Anniversary Book .....

I fancied making my Brother and his Wife a shabby vintage anniversary card. So I dug deep and referred to a class that I did with Hels Sheridan a while ago. A book made from corrugated cardboard.

Right now, my favourite colours are Hey Pesto, Limelight and Brown Shed acrylic paints from Paperartsy. I gave all the pages few layers using these plus a helping of Vanilla.

As it was an anniversary card, I had to be sure that there was a guy page and a girl page.

This is one of the inside pages.
Grunge Paste through one of my most frequently used masks Plus old faithful script stamp.

I used exactly the same paints for the front cover and the back cover. Once they were all stamped and dried, I used my brand new 'cropadile' to punch evenly spaced holes through each page. Then with two rings clips, assembled them all together,  decorated with some co-ordianting ribbons.

I am entering this into Hels Sheridans challenge this week ... Every Day I Write a Book.

Dare to Dream .....

Every week, the talented Hels Sheridan sets a themed challenge. Week 260 theme was I dreamed a dream -- and that was to create a piece that featured 'Dreams'.

My hanging this week is my entry to Hels challenge.

I wanted to use a number of layers for this piece.

The base is corrugated cardboard with a painted tag on top which had been coloured with Hey Pesto and Brown Shed and stencilled with PaperArtsy Snowflake (opaque) and Smoked Paprika (translucent) acrylic paints. I sneakily slipped another layer of red/brown colour paper in between these two, just to give some more depth.

A smaller piece of corrugated board coloured with Brown Shed and Honey Dew was the next layer and then on top of that was my stamping.

I coloured some torn paper with a blend of Honey Dew and Hey Pesto acrylic paints with a hint of Brown Shed around the curled edges. I used a Tim Holtz stamp.

For anyone who is familiar with this particular stamp, you will notice that I have introduced a gap in the text. 

what if your FEARS and DREAMS exist in the same place............... ...... would you still go there ? 

I did this by inking the words I wanted to use and masked off the others with tape. 

I then repeated the exercise for the bottom words, but leaving a gap between the first and second stampings. I thought that this emphasised the question more and made it a bit 'darker' and even haunting - which is the effect I wanted for this piece.

I stuck the top three layers together but before mounting them on to the red/brown paper layer, I wrapped around some really neat thread that I found in my ribbon box. I really like this 'cos it's interesting and has lots of 'hangy' bits. Then I finished of by sticking the rest of the layers together.

The flower is from Tim Holtz's tattered rose, made from book pages which I coloured. Then finally added a few embellishments and Treasure Gold.

This is one of my favourites - the layers give it some depth and the textures some dimension. Now to enter Hel's week 260 Dreams challenge !

x

Secrets in the Garden ..

At last, we have a had few nice spring days and the sun has decided to come and join us.  A bit of gardening, tidying  up, trimming back and discovering things that had been hidden for a while.

My secret garden hanging started life as a flap from an old delivery box. I cut one of the flaps down to be just shy of  a 7" x 5' canvas board then started to pick away at some the edges to reveal some corrugated areas. This creates some texture and interest to the piece. I coated the edges with a little bit of PaperArtsy hey pesto, holly and smidge of snowflake, not too much - just enough to give a 'white-washed' look.

I used a really old foam script stamp - had it for ages, can't quite remember where it came from and used caramel archival ink to create some contrast against the greens.

Thank you to Lin Brown once again. I coloured up some of the flower stamps with pacific blue and red bus - straight onto grunge paper. Same with some of the leaf stems, keeping with Hey Pesto and Holly dabbed here and there to give some dimension, again straight on to grunge paper. Oh its worth mentioning that I used the smooth side of the grunge paper for this project, it seemed to stamp better with the acrylic paints. But both sides can be used - its up to you. 

I then cut the leaves and the flowers out and arranged then on the painted corrugated board. I didn't add anymore paint as I really liked 'the grunginess' of the look (is that a word?) 'tis now!

A few more elements: twirly paper covered wire, metal lock and key element and painted wooden letters  all play their part in my secret garden hanging.

It was easy to glue the decorated card to the Hey Pesto painted canvas with cosmic glue and a  twisted handle from a carrier bag does a perfect job as a hanger.

Guess my secret garden isn't a secret any more ..............

Happy Secrets .......
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