Happy thoughts - art journal

So, I got the die cut from Lawn Fawn called party balloons. We have had a lot of rain lately and the gray skies have been kinda gloomy and I needed something cheerful to work on. This page has been a work of servral days, whenever I can get the time in between cooking, cleaning, and the kids.

I started off with stamping butterflies on just any old white tissue paper I found in the gift wrapping holder in the closet. The ink I used was WPlus 9's coconut husk and the butterflies was from their Flora and Fauna 2 stamp. After that was dry I glued it to my notebook page with Faber-Castell gel medium.  Right now I am just using a plain cheap notebook that I have on handle I hope to try a Dyllusions notebook in the future. After the gel medium was dry I got out three colors of distress paints: mermaid lagoon, broken china, and seedless preserves. Dabbing them on randomly and blending them with my fingers and baby wipe was lots of messy fun.
 While the page was drying I got out three sizes of balloons and five colors of distress inks. I die cut the balloons from white card stock and blended them with squeezed lemonade, spiced marmalade, peacock feathers, picked raspberry, and cracked pistachio. For the highlight on the balloons I just got a q-tip wet and dabbed the upper left of each balloon a few times. When all of the balloons and background where dry I arranged them  and glued them with Ranger's multi medium matte, but just a dot in the middle leaving the edges loose so I could get the strings under the balloons later.
Using black emborderioy thread I tied (three strands thick) a string to each balloon and fished the them behind the other balloons, pulling them tight and securing them with two staples criss crossed in a X. I stamped random  uplifting words from different stamp sets on scraps of paper and trimed them down in different shapes to scatter across the balloons. When that was done I took a scrap of water color paper and smooshed it with spiced marmalade distress ink and let it dry. I die cut the happy from the happy birthday die from Simon Says Stamp and the letters from Lawn Fawn's Cole's ABC's die. The sentiment was adhered with gel medium.
And that was my art journal layout, reminding me to have happy thoughts. I have a Pintrest art journal board if you want to check out any other of my art journal layouts. I am also entering this Simon Says Stamp Wednesday Challenge they have an "Anything Goes" challenge going on right now.