Dont pulp it, paint it!

So I got back from hols and even though I took some crafting stuff with me, I was really itching to get back in my craft room (it's really the spare room, but it has a few status issues and likes to call itself "the studio") and "make something".

I have quite a few old books in my stash, one of the perks of working in a library, we occasionally withdraw stuff and my colleagues know to give me the nod if any hardbacks are going.  This one is a thin poetry book.

I took the paper book jacket off to  reveal the pale blue linen of the cover.

I started off with Honeydew all over, not solidly as I wanted to build up light layers of colour to give depth. Then mixed Toad Hall and Beach Hut and layered that on.

I used a candle to rub over the covers to act as a revisit and added another layer of the Toad Hall/ Beach Hut with a touch of Mermaid added to move it more to a blue green rather than green blue colour. I used the heat gun to dry this and melt the wax which I then rubbed off to reveal the lower layer. I also sanded it lightly as well in places.

Using the large numbers backgrounds stamp from PaperArtsy I stamped in Cobalt Archival and embossed in a Blueberry Wow embossing powder. I then added a layer of gold leaf in the middle of the book. YOu cant see a lot of it, but it just pops through here and there for another layer of texture.

I dry brushed Honeydew, Claret and French Roast around the edges as well to add to that grungy, shabby decayed look.

Over this I did add a stamped image of the winged lady from the PaperArtsy Letters L3 plate and then added a layer of Crackle Accent and left that to dry.

Umm, that didn't work to well as it completely covered the stamping, but gave some good raised crackle texture.  So I played around with this, sanding it, picking at it, spraying with inks, metallic glaze and finally French Roast Fresco and Treasure Gold. It looked OK but still needed something in the middle.

Hunted around in the stash and found some leather and felt. I sewed one layer of felt to the other, stuck the leather on top of this and painted a chipboard heart and added some Frantage embossing powder in wine (if you click on the photo you can enlarge it and see the detail)

The back was done in a similar way in terms of the paint layers and stamping, but nothing else added.

So what shall I do with it? Well I think it will eventually become an art journal, but what I'll do is keep it on the work desk and when I'm painting and I have excess paint I'll just paint a page, just like I've done here!

Hugs

Jo

xx