background. I am using my Yellow Paper House Junque Journal and let the next page colour inspire me. In my journal, it’s pink, but feel free to use whatever paper colour you have. If you don’t have any, you can use the Distress Oxides and Inks to create a fun background (kind of like I ended up creating anyway). You can experiment with magazine or newspaper pages too.
2. Get stamping
Now it’s time to let your background dry and get stamping. Using the stamps you have chosen (in my case, the polaroids), stamp your image. I’m using sticker paper since I wanted the slightly thicker medium. This also saved time with gluing.
When layering images, you definitely want to leave ample time for the images to dry. If you watch my video, there was little dry time in between which resulted in some smudging. I also want to take this opportunity to briefly mention the different stamp inks. The most popular are dye ink and pigment ink. Dye ink is water based so if you use a water based marker, it is very likely to smudge. The Distress Inks and Oxides are dye-hybrid inks so may smudge if using a black dye ink (for the main image). That is why I use a black pigment ink when using the Distress family. For more information on different inks, you can check out my blog post here.
3. Decorate your stamped images
This is the best part! Decorating the stamped images! Using sticky notes, I mask the areas that I want to keep white. So I mask around the inside of the polaroid. Make sure that, if you have multiple images stamped, they are covered too to avoid ruining them by accident.
As mentioned above, the Distress Inks and Oxides interact with each other in cool ways so using stencils, I create fun and interesting backgrounds for my polaroid pictures. I also use Distress Inks and stamped images for fun contrasts too. Once the ink is dry, I stamp wording or images in black over top. I love long written out passages as stamps but you can also recreate that using multiple different word stamps.
4. Add some flair to your background
The pink background in my Junque Journal has some discolouration and I also want to make it pop more, so I go in with the different red inks building layers – including using 2 different stencil types – the Dylusions Holes stencil and the Dina Wakley Circles stencils. This turned out so fun and I was really happy with the look.
5. Bring everything together
Once everything is dry, you can start to pull everything together – deciding on where to place everything and if you would like additional elements. I did some outlining around the circle stencil images that I used in the background. They had blended into the background more than I liked so I outlined them with a Micron pen to add some more visual interest.
Using a craft knife, I cut out 2 of the picture parts of the polaroid stamps to show off the background a bit more and keep the eye drawn to the centre of the page. By having the bright green show up as the centre piece, as well as having the stamped words, the eye automatically rests there, and then takes in the rest of the layout.
Polaroid Art Journaling Tutorial: Techniques to Take With You
Art journaling is such a fun way to practice your skills and experiment. It definitely helped elevate my artistic skill in my journal and build my confidence. Fundamental techniques that I used in this video/tutorial, include masking using sticky notes, layering different ink formulas, and incorporating stencils for more visual interest. These techniques can be applied in so many different ways to so many different things. I have definitely used these in my bullet journal as well.
If you give this tutorial a try, or any of the techniques, I would love to see it! You can tag me over on Instagram @natashamilelrletters. If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to reach out below!
Talk soon!
