A surprise for Jessie

My friend Jessie has had lot on her plate lately and our group decided to plan a surprise book and each of us made a page and mailed them off to be made into a chunky book.

Jessie has received the book now so I can post the pictures. I was happy to participate in this book as Jessie is so encouraging and such an inspiration to me.

I know Jessie loves colour, grunge, texture...well just about anything goes in her creative world. I decided to make my page in reds hues as I had a freebie image that I really liked.

I started off by painting the page and added the image when it dried. I then took some cheesecloth and soaked it in some decoupage type glue and draped it around the right side of the picture. I added some red acrylic paint over the top, then added some acrylic gold mica flakes over parts of it.

The left side still needed "something" so I added some crackle paste and again coloured it with red and brown acrylic paint. As a finishing touch I dabbed some light gold acrylic paint around the whole piece.

I completed the page with the little heart button and some velvet ribbon in a ribbon slide.

The back is just painted with acrylics. I ripped out a piece of Mulberry Paper and stamped the sentiment with Versafine Onyx Black ink and added it. I was going to do more with the back but feel the sentiment says it all.

Chunky books

I am participating in an international chunky book swap titled "In This House". We each chose a theme for our house and will be sending to 14 other people in each group. I signed up twice and the themes I chose were Farm house and World Travellers house.

The first one I did was the Farm House and I used the rusted metal background for the front page. I was thinking along the lines of an old farm house so used the image of the little girl and her mom with the lambs which I got from Lisa Vollrath's site. I had the ivy from a long ago project and decided to add it to the piece.

The dog stamp and welcome sign from another stamp were things that seemed to fit with the theme.

I could not really decide what to do with the back so rummaged through my stamps and papers.

The paper on the back is Banana Paper and the stamped house image is a stamp I bought for Christmas cards a few years ago because it reminds me of a winter day.

I had originally signed up for a glass house but the idea I had in mind was not feasible. Since I had a bunch of acrylic sheets for what I initially had thought about, I decided to use them when creating the "World Travellers" house. I started out by cutting out the small house shape from the acrylic and coloured them with alcohol inks. Once they were dry I stamped images on the reverse with Stazon Jet Black.

The background was coloured with Fluid chalk inks and then I stamped a flourish stamp and the words Souveniers from a new Magenta set of unmounted stamps. The image of the man in the old car is from billblanton.com who generously shares old images on his site.

The back is direct to paper with Colorbox Fluid chalks. The image of the people on the bicycle is a new Magenta stamp by Crafty Individuals and was coloured with DTP using Colorbox pigment inks.

I decided to add the pictures as a vignette representing the travels of the person living in the house. The picture of the cabin in winter is one I got from my brother-in law and the one of the mountains is my own picture. I cannot remember where I got the other two pictures otherwise I would give credit to the photographer. Hope I have not inadvertantly broken the copyright law by using them in my art work.