I Love My Blunnies – AJ Page Celebrating Blundstone Boots and All Things Aussie

Hello everyone,

I hope you are all staying safe and getting your craft on during this surreal lockdown time.

So today, I have a new spread for my art journal to share with you, which I made for one of the June challenges that I had wasn’t planning to enter.

This is the mood board for the June Kraft+ Challenge, and the colours are navy and yellow.  This is not a colour combo that I enjoy.  I wouldn’t wear it and it reminds me of IKEA, so I wasn’t going to enter this month.

But then, I was in Boots and then they handed me my purchases in this bag.  They used to have white bags but recently they have switched to kraft bags.  The logo has always been blue so no big deal but then I turned the bag over and they had used this little NAVY and YELLOW sticker to close it!!!!   So I started thinking that this bag would be perfect for a challenge that I wasn’t planning on entering. And then my brain went off in a totally surprising direction.

So from one Boots to another type of boots – my favourite boots, Blundstones!  So I decided to make a AJ spread dedicated to the best boots in the world.  I was going to take a photo of my boots and stick it on the page but then I decided to sketch my boots instead.  So that’s what I did!  I drew them on cardstock and then opted for watercolour but I had to be careful because it was cardstock and not watercolour paper.  I actually didn’t think watercolour would give me the colour I wanted but they turned out just as I hoped.

One the left hand page, I glued down the Boots kraft bag, and on the right page, I covered it with Kraft coloured ink as the page was manilla.  Then I used the tissue paper from the Blundstone box which I’ve had for a few years now (yes I never throw anything away) and collaged some of it to both pages.  I fussy cut my boots and tried them on for size on the page.

I was a little stumped as to what the yellow component was going to be and then I thought I would paint some Australian Wattle flowers on both pages – perfect!  I used clear gesso on both pages first and then used Paperartsy Fresco Chalk Paints to paint the flowers.

Here’s a close up of some of the Wattle flowers and the Blundstone tissue, which you can see is printed with words that describe the boots.

Final touches, I used the leftover yellow paint to edge the pages and I added an Australian flag patch and the I LOVE MY BLUNNIES stamping.  Boots (the chemist) was founded in 1849 which is what it says on the bag but since this page became about the Blundstone boots, I added a bit of the tissue paper that had the date that Blundstones started – 1870 – which is almost as old as the chemist!

On the right hand page, I added the little navy and yellow sticker and the stamped Blunnies word.

And here’s the finished spread complete with my little Aussie flag!

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