Watercolour book of hearts

'Hearts' - using distress inks like watercolours

 Cut a long strip of watercolour paper - mine was 7 cm wide and 38 cm long.

Crease the central line vertically, cut 1 cm off each end and score at 6 cm to create each page.

Create distressed backgrounds by using stencils - rub some ink randomly over the stencil, spritz with water and lay randomly a couple of times along the strip, repeat with another colour and a different stencil and dry. 

Then take an old credit card or something similar and aged mahogany ink, press one edge into the ink pad, spritz water lightly on the horizontal line of the card pages and push the edge of the credit card into it and watch the colour disperse outwards as it moves into and through the water. Dry and stamp some random text along the line just above and below using aged mahogany ink.

Take some card and using the dip, drip, spritz and dry technique, create distressed backgrounds from which you can die-cut some hearts. I used all the colour inks in my colour palette and the distress spritz sprays as well.

bring the pages together with the die-cut hearts, some thread for texture and rub-ons.

I added distress ink and distress spritz colour palettes and left over hearts to the back pages of the book.

I also made a belly band to keep the booklet together.

 xxx

Supplies

Tim Holtz distress inks - aged mahogany, picked raspberry, candied apple, tattered rose, spun sugar, saltwater taffy, picket fence, 

Tim Holtz distress Spritz - picked raspberry, worn lipstick, tattered rose

Sizzix Tim Holtz dies - Vault Matchbook, Vault lovebirds,

Tim Holtz stamps - Ledger Script CMS241, 

Fabriano watercolour paper, bookmaking thread. punched hearts.

Halloween Collage Panel - Country View Crafts Design Team

Having had a playtime creating some potential halloween backgrounds (see post) I've taken the red one to use but before I created the collage I splattered some Barn Door Distress Spritz over it to give it some highlights.

This is my second inspiration project for October's Country View Challenges theme on FaceBook.

The Wicked Undertaker 

It is Victorian England and one of the creepiest crime waves in the East of London is surging. Anatomists and surgeons are needing an ever-increasing amount of bodies to advance their research in the study of human anatomy, and, as a result, they turn a blind eye to the dead body trade that is booming. Individuals and gangs are turning to body snatching (digging up graves to extract bodies) and selling them to make a neat profit— these are the scary body snatchers known as the London Burkers (burking meaning ‘killing someone for their marketable cadaver’). A gang led by John Bishop and Thomas Williams, who began their crimes by robbing fresh graves, quickly graduate to murder for an even fresher corpse to sell to the unscrupulous anatomists who are working with such criminals very regularly. Frightening!

Here is one of the unethical undertakers, Bertie Burns who engages in some of the underhand activities. At times bodies are very hard to come by, and sometimes, because desperate times call for desperate measures, the trade in human bodies also includes body parts, and often those who need bodies settle for body parts instead and Mr Burns makes a pretty penny.

xx

Materials

Dies Sizzix - Specimen,

Stampers Anonymous - Apothecary CMS138,  

Distress Inks - Seedless Preserves, Ripe Persimmon, Picked Raspberry, Mustard Seed, Vintage Photo, Ground Espresso, Scorched Timber

Distress Spritz - Barn Door, Fossilized Amber

Idea-ology  Corked Vials, Snippets Curator, Film Strip Ribbon, Muse Token - Halloween, Found Framed Portraits - Halloween, Remnant Rubs - Curiosities, Mummy Cloth, corked glass vials

Wish and Dream Panels with Tim Holtz Spritzes

 I picked up 2 small panels that have been hanging around on a shelf for ages, they both had a thin layer of gesso or texture paste scraped over them and were begging to be picked up and used.. I dipped them in some left over walnut stain distress ink I had been using and put them near the window to dry whilst I carried on with another project.

I heard the postman deliver some post through the letterbox and was excited to find the new Tim Holtz Spritzes I had ordered had been delivered and I did no more than unpack and shake them and gave each one a spray on some very small pieces of card and put them aside to dry. There were some little splatters of the sprays from each bottle left on my craft mat and I dipped my two little panels in them so as not to waste any. They remained on the shelf until the next morning and I just gathered some bits from my collage packets and hey presto these appeared. 

I added some more splatters of the Spritz and some slatters of white paint to finish them off.

xxx

Products from Country View Crafts

Tim Holtz Distress Spritz

Tim Holtz Distress inks

Tim Holtz Snippets - Field Notes, Curator, Number Strips

Tim Holtz Idea-ology Chit Chat stickers

PaperArtsy Lace chalky finish paint