Inspired by Nature and a bonus give away!!

Hello everyone, lovely to see you here and this is Astrid sharing my first little project for the lovely month of May.
Have I told you before that I love little books? Well I do and this time I decided to make an accordion book, inspired by nature as the title of this post would suggest, but also inspired by some of the wonderful nature themed stamps the Artistic Stamper stocks.

I used some sturdy Kraft card from my stash for the base of the book. Each of the panels is 9 cm wide and 13 cm high, this was dictated by the size of the stamps I wanted to use. To make 6 panels like this you will need two sheets of strong A 4 card and cut it along the long side to 13 cm (9") height and then score accordion style every 9 cm (3.5").

The little end bit you will have left after scoring the first bit of card is used to attach the second bit of card as you can see in the photo above.

Now for the fun of creating the panels: Cut 6 bits of Manila paper to 8 cm (3.25") by 12 cm (5"). Each of my panels was more or less done in the same way, and these are the products I used:

Ranger Distress Paints, in a variety of colours including the new Metalics.

Ranger Dylusion Sprays, I love how the colours seem to blend so well with the paints.

Ranger Distress Inks and two colours of Archival Ink, Jet Black and Library Green.

For this panel I blended purple and pink tones of paints, sprays and inks. The stamps I used were from the new Katie Fox Encyclopaedia Botanica collection. For the background, stamped in Picket Fence Distress Paint I also used the Tim Holtz Papillon set. I stamped the flowers and butterflies twice in Jet Black archival, once straight onto the background and once onto smooth stamping card. I then fussy cut the flowers only, and layered them on top of the first impression and the same with the butterflies. They were all coloured with Distress Inks.

Like I said,  all panels were done in similar ways. Here blues, greens and yellows were used, the background was stamped in Library Green Archival (I don't have any dark green Distress Paint yet) and the butterflies from the Papillon set were layered.

To be honest, this one is my least favourite. As you can see, I die cut an arch. The little girl is from the Garden plate 1, I also used a little stamp from the  Botanical 3 for the background and the Calligraphic Mat 12 to add some highlight to the arch. It was decorated with some punched flowers and die cuts from my stash.

The Hydrangea is from the Botanical 3 Plate, I also added some Tissue Tape from my stash. As you may have noticed, on several of these I added some shading around the stamped image with a charcoal pencil and a blending stump. I love doing this, as I think it makes the stamped images almost look three dimensional and adds depth.

Here I used the Dragon Fly from the Tim Holtz Classics No 1 and more tissue tape 

And here finally another flower from the Encyclopaedia Brittanica set by Katie Fox.

Now if you have ever made an accordion book, you will know there is a front and a back side. I decorated the back of my book simply with left over papers I had from the wonderful Graphics 45 French Country 8 x 8 collection.

The front and back panels were layered with bits and pieces from the collection and I used some ribbons and a little Tim Holtz clasp and some other bits and pieces to decorate and tie it shut.

Well, are you still with me??? 

Now to the give away: 

If like me you are slowly collecting  various colours of Distress Paints, here is a chance to add some more to your collection: I have three to give away, Weathered Wood, Salty Ocean and Wild Honey. They were sent to me in error and Jennie the Artistic Stamper very kindly said I could offer them as a give away!! All you need to do is leave a comment here and on my personal blog, and on Sunday the 19th I will pick a winner and announce it here on the blog.

Well, hope you like my project and thank you so much for visiting. Have a creative week!!