Oops! I missed a birthday..................

Hi there everyone,

I hope you've all had a good Saturday and are looking forward to another pleasant day tomorrow.  For those who have to work I hope it's an easy day for you.  I've had a lovely day in my craftroom so the cold, wet and windy weather has not bothered me in the slightest and I now have something to blog about ;-).

A couple of weeks ago I was really annoyed with myself because I missed a crafting friends birthday (for some reason it was not in my book) and as I have been the lucky recipient of some of her fabulous artwork I decided to make her a little gift.  This is a very photo heavy post so either get comfy or skip to the end, lol!

My starting point was this piece of cotton which had been painted with Fresco Finish paints and PaperArtsy Crackle Glaze. I did this piece in a workshop last year with the fabulous Lin Brown and the crackle was amazing but by the time I finished with all the layers I add, you will see that by the end the crackle has been lost.

I added some stencilling.........and some more layers of watered down Fresco Finish .......

 

and then some stamping....... before adhering the fabric to a piece of card cut from the box my dog's dry food comes in ;D.  Love these boxes because they are quite strong!  I cut the piece in half to create my two covers......

 

and then mixed some Golden interference paste with Grunge Paste before applying through a stencil.  I didn't add enough of the interference paste for it to make a lot of difference as it's very subtle so will try more next time.  I still liked the softly tinted result though.  I also mixed more Grunge Paste with a spot of Brown Shed FF and applied this randomly through a piece of lace.  I saw the very talented Michelle Webb demo this on the PaperArtsy stand at StampMagic (Doncaster) a couple of years ago and love the texture it gives.

 

When the pastes were dry I added some inked stencilling and also spritzed with a shimmer spray allowing it to form a few runs in the texture. 

 

And here's where I forgot to take pics of the next step!

 

 

 I sanded the Grunge Paste to remove the spray from the peaks and to make it smooth and was really pleased with the result.  It looked and felt almost like marble!  I then added just a little Treasure Gold to the raised areas and the edges of the covers.

 

 I  also took some lace and dunked it in puddles of watered down Fresco Finish but I can't remember what shades of green I used, lol!  I  think it was Sage with a bit of Toad Hall and the other colour was Brown Shed.  When it was dry I hand stitched ribbon and ric-rac to one edge before adhering it to the covers.  I stamped the butterflies from my new Prima set of Finnabair stamps onto card, coloured them with pencils and cut them out.

This is the completed back cover with some pieces of die cut trellis which has been overstamped with a fab script stamp from a PaperArtsy Hot Picks set and had the Treasure Gold treatment.

And this is the completed front cover with the two larger butterflies layered on top of each other.  I also gave these two several coats of PaperArtsy Gloss Glaze which has given them a gorgeous subtle shine but I can't get the camera to pick it up.

 

I used my much neglected Bind-it-All to create the album/journal and tied a selection of ribbons to the O-wires.

 Inside I have put lots of blank pages of different types of watercolour paper, paper for acrylics, vellum and canvas and of course, with the O-wires it is possible to open it up to take the pages out to work on them.

Over on the PaperArtsy blog for the next 2 weeks the challenge theme is for us to use various texture pastes in different ways and as always there has been some fantastic inspiration from the DT guests already this week (Elizabeth Borer's project tonight is amazing) so I'm entering this project.  I had already started it and intended using Grunge Paste when the challenge was announced so it fits in very nicely ;-).

I hope this makes up for missing out on her birthday card when the recipient receives it.  

Hugs

Lesley  Xx