Scraps Of Brilliance: Once Upon A Time Art Journal Pages

I don't remember playing with paper dolls as a child, but I should have! I do remember having a love of stories, princesses, dolls and make believe, and that has persisted into adulthood, though instead of playing Barbies and writing plays for my sister, cousins and I to perform for our parents, I now channel my love of make-believe into my crafting and writing. I think this is why the Julie Nutting doll stamps have such appeal to me.

We recently started watching the show Once Upon a Time on Netflix, and Evan and I were instantly hooked, and revisiting all the fairytales I loved as a child (along with their "real world" Storybrooke, Maine counterparts in Once) motivated me to start a Once Upon A Time art journal. And Snow White seemed like the natural place to begin (though he doesn't make an appearance here, I am working on a Prince Charming - after all, who is Snow White without Charming?).

Here are my first three pages (which will display as a panel like this once the book is bound) Snow White the Princess, Snow White the Bandit and Mary Margaret Blanchard, Snow White's timid (initially) Storybrooke self.

I used the same Julie Nutting stamp, Megan, for two of the Snows (Princess and Mary Margaret), along with Prima Princess papers (naturally) and some Something Blue ATCs.

Mary Margaret is the truest representation of the stamp, so let's start there.

I cut off the little swooshes of hair alongside Megan's neck to give the doll Mary Margaret's trademark pixie haircut, and added some layers to the dress for movement, but aside from that stayed true to the stamp.

I added some Blue Fern Studios chipboard flowers, coloured with chalk ink, and the music and bird papers because they felt Snow White-y to me.

Princess Snow is also relatively true to the stamp. I added cap sleeves to her dress to change it up from Mary Margaret's, and lengthened the skirt.

The long hair was achieved by stamping Megan's head onto a piece of scrap paper and hand-drawing the hair; I then cut this out and used it as a template to trace onto the paper I was using for her hair. (Hint: I traced the negative image onto the backside of the patterned paper so that I wouldn't have any lines showing). I then added a crown from the Aurora stamp.

Aren't the Blue Fern bunny and bird chippies adorable? Perfect for Snow White, who was always surrounded by forest creatures in the Disney movie. I painted both with chalk ink on a wet paintbrush, and finished the bunny off with white gesso for his nose, breast, tail and feet.

Snow White, the bandit/renegade after her stepmother the evil queen has put a bounty on her head, was definitely the most challenging, as I'm sure you can imagine.

For Bandit Snow I started with an image of the costume off Google Images, then set to work to recreate it. Because of her pencil skirt, I find Natalie is the easiest doll to draw pants on.

I took some pictures of my process:

I started by stamping the Natalie stamp onto scrap paper. To remove the parts of the image I knew I didn't want (in this case her skirt and part of the scarf at her waist) I wiped the ink off the stamp with a baby wipe before stamping it. I then sketched out how I wanted her costume to look (based off pictures of the costume I found online).

I then stamped her onto the background paper I wanted to use for her skin, again wiping the ink off the stamp for the areas I didn't want included.

To fashion her pants I placed her upside down onto the wrong side of the paper I wanted to use and traced the shape using a contrasting colour.

I cut out the pants and adhered them to the front of the body (I ended up trimming her hips down a little to give her a more girlish figure), then started adding details (the knee patches, lacing up the sides, boots).

To make her jacket I extended the length of the jacket on the stamp and added a couple details like the grey ruff.

And here she is:

The Blue Fern Studios Spring Branch and Tweet Friends chippies were perfect for my background, giving the forest feel to complement this time in Snow White's story as well as her affinity for animals. I coloured them both with different colours of Prima Chalk Edger.

Thanks for stopping in today! I'm working on a couple other OUaT art journal pages I'll be sharing soon.

Supplies:

- Prima Julie Nutting stamps: Megan, Natalie

- Prima Princess papers

- Prima Princess 4x6 ATCs

- Prima Something Blue 4x6 ATCs

- Prima Something Blue 3x4 ATCs

- Prima Cartographer papers

- Prima Stationer's Desk papers

- Blue Fern Studios: Shabby Brick Panel chipboard

- Blue Fern Studios: All Natural Set chipboard

- Blue Fern Studios: Spring Branch chipboard