Friday 16 March 2018

Visual Journal - altered book and cabinet card for AVJ

As promised my step by step of the altered book I made to start our new year of challenges is now up at A Vintage Journey. You will see how I prepared this cover and how the embellishments and finishing touches pulled the vintage collage together. To see my original post and my 'Treasure' that triggered this project for this month's challenge click here.



I have already created the first pages in this book so keep an eye here on my blog in May when I will  link to the DecoArt Mixed Media blog when the project goes live.

Thanks for being a reader and supporter of my blog, I do read all your comments and really appreciate them.

Have a great weekend and hopefully enjoy some crafting time of your own.

hugs Brenda xxx

Updated from AVJ
I began by preparing a couple of old books by painting the outside covers with gesso and adding some texture using the gesso with a palette knife when it was dry.

Having chosen the larger book and this cabinet card to use .....


..... I decided that as it was quite plain I would alter it and I found a piece of old Graphic 45 paper and cut an oval shape from it.


I had ensured there was plenty of space around the oval to fully cover the card.


I aged the centre cut by rubbing round with an emery board and blending over ground espresso DI. Then I adhered it onto the cabinet card and used a sanding block to sand away the excess patterned paper. This had then distressed the edges as well and again I blended in ground espresso DI.


I started to gather bits and snippets to make some decisions on the embellishing first. Every piece has been painted, inked and/or distressed in some way. I sealed all the card embellishments with satin varnish before they were added to the cover.


This cabinet card covers quite a bit of the front cover so I felt I needed to create a layered background with textures and neutral covers. I began with a text stencil and texture paste mixed with gesso that I heat dried and then, dribbled, dipped and spritzed my gorgeous decoart media acrylics.
 Using quinacridone magenta, titan buff and yellow oxide I dribbled and spritzed the colours to create a light mottled background.


I stamped with the same colours using a text stamp from the Andy Skinner shabby chic set.


I darkened the background by dribbling and spritzing some raw umber with titan buff and dabbled over some watery titanium white (all the time I am heat drying between each layer).


At this point I decided to seal it and used the DecoArt satin varnish. I wanted it to be very sturdy and ready to take the punishment of it being used regularly and creating and making the new journal pages. I began adding the collage elements in layers ....... getting the base parts adhered and flattened under a heavy box.


Now to add in the collage elements. I used the new clear modeling paste from DecoArt and oh boy does it have a strong bond for the card, fabric and metal pieces.


Looking at the book I felt there was something missing - contrast in the background - so I took a fine brush some quinacridone gold, paynes grey and raw umber ........ and with some dabbling of the colours around the collage elements the shading, shadowing, aging and framing has brought it together more.