Altered Book page

Hello everyone, thanks for dropping by and for all your lovely comments on my recent Tim makes.

Today I have something totally different to share with you. I finally found the time to do an other page in my altered book:

I am using this book to keep old photographs of various relatives, both of my husband and myself. This page is dedicated to my grandparents on my fathers side.

Unfortunately I never got to know them very well. They were German jews who immigrated to the United States in 1939, they got away from Nazi Germany on one of the very last ships.

By the time I was born, my grandpa had died already and I only met my grandma twice....

Anyway, here are a few closer looks at the pages:

Background created in the usual way with Gesso, various texture pastes and different layers of fabric and lace strips. Added colours with various sprays then some background stamping, plus some collaged and stamped tags and tickets etc.

On this page I added texture paste and while still wet embossing powder and some glitter which was then dried and melted with a heat gun. Below some further close ups:

The metal clock face was first painted with Gesso, then coloured with some Luminarte Silks, a few bits of embossing powder and glitter were melted into it and then it was highlighted with Treasure Gold, as were some of the other embellishments.

I am going to enter this into the following challenges:
Finnabair Sparkle and Shine bloghop and challenge
Paper Artsy Shiny Stuff lots of shiny embossing powder and glitter plus treasure gold.
Mixed Media Monthly Challenge use something new to you. I have never used embossing powders and glitter into wet texture paste, so that was new to me.

Vintage Altered Book

Hello everyone and thanks for taking the time to come by here.
Today I want to share a first spread in an altered book I have started.

I have been hugely inspired by some of the vintage book projects I saw on Pinterest recently and wanted to try one myself. I want to make it into a kind of family chronicle, using old photos from both sides of our family to pass on to my grand children when they are older. This photo is my husbands great grand mother on his father's side.
Here is the original photograph:

I love the look on her face.
Anyway, I started by ripping out some pages from the old hard back book picked up at a junk shop.
Next I coated the first double page with gesso and when dry added texture with the help of texture paste and some stencils. I also used a texture tool for the texture in one of the corners.
I chose a neutral colour palette to go with the vintage theme using acrylic paints, a baby wipe and some kitchen roll to add further subtle textures to the background.
I stained one of the pages of the book with coffee to use behind the photo.

I tried to make it genuinely old looking. The way to do that is to crumple up the paper, then flatten it out again and cover it with some strong coffee made with instant coffee (never drink it, just use it for crafting lol, I only drink real coffee...)
Put the coffee dipped paper on a flat baking dish on top of some grease proof paper, sprinkle some more coffee grains on, because I used instant they started to kind of "bloom" out, making lovely spots. Next put it in a low oven until it has dried out (about 7 minutes or so) and you are done.
Here is a close up of the page

The other bit of paper behind the photo is a stamped (Finnabair stamp) piece of photocopy paper, inked with Vintage photo. The colour matched the coffee stained paper exactly. I also added flowers, background stamping, tissue tape,some die cuts and some Golden Brand Gold Mica Flake paste. The paste dries completely clear and you are left with some wonderful mica bits in the background. The stenciled word Hope was first coloured with a Faber Castell Big Brush Pen and then highlighted with Treasure Gold.

Here is the other side, done in a very similar way but leaving a large blank area for journaling.
The final step was to cover the photo with a wet baby wipe and then using some sprays on the embellishments and textured elements to bring them out more.

Here's a close up so you can see the effect of the mica flakes a bit better. I have had this stuff in my stash for ages, and only just re-discovered it, - it will be great to use on Christmas cards too I'm sure, but it's really hard to capture the effect in a photograph.

Thank you for visiting like always and I hope you are have a good week!

xxx

Finn weekend part two....

Hello dear visitors, so glad you are here, it is lovely to have you drop by.
Today I am sharing the remaining projects I created last weekend under the guidance of the wonderful Finnabair. And for UK visitors, I wanted to let you know that Finn is doing further workshops, the next one being in Glasgow at Damselfly Crafts, information on these classes can be found HERE
As far as I know there are still a few places available on the Sunday for sure, but maybe even on the Saturday also. These classes will be worth every penny!!

Anyway, onto my projects: The first class we did was a LO, using Finn's wonderful papers, her mechanicals line, some sprays and plain and ordinary tea!
I'll show you two photos, one before and one after the spraying and splatting process:

To be honest, this was probably my least favourite project, I am just not a scrapbooker, it was also a class that was similar to one I did last year, but hey ho, it's always good to be reminded of techniques.

The second project was the canvas I showed in the post below this one, the 3rd was a journal. In the morning Finn guided us in making the cover and in the afternoon we created two journal spreads in different styles, the first one more vintage, the second more free style. Even though that was totally out of my comfort zone, it was probably the one I enjoyed most. I loved the kind of free flowing artyness of it.
Here are the covers, full of Finnabair style embellies:

 We did the front and the back at the same time and were meant to have put less embellishments on the back, but me being me, I got totally carried away, so there is not much difference between the two.

 This is meant to be the front, - the beautiful Prima mixed media album was part of our kit, as was all the other stuff used. The only thing we had to provide ourselves was some glue!

The back cover

All right, now for the inside pages, again, we created them two at the time which I thought was a brilliant idea:

 I had stupidly forgotten to bring photos, so used a Crafty Individuals image for the page above and a vintage image which the generous Jools provided for the one below.

Finally the arty pages:

 This handsome gentleman was also provided by Jools, I just noticed she used the same one for her spread, - great minds lol.

The word on the page above came from an older Finnabair collection I still had in my stash. I added it when I got home.

I am really looking forward to creating some more pages for this journal, if and when I have time. I'll leave you with a final photo of the journal when I put it together with the bookrings we received.
Thanks for visiting like always and for all your lovely comments, they are very much appreciated!!

Post Script: A face book friend just pointed out to me that the gentleman in the second journal spread is a youth photo of Joseph Stalin. I'm afraid I did not realize that, I just thought he was any odd handsome fellow. Had I known, I probably would not have honoured him with a journal spread.... Glad I added the word emotion rather than love lol. This man who killed thousands of innocents, must have had something wrong with his emotions that's for sure.....

A Fantastic Weekend

Hello everyone and thanks for dropping by. As many of you know I have just returned from the most fantastic weekend doing classes with the fabulous Finnabair. It was the most amazing event, not only because of all the wonderful classes Finn taught, but also because I met up with so many like-minded friends, old and new.

It's late at night as I write this post, so I will keep it brief and will show much more in the days to come, but for right now I at least wanted to share one of the projects we did and show you my version. No doubt you will be able to see many more in various places across blog land. It was a great inspiration to see what so many talented artist managed to create under Finns amazing guidance.
So today I will share an 8 x 8 canvas. I took a few step by step photos, but very soon I got so caught up in the creative process that I forgot to take more.....

Here you can see about step three. After covering the canvas with strips of randomly torn paper and canvas resist, we arranged our embellishments around a photo and then covered the bottom half with black acrylic paint.

Here is further stage, the canvas now sprayed with mica sprays, both over the black at the bottom and over the top half which had been thinly coated with gesso first.

The final stage, bringing the whole piece together with further layers of gesso and sprays, plus (in my case) a few high lights with some Treasure Gold.

As you can see, keeping the photo clean is not so easy, specially if you are a messy worker like I am.

Here are a few close ups still:

Some of the embellishments included in the very generous kits we received

I decided to give my lady some creative head gear... I chopped up some of the wooden bits that came with the canvas and cut up some of the larger bits to create the rest of the contraption.

Here you can see some of the fab texture created with the help of bits of canvas and lace. The paint, sprays and gesso bring all the textures to life.

Well, that's it for my first project (it was the second one we did in the classes) I'll leave you with a few happy snaps that capture some of the wonderful moments during the weekend.

Back row from left to right:
Lesley Ebdon, Alison (Butterfly) Brenda Brown, Emma Taylor
Middle row: Alison (Crafty Trog) Finn, myself and Tracey Bantoft
Front row, the "terrible twins" Nicky and Gillian

How's this for a photo composition?

With Alison, Finn and Brenda, - so wonderful to meet you all!!!

Here you can see all of us proudly displaying our canvasses after the class.

Well, that's it for today, but before I sign off I want to apologize that I have not been visiting nearly as many of your blogs as I would have liked in the last few days. I had a full day of work today, but hope to catch up with you all in the next day or two.

Thank you for visiting like always! Hugs

Tagbook for Snazzys

Hello everyone and thanks so much for dropping by. It's a busy week here I'm afraid to say. Here's a little sneakpeek of my second project for Snazzys, showing the 7 Dots Studio 9th wave collection designed by the wonderful Finnabair.

To see the full project please click HERE

Hope you'll take the time to look, these papers are fabulous.

I'm excited as tomorrow I am off to Snazzys for a full weekend of classes with Finnabair and hopefully I will get to meet some of you there in person!

I'll remember to take my camera, so look out for some pictures soon.

Thank you for visiting today
Hugs

7 Dots Studio 9th Wave project for Snazzys

Hello dear visitors and thank you for dropping by.
Today it's my turn to show a project on the Snazzys DT blog.
Here's a little sneak peek

To see the full project with step by step, please click HERE
 Have a creative day