Tuesday 31 July 2012

Altered Book - Colour Wheel

Hello all,

ha ha, back to good old British weather!! Hey ho, I did enjoy it while it lasted and here's hoping for some more sun before the sprogs go back to school!!

I am back-tracking with this one as this was a lesson done by the fab Elizabeth, Altered Book Lover, many many weeks ago.  I was determined to do one for my own reference purposes firstly and also because it looked like lots of fun.


I started by priming my pages with white acrylic and then sprayed them with some chalk mist.
The colours were found in a free fruit and veg catalogue, lol all bar one! The blue one is of the Blue Ridge Mountains which came from a holiday brochure.
Some basic doodling then finished the page off a little more, lol I wanted to keep this one really simple (ha ha ha, bit like me really!!)

Thanks for popping by,

Big hugs x x x x

Dawn

Wednesday 25 July 2012

Inky, Painty Fingers Ha Ha......

Hi all,

hope you are all enjoying this fabulous sunshine, what a pleasant week it has been so far!!

I just had to share this with you, a small project inspired by one that was blogged by the fab Kate Crane last week. If you want to see the project please hop over here.
I had so much fun, thank-you Kate for the inspiration.

I took 2 A4 bits of card and divided them each into 4 pieces, making 8 pages in total. These were then all sprayed, splatted and smooshed with lots of dylusions ink, memories mists, acrylic ink and acrylic paint.
Once both sides were dry I got my increasingly large collection of masks out (Tando and Creative Expressions) and stencilled away to my hearts content until I was happy.
I then used a Tattered Angels flourish stamp in various places across all the pages to unify the whole project.

Here you go........





As you can see, this is still very much a work in progress as no holes have been punched yet and no embellishments have been added.
I have to admit that there is rather a large piece of me saying leave well alone for the moment because I like the pages so much ha ha. ((Karen - thank-you for your advice, think you are bang on the money but I can't bear to try it yet, daft mare me I know but will pluck up the courage one day I hope!!))

Thank-you for popping by,

Big hugs x x x x



Tuesday 24 July 2012

Altered Book - Lesson 12

Evening all,

wow, sunshine at last woohoo, so good for the soul hey!!

Elizabeth our Altered Book Lover set a fab challenge with this lesson - Folded Pages. If you fancy a peek at her amazing tutorial please pop on over here.

I had an incredible amount of fun with this lesson and I hope it shows! Back to my favourite bright and vivid colours again ha ha.

I started with a base of acrylic paint on the pages to either side of my folded pages, this was gleefully smooshed on with my fingers. The folded pages in between have been covered in various patterned papers from my stash and lots of torn elements from a fab matt papered fruit and veg catalogue have been collaged on top. Eyelets have been put in and fibers attached for decoration. Torn elements from the catalogue have also been used to create a border on my background pages.
The folded pages vary in size and some have pockets - LOL couldn't explain how I did some of them if I tried but they worked out quite well I think!!
To unify the whole spread I have used the same doodle across the background pages and all the folded pages, the sentiment is my own albeit adapted from a well known one I think ha ha!!
I made some small tags to go in the pockets using some old luggage tags that were lurking in a drawer and which were just the right size. These were prepped using distress inks and some vintage seed packet images were attached along, I then doodled and stamped to finish. The tags had their own grey strings already but I decided to colour these with my fave distress ink to match.
Tee hee, please note the final collage on the last folded page - I have had a problem with ants raiding through my front door this summer, artistic revenge was sweet to say the least!!

Well, think its time you had some pics now!! Here you go.........







Thank-you so much for popping by,

Big hugs from a lovely sunny Cornwall x

Sunday 15 July 2012

A Ray of Sunshine

Hi all,

after a wonderful sunny day today I decided to do a quick journal page and share some sunshine with everyone else who may not have been so lucky.


I started with a very quick acrylic ink wash and sprayed my gessoed page. The sun was drawn on watercolour paper, outlined with a copic fine-liner and coloured with promarkers. I cut the sun out and stuck it on then doodled lots with a gold glitter pen. The sentiment is my own as far as I know and was stamped using black memento and a basic alphabet set. One quick journal page to lift the spirits hopefully?

Thanks for taking time for a peek.

Hugs x x x x   

Saturday 14 July 2012

Butterfly Canvas

Hello all,

hope you are all well. Ha ha, went into shock today myself as a strange bright orange thing appeared in the sky!! Long overdue and really lifted the spirits, here's hoping we will see more of it over the school holidays hey!

Today I decided to challenge myself and leave the comfort zone that my altered book adventure is becoming. I usually automatically reach for bright primary colours when I am crafting so thought it was about time to throw in some pastels ha ha.

I wanted to have a go at a small canvas to enter in the current Tando challenge, which for the month of July asks for texture...........


I started by painting the canvas pink, this has then been edged using memento rhubarb stalk and grape jelly for some definition. The flower was on a free stencil set which came with the latest issue of Crafts Beautiful. I sponged some sea breeze green acrylic through the leaf part and some bubble-gum pink dylusions through the petal part. I then doodled round the flower using sakura glaze pens. To ground the flower I decided to do a bit more doodling along the bottom of the canvas. The sentiment is just something that popped into my head lol.
To create some texture I decided to focus on the fab Tando mini butterfly's, these were gessoed then given a base coat of red acrylic. Purple Viva Decor croco crackling paint was then applied. Lol the last time I used it I put too little on and it didn't crackle properly, I got it right this time, whoop whoop - it crackled beautifully.
I wanted to highlight the bodies on the butterfly's so I very sneakily pinched some of my daughters glitter glue, ssshhhhhhh!! OOhh, and some of her sticky gems!! Hey ho, she keeps pinching my craft stash ha ha.

If you fancy taking part too please pop on over here

Thanks for taking the time to pop by,

Hugs x x x x

Monday 9 July 2012

Altered Book - Lesson 11

Evening all,

blimey! 2 posts in 2 days, must be something in the water ha ha!!
The lovely Elizabeth over at Altered Book Lover asked us to play with pockets for this lesson. What a lot of wonderful ideas and instruction she gave us too, do go and have a peek if you can.

Well, me being me, I came up with at least one idea that wasn't exactly to brief but I had to go with it.........


Ha ha, a curtain with some very dodgy stitching!! I prepped my page first  and cut a window. I realised I would need to reinforce the page to support the curtain so I added some thin card which has done the job nicely without adding too much bulk. I stamped the background with some Andy Skinner lovelies before adding an acrylic glaze. I have added some decorative tape to frame the window. The curtain was made using a scrap of fabric from my stash and 'tied' using a safety pin (thank-you Karen, the safety pin was a brilliant idea and works perfectly). The curtain is hung in the window using invisible thread.

 
A page was glued to the back of the window, allowing a small pocket at the bottom of the frame so that I could tuck in the distressed sewing pattern tag, again stamped from the same Andy Skinner set.


This pocket was made from a scrap of acetate from a cheesecake box, thoroughly cleaned first of course!! I stamped The Octopode Factory's Cheshire cat using stazon and coloured him in with promarkers, the pocket has been attached using electrical tape. The Octopode's Mad Hatter had to make an appearance too , along with an additional Cheshire cat to go in the pocket. Thanks to another fab idea courtesy of Karen Mad Hatter has been linked to Chesire cat with a coloured piece of string - lol, looks like he is under control at last, or is he.................?


This pocket was made to house my first tag from my first blog post. The electrical tape came out again, I just love the bold colours you can get it in. The pocket itself was made from the mesh of a Babybel pack, ha ha my children love these little cheeses so there is normally some lurking in my fridge!!


For my final offering I decided to have a go at the torn page technique Elizabeth beautifully demonstrates in her lesson. To preserve pages in my book I chose to use some of the pages that were removed at the beginning of the course, these were torn to size, painted, stamped and stenciled before being glued to the base page in order to create the pockets.


Here it is with its respective tags in place.


These are the tags I made to go in the pockets. I have used a Dovecraft plastic template to create the tags from plain card, these were then coloured using distress inks. The mermaid images are all courtesy of The Graphics Fairy who very generously hunts out and provides wonderful vintage images to download and use for free in your craft projects. The tags have all been doodled on using metallic markers and purple ish fibres have been added to finish.

Wow, thank-you Elizabeth, I had sooooooo much fun with this lesson, really got the imagination going!! I hope you all like them too.

Thanks for taking the time to have a peek.

Hugs x x x x

Sunday 8 July 2012

Mixed Media Canvas

Hi all,

ha ha this was so much fun to play with but I'm still not sure I would call it finished!! Every time I look at it I see something else that may or may not 'finish' it off. Lol, maybe I should just put it away and look again in a few months!!


I started with an acrylic base coat, stuck on various bits of torn book paper, chocolate wrapper pieces (yummy they were too!!) and some kaisercraft ephemera pictures. I stamped some script and flourishes using coffee archival ink and then toned it all down with an acrylic glaze in a much lighter colour, rubbing sections off with a baby-wipe where I wanted some emphasis. Much inking through masks and use of bottle tops and various other bits and bobs ensued in an attempt to create some texture. The gorgeous Tando random circle mask was sprayed through using Memories orange juice ink and some lace was added around the main lady's neck-line to finish.

Many thanks for popping by,

Hugs x x x x