Make today Count - panel to mini book.

Gosh I'm still showing projects I made earlier in the year - but I'm so glad I had a few held back as it enabled me to spend lots of time in my garden during the warm weather - and I'm still catching up with project deadlines now.

Here's the panel I made.

Proces steps

1.      Seal the substrate with tinting base. 

2.      Use premium acrylic paints in cobalt teal hue, primary yellow, burnt umber, pyrrole red and titanium white. Blend them randomly through a stencil (Prima).

3.      Take media acrylics in translucent white, cobalt teal hue and phthalo green blue (all translucent colours) and blend over the background with satin varnish on a sponge. 

4.      If too dark rub over with dry kitchen roll and then spread translucent white with satin varnish over, let it pool, dab some off if necessary and dry. 

5.      Dip and dry in cobalt blue and titanium white mixed media acrylics. 

6.      Repeat step 4 with raw umber media acrylic. 

7.      Splatter with white media acrylic. 

8.      Add some random and torn tissue tape. 

9.      Stamp with black archival ink. 

10.  Add embellishments. 

11.  Sand and ink the edges.

Stamps are by Andy Skinner. This is from the Stampendous Shabby Chic set.

Paper dolls by Tim Holtz.

So that was the panel finished ......

..... but I decided to use it to make another little book for my shop space.

The pages are from a watercolour paper pad cut to size ....

.... and I used green thread to match in with the colour tones.

I used a coptic binding so that the journal open right out and lies flat when you use it.

I just simply tied it up with ribbon to keep it closed.

Making art on panels is a fabulous way to create and then to use the panel to make a book of your own is even more pleasurable.

xxx

Peace - Media Board

This panel stated life as a sample for the Stitches Trade show back in February. I used DecoArt media paints and mediums with some of Andy Skinner's stamps including the new Gothic Grunge set.

Process steps

1.      Seal with tinting base.

2.      With a plastic card scrape small amounts of cadmium orange, diarylide yellow, pyrrole red, titan buff, titanium white across the substrate, first in one direction then in the other.

3.      Using the same colours plus raw umber use two different stencils and blend and bump them to create different tones of pattern across the background. (Tando small dots and swirl)

4.      Dribble the leftover paints top to bottom and dry between colours.

5.      Add some cobalt teal to titan buff and repeat step 4.

6.      Take a small piece of card and monoprint with titan buff and titanium 

 white and watch the card pull off onto the substrate.

7.      With a palette knife scrape some white crackle paste around the edges  of the board.

8.      When dry rub some teal antiquing cream into it and rub of again.

9.      Stamp using titan buff, raw umber and pyrrole red stamp some text across the background.

10.  Stamp arch onto tissue paper and adhere to the background and add some remnant rub words.

11.  Seal with a coat of satin varnish.

Now I have used it to make a small handbound sketch/watercolour book. For speed and efficacy I added some patterned paper to another board and sealed it with the satin varnish.

Having bound the pages using a coptic stitch so the book will lie flat when it is being used I bound the spine with white tape and glued the first and last pages to the inside covers.

This is now ready to go in my shop space.

Keep the creativity in your HeART.