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

Four Seasons but remember the now!

Saturday saw the start of Linda Ledbetter's  Tim Holtz Compendium of Curiosities 3 challenge, based on Tim's latest book and sponsored on alternate weeks by Inspiration Emporium and The Funkie Junkie Boutique, Tim and Mario themselves have  added to the prizes too. To find out more, just click on the link! 

Now if that's not enough, Linda has put together the most amazing design team, her Curiosity Crew; I was totally delighted to find so many of my blogging buddies among them, and boy, what inspiration they have provided!! The first challenge is all about Paint Marbling. Details of this technique can be found on page 43 of the book.

I love this technique and funnily enough had guessed and hoped this might be the first one, and when I saw it I immediately thought I would do something related to the seasons to have a chance to play with the technique several times in different colour ways. So I started with 4 size 8 tags, moving from cool colours for winter and spring, through to warmer ones for summer and autumn.

Below you can see the 4 tags after marbling, inking, doing some Sprits and Flick and in the case of 1 and 2 I added some stenciling too straight away.

For tag 1 I used: Picket Fence, Antique Linen and Tumbled Glass, and then inked with Frayed Burlap, and Walnut Stain. For tag 2 I used: Antique Linen, Bundled Sage and Peeled Paint and inked with Crushed Olive and Frayed Burlap. Tag 3: paints: Antique Linen, Scattered Straw, Wild Honey and Crushed Olive. Funnily enough the green of the Crushed Olive totally disappeared when I dried it, so I brought some of it back in when inking and also added more Wild Honey. Finally tag 4: Paints: Wild Honey, Ripe Permission, Fired Brick and Festive Berries. I inked with Aged Mahogany, Chipped Sapphire and a tiny bit of Dusty Concord and Walnut Stain.

After the backgrounds were done I added stamps, more stenciling, some embossing with texture fades etc.

Here is a close up of tag 1, kept it in a wintery mood.After adhering the stamped and die cut trees I added a bit more colour and texture with shadows. They were stamped in Iced Spruce. The dry embossed snowflakes on the right were from a little folder that came as a freebee with a magazine some years back. I am keeping my fingers crossed Tim will bring out a Snowflake layering stencil with the next release....

This tag sees a mix of stamps from the Tim Holtz Nature Walk set and the Artistic Outpost Birds of a Feather set. The little feathers at the bottom are Spellbinder dies, the greenery is from the TH Spring Greenery strip die and the little flowers I had in my stash. They are rather plasticky , but when I blasted them with my heat tool they curled up which I rather like.

For tag 3 I added some stenciling also, to fit in with the other two tags. I then used my favourite butterflies from the Papillion set, stamped them first straight onto the tag and then again, fussy cut them and coloured them with Distress Markers. I also used a stamp from the Odds and Ends set and some remnant rubs.

Finally for tag 4 the stamping is from the Mercantile set (I am totally in love with that bottle). The feather is from Spellbinders again and the word Autumn was cut out from a piece of Core'dinations card embossed with a texture fade. To echo the first tag I also ran it through a seasonal strip embossing folder.

 All 4 tags were then first mounted on to pieces from Tim's latest 8 by 8" paper collection, I added some more stenciling and inking to these pieces first and then I mounted them all onto a piece of dark brown mount board and further embellished with some die cuts and the words Remember the Now made from the little chip board letters. The final touch was an altered Ornate Plate (using more Distress Paints), and then mounted onto a Weathered Clock die which was also painted and rusted up with various Distress Embossing powders and some Antiquities Verdigris etc.

The text in the opening is from the Mercantile set.

I had so much fun creating this piece and obviously will be adding it to Linda's Challenge. This first challenge is sponsored by the Inspiration Emporium

Well hope you like my piece and have a fantastic week!

Thank you for visiting and make sure to stay inky!!

Spellbinders Mixed Media Journal cover

Hello everyone, thank you so much for having a look in here at this very busy time of year! I hope you have survived the first part of the festive season!
Let me start by wishing you all the very best for 2014!!! I hope you will have the most amazing creative year and that you will get closer to realizing your dreams!

I have several aims and dreams for the world in general of course, but also for my creative journey, one of them being to journal more regularly. So what better start than to create a cover for a brand new journal.
One of the things I love about Spellbinder dies is that they can be used in so many different ways, and for this project I chose to use them to add dimension to my Mixed Media cover.

These were the dies and other products I used:
Dies:
Radiant Rectangles
Grateful Lattice
Persian Motifs
Tattered Blossoms (Heartfelt Creations)
Font One Uppercase
Fantastic Flourish 1
Medallion 6
Les Papillions
I realize this is a lot of different dies, but these could be substituted for any other ones you might have in your collection.
Other products:
Paints:
Antique Linen
Iced Spruce
Bundled Sage
Frayed Burlap

Embellishments and other products:
Molding paste, Gesso, Muli Medium (Matte), Crackle Medium, Embossing Powders, Treasure Gold gilding paste, Walnut Stain (Tsukineko), Some background stamps, script stencil, paper flower, selection of cogs, little key charms, some bits of lace,Derwent Pastel Pencil.
First I cut a piece if 7 x 9" mount board to form the actual cover of my journal.
Next I used my Grateful Lattice die and made it into a stencil, by cutting it out of an old cereal packet.

I used it to create some texture onto the largest of the Radiant Rectangle dies which was also cut from some packaging. While the texture paste was still wet, I stamped into it with an old text stamp.

I then cut some of the other dies I wanted to use, all out of the same strong cereal packet card. I love how it shows up all the detail of the dies. Here is a selection of the ones I used:

Next I adhered them to my mount board, adding some further stenciling and a few little cogs and some strips of lace for further interest. When I was happy with the composition I covered it all with a thick coat of Gesso.

Time to add the first layers of colour in my chosen pallet.

So far so good, - time to add some letters. I cut them from the same material, coloured them and added texture with crackle paste, embossing powders and paint to give them a metallic appearance.

Here is a close up, so you can see the textures, this is what I love about mixed media!

Time for some more colour and shading to add depth.

Nearly there, - it just needed a bit more to focus the eye around the page, - a flower, cut from old book paper, came to the rescue.

I cut about 5 flowers of the same size, glued them together and then added another flower from my stash to the centre, adhered it to the page and gave it all a few spritzes with Walnut Stain to blend it into the page.

A butterfly, to balance the composition on the other side was needed now, so I cut two of the dies, layered them together and coloured them the blend with the rest of the page.

And finally to stick with the "rule of three" in composition, a couple of little rusted keys from my stash completed the composition...

Here are some further close up photos still of different parts

I just love all the detail in the dies, it adds another dimension to what ordinary chipboard pieces could achieve using similar techniques.

Well, here is the finished piece and I hope you have enjoyed my little mixed media step by step.

Thank you for visiting today and I hope you will enjoy the rest of the festive season.

I will be busy with family commitments in the next few days, but will try to stay in touch and come and visit all my favourite blogs when I can.

Altered Frame for Nicecrane Designs

Hello everyone and so kind of you to drop by here.

Today I am sharing an altered frame I created with one of the adorable Christmas Images from Nicecrane Designs.

I'm afraid to say I got a bit carried away and started to add more and more to my piece, - I think I should take lessons from some of those wonderful "Less is More" people out there, but hey ho, I'll share it with you anyway, seeing I have done it now.

I started by making the background for the central panel. I added some texture paste through a couple of stencils and when it had dried added some colour with Distress Stains.

Next came some stamping in the background with Distress Inks and some stencilling with my new Tim Holtz shattered stencil, using mainly Iced Spruce.

Here you can see some detail. Not sure why I am showing this, because in the end I covered it all over, but at least it can serve as a reminder for myself. I now wish I had left it like that...

Right, so then I started to add several layers as a backdrop to the image and forgot to take further step by step photos, - usual story with me, I get so into the process that I totally forget about the old camera.

As you can see, I added the image (a black and white one from one of Nicecranes many wonderful Christmas Images) on top of several other layers. Here is a close up of the image

You can find all of his wonderful Christmas images HERE.

The wooden frame was altered in a very similar way: Texture added through stencils first, but this time I also wanted some crackle, so I painted it with Paper Artsy Fresco in French Roast, then added some Crackle Glaze and then did the top coat in a mixture of colours to blend with the background of my central panel.Finally the raised bits were highlighted with Treasure Gold in my all time favourite colour White Fire.

Here are some more close ups

The brown around the edges was done with some Tsukineko Walnut Stain, I also did some background stamping still. And as I was going over the top, it got a rather elaborate Flower cluster and beaded trim also still.

Well, there you have it, I am truly not sure whether I like it, but what is done is done and I will just have to live with it....

Hope you are finding some creative time and thank you for dropping in like always!

Steampunk for Our Creative Corner

I was more than a little excited when I was invited to become part of the Our Creative Corner design team, and today is the day I will share my first project. Just click on the link to see the amazing projects my teamies have created also.

As you may know Claudia chose the theme of Steampunk Tic Tac Toe and I decided to go with the top line, wing, gears and wire. I made a wall plague out of mount board and started by making my background using Tim Holtz's Eroded Metallic technique as explained in Creative Chemistry 102.

Though I was pretty pleased with how it came out I added some Wow Blended Verdigris for some extra texture as well as some rusting powder to the corners.

Next I ran a piece of card through a Spellbinders Cogs and Gears embossing folder, layered a piece of 7 Gypsies printed tissue paper over the top and darkened the raised bits with Walnut Stain Distress Inks,

The next layer was some corrugated card, painted with Antique Linen, Weathered Wood and Walnut Stain Distress paints and then rusted with a thick layer of rusting powder.

Time for some stamping: these are both La Blanche stamps, stamped in Jet Black Archival onto smooth stamping card and then fussy cut and inked a bit with Vintage Photo DI.

Some rusty cogs (love that rusting powder, two of these are metal the other wood yet with the powder all beautifully rusted they look just the same).

A little plaque created with a metal filigree charm, treated with a bit of verdigris gilders paste, a piece of dry embossed metal and a word created with a Spellbinders die.
Ok, now for some wings..... a butterfly image with a rusted pen nib came to the rescue.

And of course no Steampunk piece is quite complete without the Victorian inventor, a vintage freebie I had in my stash.

Finally a piece of rusty wire to attach the charm to the plaque

Well, there you have it. I am not usually a steampunk sort of girl, so this was a bit of a challenge for me, but I greatly enjoyed it. Hope you like it.....

There is still plenty of time to play, so I hope you will come and join us. Click HERE to find all the details of the challenge, hope to see you there!!