Take a leaf out of my book...

Hello all, Alison (butterfly) here with an autumn mini-journal for you.  There's time for a last breath of autumn before we kick into gear for Christmas, isn't there?!

I had great fun altering this little papier mâché book (8 x 11cm, and there's an even tinier one still to come), and creating a mini-album to go inside.

I started by covering it with some Tim Holtz tissue wrap, leaving the "edges of the pages" just with a coat of gesso (thick enough and on a hard bristled brush, so you get some "pages" showing - I'll see if I can find a picture showing that later).

Next step was to stamp the new Leaves Background onto the front and back covers.  I used lots of Archival inks on the stamp: Sepia, Sienna, Coffee and Plum, all blended on there.

Distress Inks next: Vintage Photo, Gathered Twigs, and probably some Rusty Hinge if I remember correctly.

I ended up giving it a coat of medium to seal it, which meant some of the Distress Inks faded a bit with the brush strokes, but I'm fine with that, as it brought the leaves to the fore again.

Time to create what's going inside.  I cut some pages to size (pretty much ATC-size) and did some wrinkle-free distress technique with lots of warm golden brown inks and stains.  I also added a couple of spritzes of Perfect Pearls Heirloom Gold to the craft mat before smooshing through with the pages, so you get a lovely golden shimmer in places.

I used the gorgeous new Journalling Words #5, one per page - it's the US version of "journaling" with one "l", but I guess I can work with that!  Just love all those fonts.

On the reverse sides I used some of the new Katy Fox stamps - the Leaves...

... and the Dates, again stamped in Archival inks, mainly Coffee and Sepia.  Apologies, this was all done after dark - how early is it getting dark already?! - so these are flash photos.

So, enough of the process, let's see some photos of the finished thing by daylight, shall we?

I love that the spine looks like a real old leather volume, burnished with age.

I added some Tim Holtz Remnant Rubs to the cover.

And look how the mini-album nestles just inside the book.

Here's a close-up of that cover, also using the leaves background and some Rock Candy crackle paint.

More crackle paint inside the cover of the box, with layers of autumnal paint shades.

And here are some of the internal pages.  I interleaved them with some hand-made paper pages, and added some stamping using my all-time favourite Calligraphy Mat, number 19!

Oh, almost forgot... here's the promised shot of the "pages" - click for a close-up if you need to!

So that's probably my farewell to autumnal crafting for this year - it's always a sheer pleasure to play with these colours and images, but with the temperature dropping rapidly and Advent Sunday almost upon us, it's probably time to let go soon!

Thank you for stopping by, and I hope you enjoyed taking a leaf out of my book (sorry, appalling pun, but it tickled me!).  If you've already moved on to sparklier times, you could come and play along in our Christmas challenge this month at The Artistic Stamper - you've still got about a week to go.  Hope to see you there!

Ingredients used:

Artistic Stamper Stamps: Katy Fox - Leaves, Dates; Backgrounds - Leaves; Calligraphy Mat #19;

Papier Mâché Book

Tim Holtz Remnant Rubs

Distress Inks - Vintage Photo, Gathered Twigs, Rusty Hinge

Archival Inks - Sepia, Coffee, Sienna, Plum

Perfect Pearls Mist - Heirloom Gold

Tim Holtz Tissue Wrap

Claudine Hellmuth - Multi-Medium and Gesso

Falling Leaves

Hello everyone, Alison (butterfly) here, and like many of the team I've been having a wonderful time with Katy Fox's fabulous new leaf stamps.  I've been having fun playing with gesso, inks, clear embossing and fussy-cutting (well... not so much fun with fussy-cutting - I'd be lying if I said it was my favourite thing to do!).

The background was a by-product of me doing some stencilling with the Roman Letters onto another tag with gesso.  I had this tag nearby and flipped the stencil straight over onto it to get a reverse print of the Letters here.

The gesso partly acts as a resist, but - being gesso - also takes some of the colour when you ink over it, as I then did.

I think there's Peeled Paint, Rusty Hinge, Spiced Marmalade and maybe a couple of others in the mix here.  (Sorry - this was made in the middle of house-moving so I've only a hazy recollection of what I actually did!)

I blended the same colours onto a piece of Manila cardstock, and then stamped the leaves in various combinations of Archival Ink - Sienna, Olive, Fern Green and Sepia - using two or three ink colours on each stamp.

I clear embossed the stampings as I went, using the Wow Superfine powder.  And then the cutting...  The embossing gives you a bit more sturdiness on the very fine areas, like the stalks, so it's quite helpful when you're cutting.

I seem to have added some Grunge Paste to create some "earth" at the foot of the tag, patting it on with the palette knife for extra texture, and inking it along with the rest of the tag.

One leaf had the privilege of being home to the Camus quote which is also on the stamp plate - it's a lovely font, I think.  It's stamped in Potting Soil Archival ink.

I arranged the leaves around the tag, and then mounted them using padded tape, sometimes a couple of layers of it, to get different heights above the background.

I like the glossy leaves against the chalky background of the gesso.

A very simple, natural tag topping of some raffia tied with twine, and my autumnal tag is done.

Thanks so much for stopping by today.  The October Alter Something Challenge still has a few days to run here at The Artistic Stamper, so do come and play... and I'll see you again in November.

Ingredients used:
Artistic Stamper Stamps:  Katy Fox, Leaves
Crafter's Workshop: Roman Letters stencil
Distress Inks: Peeled Paint, Spiced Marmalade, Rusty Hinge
Archival Inks: Olive, Fern Green, Sepia, Sienna, Potting Soil
Grunge Paste
Wow Embossing Powders: Superfine Clear Gloss
Gesso
Manila tags
Manila paper

"Thinking of you...." Tag By Zuzu.

 

Hello... Zuzu here:
Well as I got my first ever die cutting machine (BigShot) at the beginning of this month, I HAD to do something that involved cutting out with my one and only die (so far). So I have made a tag that features a large flower and leaves.

Firstly I inked a large buff tag using distress stains and inks. I used Antique linen, vintage photo, peeled paint and worn lipstick. I applied the ink randomly using a blending tool. then i stamped on the Katy Fox  "postcard" stamp in black archival ink. next i used the new  Leaf background stamp. I used peeled paint distress ink and stamped over the full tag.

I cut out my "Tattered floral" flowers out of card and used the large broad petalled flower. I inked them with worn lipstick, fired brick and vintage photo . I cut out four of them, cutting sections out of the inner layers to make them easier to fold in to a cone shape... Tim Holtz has a tutorial on his blog that shows you what to do (his example is with a different die cut but the principal is the same.) you can find his step by step HERE.  once it was assembled i sprayed over it with Heirloom Gold perfect pearls mist. I also cut out some leaves (Astrid was visiting and had brought lots of dies for me to try out) and inked them.

Next i inked some plain card using worn lipstick, fired brick and vintage photo on enough card to stamp out my words "Thinking of you" and to make a backing mat for the main image... and I also inked a piece of card with just a light touch of peeled paint and vintage photo to print out my collage lady stamp... I used my paper distresser tool on all the edges (including the tag), then assembled all the pieces. The ribbon is a bit of calico i ripped off and inked with "pesto" alcohol ink. you dont need much if you add it to a touch of blending solution in a saucer and dip the fabric in to it till it soaks it up.
See you in a couple of weeks. 
Z x

Autumnal Gatherings by Emma

Hello everyone...

Hope you're all had a fabulous week and that you're looking forward to the weekend. Today, is my turn to share my latest creation with you all and I decided to make an autumnal wallhanging by using and recycling some old coasters that were in need of a makeover!

As always, I hope you love what I've made...

To begin with I applied a good covering of Gesso to all three coasters and allowed them to dry. I then used one of the fab new Artistic Stamper masks, Large Dot and applied GrungePaste through the mask onto my 1st and 3rd coasters. I also added some Grungepaste around the edges of all three coasters and stippled it to give a rough texture.

Once the paste was dry, I painted all the coasters with a mix of Spiced Marmalade, Barn Door, Mustard Seed and Gathered Twigs Distress Paints, blending the paints together until I was happy with the colour. I then added some splashes of white paint and touches of Treasure Gold around the edge to highlight the raised areas where I had added the paste.

I randomly stamped leaves over the painted coasters using stamps from Katy Fox's Leaves stamp plate using Wendy Vecchi's Potting Soil Archival Ink and also used my favourite all time stamp, the Calligraphy 12 plate to stamp areas of the painted coasters.

The message was also from the Katy Fox Leaves stamp plate and stamped in black Archival onto a piece of torn cardboard packaging which I also tore around the edges to show the corrugation and painted with Roast Coffee Fresco Finish Paint. I then added a thin layer Fresco Crackle paint and then a covering of Snowflake over the top to reveal the crackle. I then added small amounts of Treasure Gold around the edges.

I added some Remnant Rubs Words onto the raised circles that I created with the masks....

...and then made small arrangements of foliage using the Autumn Gatherings die by Tim Holtz from my own crafty stash, die cutting them from kraft card and colouring each individual piece with Distress Inks in various autumnal shades.

Finally, I attached all three coasters using Idea-ology Jump Rings and added a bamboo stick, which I threaded through the top jump rings. I then platted some thick twine and tied it onto the bamboo stick.

So, that's it from me for today and thank you so much for stopping by to say hello and for leaving all your lovely comments...I can't wait to read them!

Hope you all have a lovely, creative weekend and see you soon!

Emma x

Faded Glory....

Hello everyone, Astrid here with my next project. Thank you for dropping by! I love the colours of Autumn as slowly but surely the glory of the warm summer this year starts to fade around us in nature. This time I would like to share two little projects with you:

They are both cards and as you can see, the colours of Autumn are prevalent.

For the first one I  wanted to play around with some textures and paints.
I used just two stamp sets from the Artistic Stamper,
The new Leaves set and the Numerical set, both from Katie Fox. The sentiment is from the Tim Holtz Simple Sayings set.
I started by cutting a bit of mount board and adding some texture with Paper Artsy Grunge Paste.

Once that had dried I messed about with a variety of acrylic paints, including some Paper Artsy Fresco Finish paints, until I was more or less happy with the result. I

 highlighted the raised bits a bit and added some stamping from the numerical plate in Archival Jet Black ink. I stamped one of the leaves on a separate bit of thin card, cut it out and then finished my panel by adding a bit of string, the leaf and my sentiment, also stamped on a separate bit of card.

I finished the card by mounting the panel onto a folded bit of Kraftcard and that was it.

Hope you like it and I apologize for the glare on the photo but it was getting dark already when I took them.

For the second card, I used texture as an important feature again, but this time using a texture folder (one of the new Spellbinders 3D Mbossabilities). This time I just used the leaves set.

I ran my card through the folder and then coloured with various colours of Distress Inks in Autumnal colours. Mainly Rusty Hinge and Barn Door with a bit of Gathered Twigs. I also used some Adirondack Dye Inks in Cranberry and Espresso. I then stamped the leaves and sentiment, using a technique I describe on my blog here if you are interested.

I mounted them on the card base with foam tape and then matted first on white and then Kraftcard.

Thank you for visiting and don't forget, there are still a few days left to take part in our Challenge where the theme this month is Autumn too.