Altering Papers a step by step for "beginners"

Hello lovely visitors and welcome to you all. I am sharing the first double page of another little book with you today:

After the last little book I did I was approached by several people whether I could describe in more detail how I go about altering the papers I used for that one. I know many of you will be quite familiar with how to do that, but for those who are just in the beginning of your crafting journey, - here is a step by step on one way of how you can do this.

I start by choosing papers that are roughly in the colour tones of the scheme I have in mind already. I wanted this booklet to be quite grungy and vintage of course, so the Indigoblu Belle Epoque Mixed Media card stack was perfect for this. I used the 6 x 6 size and this is one of the papers and my very first step was to cover each paper with a coat of clear gesso. This adds tooth and seals the papers which are quite glossy..

I then covered the central part with heavy gesso and while still wet dabbed my finger in it to create a stucco like texture.

To make it slightly less stark I then added some Titan Buff acrylic paint, I used the Golden brand here but you could use Decoart Media Fluid acrylics or Distress Paint in Antique Linen or indeed any other brand you may have. Blend it out with a baby wipe, to avoid hard edges.

Next add a few spritzes of a spray ink. I used Distress Stain Spray in Weathered Wood, but again, use what you have on hand. Using a spray adds depth and interest and will highlight textures, but have a baby wipe on hand to mop up any unwanted areas.

Next I added some stenciling along the edges, using a mix of Archival ink in Sepia and Distress Ink in Rusty Hinge. I also did some background stamping, again using Sepia Archival ink. The stamp I used is a Tim Holtz one from the Curiosities collection.

Next I wanted to add some imagery back in. I usually do this either with stamps or sometimes with the top layer of a paper napkin. In this case I used some scraps of rice paper.I adhered them with mat gel medium that makes them almost translucent. I purchased  the rice paper (as well as many others) on ebay HERE. This lady has the best selection I have been able to find!

Time to create some embellishments. This could be anything of course. In this case I stamped and die cut some elements from a Heartfelt Creations collection. I used a previously coloured bit of a manilla tag. After taking this photo I coloured the grapes still with a coloured pencil.

I decided to stamp and fussy-cut a butterfly as a companion piece to the butterfly that was already on the paper. I coloured it with the same colour inks I had used before, Rusty Hinge and Sepia Archival and also added a touch of Paper Artsy metallic glaze for a little shimmer.

And here you can see how it all fitted onto the page. The final step was to add a quote. On this occasion I used a quote from a Cloud 9 collection of clear quote stickers that I have had in my stash forever, but I found you can purchase them HERE . Oh and I also added some stamping around the edge, this is a Limor Webber stamp produced by Indigoblu.

The page on the other side was done in a very similar way. I just added some texture paste through a stencil still and some strips of fabric for texture,  and obviously used some different embellishments.

Here is a close up of the embellishments still so you can see them a bit better.

Well, I hope this was useful for some of you. There are several more pages to follow still but I will keep those for another day. Have fun crafting and above all enjoy what you are doing. You never stop learning!!

Thanks for your visit like always