An Altered Book - The Castaways

Welcome back to my blog! things have been a bit quiet around here.

A word of warning before we continue - yes, an old book was altered, glued, torn and ripped in the making of this blogpost. Viewer discretion is advised. 

I have a lot of old books - some up to 100 years old - that I have collected over the years. Some I bought at garage sales, some of them once belonged to my grandfather and some were given to me by my crafty BFF, Nicole.

For this project I chose a book that came from my grandfather - The Castaways.

To begin I took the largest die from a rectangle nesting die set and traced out the shape on the front of the book, making sure to leave the title.
I took my x-acto knife and carefully cut out the traced shape from the cover. I made sure to a cutting pad under the cover before doing this.  Next I took my x-acto knife and trimmed a smaller sized rectangle shape through the first 50 pages or so.

To curl the pages - first I put my cutting pad in the book to protect the uncut pages; then i took my mister bottle and sprayed the pages a couple of times; next I took my fingers and gently starting curling the pages outwards. This took some time and required some additional sprays of water but I loved the results. while the paper was still wet I ran my Walnut Stain Ink pad over the curled pages and then let them dry.

My happy castaway couple is a card from the Found Relatives pack that I coloured with Distress Markers before adhering into my book behind the curled pages. Once I had this done I starting gluing these curled pages together along with the page with my castaways. Then I glue the lot to the front over. The remaining pages of the book were glued together in groups of 50 pages or so.

These became my journal pages - although I didn't actually journal as this was meant as a decorative piece. I did gesso the pages, add some Distress Oxide Ink, some stamping and then added some pieces that stick out the top and side edges.

Some of these pieces are die cuts, paper, vintage postcards and half of a stereoscope card. I happen to have a few of these and the palm tree one was perfect.

This is how the finished book looks and how it will be displayed. I just love all the bits and bobs peaking out of the pages.

To finish off the front cover I added a few of the wood starfish pieces from Southern Ridge Trading Co. They take paint very well and I love that they have a bit of dimension to them.

My Paper Doll Family

Hello & welcome back!

I'm here to share yet another Etc tag. I love these! LOVE!

Here is one I made using the medium size tag -
click on the photo to see more details and close-up photos.

The tag I have to share with you today is using the large Etcetera Tag.

The first thing I did was paint my tag with white gesso then set it aside while I 

worked on my focal point piece.

I started with a Tim Holtz Idea-ology Cabinet Card frame. I carefully opened it up and removed the front frame part from the back.

I used the smoosh technique to add some Distress Oxides ink to the inside of the back piece.
(not shown in photo - I smooshed the front frame into the left over ink to add some splotches to it)

Then used some Distress Ink & the Ornate Layering stencil with the stencil monoprint technique to add some interest over the Distress Oxide.

I added my Paper Doll parents to the background with some foam dots then added the frame

 with 2 layers of foam tape. To finish off the edges of my frame I cut strips off the packaging insert from a layering stencil and adhered them with tacky tape.

The gesso is now dry on the tag so its time to start adding my paint. I chose to use Pomegranate Seed & Black Marble Dylusions Paint for this. First I applied the Pomegranate Seed with a
dry brush. I then applied the black with a brayer. Once the paint was dry I used a sanding
block to distress the edges a bit.

Taking the same Ornate Stencil that I used on my cabinet card frame, I applied the some Picket Fence Distress Ink in a few spots on the tag. I also added some script stamping with black Archival Ink.

My next step was to mix some Distress grit paste with some Peeled Paint Distress Oxide.

I applied this through the Floral Layering Stencil on to the tag. Once the green grit paste dried I decided to add another layer of grit paste in a contrasting colour - this was Worn Lipstick Distress Oxide ink.

I assembled my focal point with my 3D cabinet card frame and various pieces of ephemera from my stash. 

I still wasn't happy with the edge of my cabinet card frame so I added some 

jute twine with a bit of hot glue. 

I used a couple of metal embellishments that I found in stash to cover the hole in the tag.

My finished tag - 

Crafty Friends & Coffee Fairies

A few weeks ago I started getting together on Wednesdays with my very best

 crafty friend, Nicole Wright. We alternate between our houses - she has the mother of all Sizzix die collections and I have everything mixed media. It works out pretty well.

This project was one of the first ones we collaborated on without even realizing it. I was in a bit of funk and not feeling very inspired. Nicole was working on a tea & coffee inspired journal page and I decided to let her creation inspire me.

We ended up using the same dies & some Tim Holtz Paper Dolls & loved how different our journal pages turned out.
My background was created a few weeks before using Distress Oxides, stencils and the stencil monoprint technique. I repeated the technique on the tea cups too. I loved how it looks.

On the coffee side of the page I decided to make wings for my paper doll children. I first inked up some watercolor paper with Scattered Straw and Carved Pumpkin Distress Ink with my ink blending tool, a few spritzes of water and quick dry with my heat tool and I was ready to die cut.
I used the Butterfly Duo Bigz Die from Sizzix & Tim Holtz. I then used the coordinating embossing folder, inked with Vintage Photo Distress Oxide, to emboss my 'wings'.

The Paper Dolls & Quote Chips were perfect to finish of my page.

I really loved how this page turned out and dream of the day that I have my own little coffee fairie that will serve me the perfect cup when I wake up in the morning. It's always nice to dream.

Check out Nicole's coffee & tea themed journal page here.

We already have more projects planned to show how to use products in different ways in our own styles. Collaborating with crafty friends is so much fun!