Board book Spread 5

Step 1. Pages were sponged with gesso, then painted with black acrylic paint. Various metallic paints were dripped on the pages and then the pages were closed and held shut; I smoothed the pages down to distribute the paint over the pages. Opened up the pages...what magic .!! Love this technique-the paint looks like ferns and branches and a big bug right in the centre. LOL

Board Book Page 4

While waiting for the page to dry I made an embellishment. The instruction was to use stamps that were not Asian but to end up with something which looked Asian. I made mine from air dried clay and painted it with acrylic and metallic paints. You will see this further along in this post.

Step 1: A layer of Gesso was sponged then cheap glue added randomly over the page. When dry another coat of gesso was applied, dried again red paint was brushed on. Gold acrylic paint was rubbed over the pages to accent the ridges from the glue.

Step 2: Stamped a fern stamp (Hero Arts) around the perimeter of the pages.
Step 3: A strip of the faux washi paper (see previous post) was added to the right page. We were to add a Haiku to the page "A Japanese poem usually written in 3 lines". I found several online and finally chose one that I liked and printed it on parchment coloured paper in red ink, then cut out and glued the word over the washi paper. Final touch was to add the handmade embellishment. In hindsight, maybe I should have added a moon somewhere on the page to match the Haiku?

Board book Spread 3

Step 1: Tore up various strips of leftover scrapbook papers and attached them overlapping each other and lighty gessoed over them after the glued dried. Rubbed Vintage distress inks over both pages to age it a bit. Step 2:Ripped a wide piece of masking tape and stamped a background image on it with black stazon ink, then attached it to the left hand page. Made a heart shaped image out of airdry clay and stamped it with a text stamp. When dry I added red paint and then gold paint over the top. Attached a piece of magic mesh and attached the heart. Printed off a Heart quote and added it to the left page. Now there were no instructions to add anything else, but since this is my book I decided to add some images to go with the quote..guess I am just a rebel at heart!!

Board Book Spread 2

Page two Step 1:

Made a wavy line with a pencil, then coloured the page with orange on top and lime green on the bottom.

Step two. Add a wavy red line between the orange and lime green. Took a pencil with an eraser on the end and made dots in white gesso. Ripped sections from a previously gessoed book page and adhered them to the bottom in strips.

Step 3: Coloured the pages all over with distress ink (Frayed Burlap) Made hand made flowers to add to the pages. I did mine with strips of cardstock coloured with fluid chalk inks and stamped a small background stamp on them. I cheated with the one flower as I had a bunch of punchie from newspaper left from another project. Added a flower quote then a bird image printed on vellum to complete the page.

Board Book Project

On NGS Trish has challenged us to do a board book project. I could not find one that was just plain with no cut outs, but Melissa very kindly sent me one all the way from Australia.
The instructions for this project can be found at

http://artbuzz.wordpress.com/2008/08/10/12-altered-board-book-project/

I have been busy with other projects and have been away a couple of times, but finally got started on this project and am thoroughly enjoying it. We are only to use items we have on hand; no buying new stuff for this project.

The first thing we had to do was sand or gesso the pages. I opted for sanding as I have only a small amount of gesso left.



Spread one, step one was to paint the page with cobalt blue paint or whatever blue we had on hand. When that dried we were to dip a credit card in black paint and make lines criss-crossing around both pages. Next we added white cloud-like pieces over the pages by dabbing gesso on with a damp sponge. We then added a white line in gesso, (anywhere we wanted) on one of the pages and then a bold magazine image was torn out, applied and gessoed over.
The next step was to stamp an image with a mettalic paint along one edge. I chose a turquoise paint and a Fleur-de-lis foam stamp. Next, we added a piece of paper torn from a cheap pocketbook on on the opposite page from the magazine portion. We then were to stencil a letter of the alphabet on the magazine side with black paint and draw around it with white ink/pen or paint.
Last and final steps.

1. We had to find a quotation that started with the letter we chose, and also an image to go along with it. I am an avid reader and found lots of quotes about reading but chose this one, because I truly believe we can travel anywhere in a book, only limited by our imagination.


2. I searched for a picture to go along with the quote and stumbled upon one which really "spoke" to me on the Morgue Files site taken by Clara Natoli of Rome. I downloaded the picture and then matted it with black cardtsock as instructed by Trish.


3. Final step was to add 3 silver embellishments wherever we chose.

Mica Swap

Another swap I am in is to use some form of Mica on an Art piece, i.e. create an item using any mica product (tiles/sheets, flakes, or powder). The item could be a card, ATC, bookmark, booklet, canvas, tip-in. etc.


I had a book board which I had painted with acrylics and pearlex, but did not make any effort to use it, so out it came for this project. I added some green mica magic ink on the one side, painted the edges a dark colour to add some dimension. I stamped some word stamps with gold acrylic paint and Brilliance silver ink. I then stamped the quote onto Fibremark paper with gold pigment ink and embossed with gold embossing powder.


I did some die cuts on my cuttlebug out of green cardstock and added gold Mica Magic over them and attached them in the corners. I stamped & embossed the sun image on the Mica Tile. I glued the eye image to the board then attached the Mica Tile with glossy accents and added the little rivets to finish it off.



My inspiration for this piece was the quote stamp which I purchased yesterday.