Vintage Journal Cover - Tutorial

As promised here is my step by step of the altered book I made to create my vintage visual journal for the rest of this year (and beyond?) using one of my treasured cabinet cards. To see the full challenge brief pop over to the AVJ Challenge Blog where you can read all about the challenge and see the amazing inspiration projects from the Creative Guides. You can also see my introduction post HERE.

I began by preparing a couple of old books by painting the outside covers with gesso and adding some texture using the gesso with a palette knife when it was dry.

Having chosen the larger book and this cabinet card to use .....

..... I decided that as it was quite plain I would alter it and I found a piece of old Graphic 45 paper and cut an oval shape from it.

I had ensured there was plenty of space around the oval to fully cover the card.

I aged the centre cut by rubbing round with an emery board and blending over ground espresso DI. Then I adhered it onto the cabinet card and used a sanding block to sand away the excess patterned paper. This had then distressed the edges as well and again I blended in ground espresso DI.

I started to gather bits and snippets to make some decisions on the embellishing first. Every piece has been painted, inked and/or distressed in some way. I sealed all the card embellishments with satin varnish before they were added to the cover.

This cabinet card covers quite a bit of the front cover so I felt I needed to create a layered background with textures and neutral covers. I began with a text stencil and texture paste mixed with gesso that I heat dried and then, dribbled, dipped and spritzed my gorgeous decoart media acrylics.

 Using quinacridone magenta, titan buff and yellow oxide I dribbled and spritzed the colours to create a light mottled background.

I stamped with the same colours using a text stamp from the Andy Skinner shabby chic set.

I darkened the background by dribbling and spritzing some raw umber with titan buff and dabbled over some watery titanium white (all the time I am heat drying between each layer).

At this point I decided to seal it and used the DecoArt satin varnish. I wanted it to be very sturdy and ready to take the punishment of it being used regularly and creating and making the new journal pages. I began adding the collage elements in layers ....... getting the base parts adhered and flattened under a heavy box.

Now to add in the collage elements. I used the new clear modeling paste from DecoArt and oh boy does it have a strong bond for the card, fabric and metal pieces.

Looking at the book I felt there was something missing - contrast in the background - so I took a fine brush some quinacridone gold, paynes grey and raw umber ........ and with some dabbling of the colours around the collage elements the shading, shadowing, aging and framing has brought it together more.

I have already created my first pages in the book so keep an eye on my blog - Bumblebees and Butterflies - in May when the project will go live.

Thanks for stopping by, we hope you are enjoying the new schedule and don't forget next Friday will be the start of our Creative Cardmaking series. I know the lovely Julia will be kicking us off with a fabulous make, so make it a date to be back here in a weeks time. See you then.

hugs Brenda xxx

September Destination Inspiration - Arriving at Terminal 4

Hello friends and visitors! Welcome to the 4th Destination Inspiration for September. It's Sara Emily here with you today to guide you through the 4th leg of this month's creative journey. Each Creative Guide is using the same four items in our travel bag. To review, we are using the following ingredients:

Product : Gesso

Technique : Any form of Resist

Colour : Olive Green

Substrate : Chipboard

I was pretty excited to find some 'trash' at an estate sale and from my stash that I could turn to 'treasure' for this project.

Substrate and color:

I started with my substrate--a piece of sturdy chipboard from the back of an old art paper pad (it's under the pile of other collected goodies). They sure don't make them like they used to. This is almost like plywood! I found these olive green glassine papers in my stash that once wrapped those really good pears you get from Harry and David. Although I didn't have a plan at this point, I glued them to the chipboard, wrinkling the paper as I glued.

Once dry I used a foam brayer to add Glossy Mod Podge to the raised areas and allowed that to thoroughly dry.

 Out came the sprays--Distress spray stain in Twisted Citron and Heidi Swapp Color Shine in Gold. The glossy Mod Podge acts as a resist, and I wiped the sprays from the raised areas with a dampened cloth.

 I allowed this to dry and later blended Walnut Stain ink around the edges and gave it a coat of DecoArt Ultra Matte Varnish. Unfortunately, this blended my colors and took away some of that resist I was going for, but it's still pretty cool to see the colors puddling between the ridges here and there.

Product, technique and more color:

I tried another resist technique, this time using gesso as my resist medium.This smaller panel is also chipboard, the thin stuff that separates the layers of cans in my cat's canned  food box. These are mighty handy and are a perfect size.  

 I glued card stock to the chipboard and sponged some gesso through a flimsy stencil from Recollections. I started with thick gesso, but it kept pulling up the stencil, so I switched to a thin pourable gesso.

I dried the gesso and blended over it with  a heavy layer of Peeled Paint DOX. I splashed it with water and dried.

The photo below shows the panel before splashing with water and removing the color from the gesso.

 I carefully wiped the gessoed design with a damp cloth. The gesso acts as a resist to the DOX and looks great combined with the chalky inks. I edged with Frayed Burlap and splattered on Walnut Stain inks.

Finishing up...

The bow is twisted up using some vintage pre-colored seam binding--just perfect for our color ingredient, as is the dress on this beautiful woman. I spritzed it with Ranger Perfect Pearl in gold. I found this framed photograph, and removed the photo, intending to use the gorgeous frame for another purpose. I couldn't throw out this lovely photo, and thankfully it fit our color ingredient. The lace behind is from that same estate sale.

I chose the Quote Chip which so accurately describes my recent estate sale finds and framed it with a doily die cut with it's center removed and colored with more DOX.

 I hope you've been inspired to get out your chipboard and gesso and maybe try a resist technique. In case you missed the first three stops on our Inspiration Journey, you can visit them now, by seeing Jennie's beautiful fall tag HERE, Tracy's show stopping card HERE, and Autumn's stunning altered journal HERE.

Our inspiring challenge this month is Altered Art hosted by Alison. I do hope you get some time to play along!  The Creative Guides have created some wonderful pieces to inspire you this month!

Please pop back next Monday when another Creative Guide will be taking you through yet another creative journey using the travel bag contents.

Thank you for traveling along with me today!

Sara Emily

September Destination Inspiration - Arriving At Terminal 3

Hello and welcome to the third Destination Inspiration for September.  Autumn with you today to guide you along the journey with the contents of our travel bag.

Our bag this month is filled with goodness:

Product : Gesso

Technique : Any form of Resist

Colour : Olive Green

Substrate : Chipboard

I decided to play along with our current challenge, Altered Art.  At my job we were all given these lime green journals as gifts from a recent conference.  I thought it would be fun to grunge it up and give it a face lift.  

I painted my cover with clear gesso, then layered a couple of olive green paints over it.  I sanded the edges to let a little of the original color show through, then stenciled a pattern with Archival Ink and a sponge.  

Next, I cut a watercolor panel and embossed this amazing image from the new PaperArtsy Lynne Perrella Collection.  I partially stamped and embossed the script from the stamp below (also LPC) randomly on the perimeter of my panel.  I blended Distress Inks around the face.  In the end, I was unhappy with the embossed face, so I restamped in Versamark Sepia onto tissue paper and carefully adhered over the first image, sponging the edges to coordinate.  The sentiment is by 7Dots.

I embossed this gorgeous chipboard from Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts in copper.  I used Distress Glaze to seal my stamped panel, then applied crackle paste along the edges of the adhered panel.  I wanted to use permanent inks since this will be handled, so I used ColorBox Chalk ink directly to the crackle once it had set.

The ribbon bookmark and elastic closure were both so bright!  I mixed Infusions with water and carefully painted them.  

Here's a little closeup of the textures and embossing resist...

And the finished product, simple, but filled with pattern and texture.  I hope you like it and are inspired to play in our Altered Art challenge.  Join us next Monday for Terminal 4...

Thank you for visiting today!

Autumn Clark - SewPaperPaint