Book It! A Vintage Journey challenge and Eileen Hull Passport Book

I Just love creating handmade books, mini albums and journals etc and as  a child I was an avid reader but all I seem to read about these days is new techniques and craft ideas etc. :o) x

There is nothing better than curling up with a good book to take us away to another place! This month over at A Vintage Journey we'd like you think about books - perhaps you will make a book, or a journal, create a journal page showing a scene from one of your favourite books (do please tell us what book!) or a card showing someone reading or made using text stamps, stencils or word stickers. Just remember to create in one of our preferred styles of vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk.

I attended a workshop with the lovely Antonis Tzanidakis last weekend and bought some of his papers and stamps to play with. I decided to use these to make a little grungy, mixed media passport style book.

Process steps

1. Cover some black card with patterned paper - I used Mechanical Fantasy from Stamperia by Antonis. Cut two covers from the die.

2. Cut a spine from mountboard, stamp it with the typewriter from Tim Holtz Inventor set.  Daub some paints over it, stamp it and dip in some watery colour washes using the same as you just used.

3. Add some additional colour to the papers and spine, seal them with matte medium and give a coat of clear crackle glaze and leave it to dry naturally.

4. Paint the back of the covers with the titan buff paint. With a palette knife drag over cobalt blue and quin gold and dry. Stamp. Repeat the dragging over with white gesso. Seal with a coat of matte medium mixed with both the quin gold and cobalt blue and when that is dry again give a coat of the clear crackle glaze and dry naturally.  Also crackle glaze the spine.

5. Brush everything (inside and outside of the covers) with oil paint to get into all the cracks, then rub back with a baby wipe and dry kitchen roll to leave the cracks and crevices aged with the paint.

6. Stick the covers to the spine and add embellishments to the front. It was here I swapped the inside and outside covers over. I prefer the painty layers to the patterned papers.

7. Die cut pages with patterned papers and watercoloured papers and insert them as three signatures  into the booklet using elastic.

My book is now ready to use tor any "Stuff, ideas and things"

I hope you will be able to pop over to AVJ to see some other wonderful creations from the members of the team posting this month and maybe we'll see you joining in as well?

xxx

Supplies from Country View Crafts

Stamperia Mechanical Fantasy paper pad - Antonis

DecoArt premium acrylic paint- titan buff

DecoArt Media acrylic paints - Cobalt Teal Hue, Quinacridone Gold
DecoArt Clear Crackle Glaze, Matte Medium

Tim Holtz stamps - Inventor
Eileen Hull dies
Tim Holtz supplies

Blending acrylic paints technique for DecoArt Media Design Team

I have a post up over on the DecoArt Mixed Media Blog today with a step by step outline of how I experimented with blending acrylic paints using a blending tool.

It all started when I made a vintage tag for Tag Friday on A Vintage Journey at the end of March. You may remember seeing it.

At the time I didn't record how I got that lovely creamy and smooth looking background with the media fluid acrylics, so I set about experimenting with different ways I could re-create it.

So if you have time to  be transported over to the DecoArt Mixed Media blog to see what I found out you'll find all the details there.

xxx


Updated from DecoArt blog

Instructions :

Here's what the original background photos looked like.

I started my exploration with some ordinary craft shipping tags. The tags on the left were not primed at all and the tags on the right were given a thin coat of gesso using a palette knife. I used the rectangular blending tool and foam, taking a small amount of each colour and blending from my craft mat onto the tag, just like you do with distress inks.

1. These were a mixture of both opaque and semi-translucent paints - Titan Buff, Cerulean Blue, Green Gold and Yellow Oxide although I mixed some Titan Buff with the 3 semi-translucent colours which made them more cloudier.

2. These were all translucent colours - Hansa Yellow Light, Cobalt Teal Hue, Phthalo Green-Blue and Cobalt Blue Hue.

3. In this neutral palette the acrylics were all opaques - Burnt Umber, Dark Grey Value 3, Medium Grey Value 6 and Titan Buff.

What I realized was that I used far too much paint on the blending foam, the paints moved around a lot but were easy to use. What I also noticed was that blending onto a gesso surface was much smoother and created more translucent colours. Mmmmm how could I improve on that?

I took a little time to think about what else we know about acrylic paints? They dry quickly, they are traditionally used by painters using brushes and these artists usually use sweeping strokes of colours to blend them together. They can be mixed with glazing medium to create more transparent layers which doesn't affect their drying time. Also, by experimenting with the blending tool and blending foam I found the pads hold the paint well, give good coverage and are washable so they can be used again. So I decided my next step was to add some glazing medium to see what difference that made.

I cut some card to fit one of my journals and scraped a gesso layer over with a palette knife and left them to dry. Gesso has a tooth to it to allow the paint to stick to it so I buffed the first piece with a soft cloth, it certainly gave it a bit more of a satin feel. I also swapped from the larger rectangular tool to the small circular tool and foam. I love the neutral palette so I chose Titan Buff, Medium Grey Value 6, Burnt Umber and Raw Umber.

4. The card on the left has two coats of Titan Buff. The card on the right has two coats of Titan Buff mixed 1:1 with glazing medium. When added to paint it gives more transparent layering effects and this just glided on with the foam pad and gives a much softer finish. I also started by rubbing with a soft cloth after each layer had dried but you’ll see what happened part way through.

5. For the next layer, I chose Medium Grey Value 6. Immediately you can see how thicker the paint stays on the surface even with only one coat (as the left-hand side). Because the paint is thicker you need more paint on the foam for it to cover. Whereas the mix of paint and glazing medium on the right-hand side has two coats and is still so soft and translucent and you need very little on the foam pad. I can see the benefits of using both of these techniques.

6. For the third colour I chose burnt umber and repeated Step 2 above but I forgot to rub the right-hand card with a soft cloth between the layers and the paint beneath gave more tooth for the second coat to hold onto giving a deeper tone.

7. I finished with Raw Umber applying it mostly around the edges to frame each background. Again I chose not to rub the right-hand card between the two layers of paint but I did rub both of them before I took each photo. On the right-hand card I also rubbed my finger around the edges when applying the wet paint to blend it to an even softer finish.

So you see the effects I got from raw card, gesso, media paint and glazing medium. You can see some of the cards have more texture than others from the gesso. I actually love all the effects.??
To summarise there are four different outcomes and effects.
1. Blended acrylics on raw card
2. Blended acrylics on gesso covered card
3. Blended acrylics on gessoed card with buffing between layers
4. Blended acrylics mixed with glazing medium and buffed between layers

Vintage Photos, Collage, Ephemera and Embellishments.

I love my mixed media work but I also love working with all those things in the title of this post. Today I am using the new Found Relatives Vintage Portraits with some older Tim papers and bits and pieces I keep for creating my vintage collages.

I love this photo of a young girl and her teddy bear, she is sitting so beautifully for the camera and is composed and happy. I bet this portrait became a favourite of her parents.

The heart is a little one die-cut from corrugated card and given a large splattering of white paint and mounted over some linen thread. I also tied the neutral bow to it to give additional interest.

This embellishment below just came about with me finding the small piece of black seam binding and the piece of tape in a box and put them together like this. I wanted the red to continue drawing the eye around the page and the black balances the Heartfelt sentiment  in the other corner.

You can just see some vermillion stamped text, it is randomly dotted over the grungy panel which was the result of a DecoArt project I made for May. So keep your eyes peeled for that coming soon.

A scrap of hessian, red and white borders and the Heartfelt sentiment carry the eyes across the page picking out the textures and patterns. The little red flower is one I made years ago and it found it's way into my box of bits when I disassembled a project it was on. Do you do that too, take something to pieces that you don't want to keep any more and recycle the elements?

I wonder if this little girl is going on a journey as this red and black ticket fitted in perfectly with the colour scheme and the pen nib reflects the idea of typed and written text in the right hand piece of layering paper and of course you just get a glimpse of the red stamped text too. Perhaps she grows up to be a writer or a travel journalist?

I love the kraft, red, white and black palette and as you saw this was created in one of my kraft journals which I think will now become just for paper dolls, lost relatives and photo booth collage art.

xxx

Treasures - stamps and acrylic watercolours

I've been away for two weeks for some sun. 

I had this little tag in reserve and it's perfect to slot it in here.

It's very quickly made and simple to do but I just love the effects.

Process steps

A coat of gesso layered thinly with a palette knife.

Dip, drip and dry with watery prussian blue hue, 2 or 3 dips did the job.

Stamp Andy's fossils and fern in black archival ink. I used the stamp platform to get a really dark and clear image.

Watercolour the images with watery washes of translucent media acrylic paints to get the gorgeous bright tones shining back at you.

Finger paint some colour around the images using the washes and finger daub some neat quinacridone gold at the bottom.

Stamp the title word and blend ground espresso distress ink around the edges.

Not my usual style I know but it came from nowhere whilst trying to get some projects finished and the vintage feel really appeals to me. It's like a n illustration in an old book.

xxx

Supplies

Stencil cover tag from Tando Creative

DecoArt Media Acrylics - quinacridone burnt orange, hansa yellow medium, quinacridone gold, sap green, prussian blue hue, translucent white

Andy Skinner stamps - Stampendous - Fossils

Media board for Andy Skinner

I have been having fun with chipboards for this project. I love layering up greyboard shapes but sometimes they end up protruding too high especially if you want to use some in a journal or on media boards. So for this project I have soaked some of my Andy greyboard shapes and pulled them apart and it's amazing how you can then play with distressing the layers of the greyboard and even get to put some back together again to create different shapes as I have done here.

I am using a piece of greyboard cut to the size I want as a page for the Andy book I am making.

Process Steps

Paint the greyboard with gesso but do not have too much on the brush so that this almost becomes a dry brushing technique.

Repeat with cerulean blue and prussian blue keeping the edges darker.

Scrape over some gesso with a palette knife keeping it horizontal to the board and getting a distressed look. Dry.

 Repeat with some white crackle paste and this time leave to dry naturally.

Take your chosen greyboard shapes and soak the ones you want to split into thinner pieces and distress. These can be dried with a heat gun.

I split the industrial wings into 4 pieces and took the two thinnest ones for this project. When they were dry I glued them together to create a new shape with a hole in the centre and decided to use a retro palette for the rest of the colouring up.

When they were dry the small rectangle and the heart got a coat of quinacridone red and a wash of carbon black over them.

The industrial wings had cobalt teal hue, titan buff, a tiny amount of yellow oxide stippled over them then a random wash of red iron oxide.

Back to the backboard now it's dry and cracked. Mix a watery wash of turquoise blue hue and prussian blue, paint it over and rub away immediately with a piece of dry kitchen roll. This takes the edge off the white and tones it in with the colours we originally used. It also gives us some nicely defined cracks. Seal it now with a coat of matte varnish.

Use transparent red iron oxide and yellow oxide washes to layer more colour over the background. Dry between each layer.

Use paynes grey as a thick wash to go round the edges use a water spritzer and heat gun.

Stamp the words, add your chipboards using heavy gel medium and finish them with a coat of matte varnish.

It didn't quite look finished to me so I added a few remnant rubs, then I was happy.

The colours are pretty good too. It's not a palette I've used before but I'm loving the retro feel to it.

I'm sharing a shorter version of this over on Andy's blog today for my April DT piece.

xxx

Supplies

Andy Skinner stamps - Stampendous - Curiosity and Unexplained

Andy Skinner greyboard shapes - Tando Creative - Industrial Wings, heart and miscellaneous pieces from kits.

DecoArt Media Fluid Acrylics - cerulean blue and prussian blue, quinacridone red, carbon black, cobalt turquoise, transparent red iron oxide, titan buff, yellow oxide

DecoArt Media Speciality - white gesso, white crackle paste, matte medium, heavy gel medium, ultra matte varnish

Route 66 media board - Tando Creative

I have a quick post today sharing a small media board from Tando Creative, one I made for one of the visits Di made to Hochanda.

The Route 66 badge was stencilled onto a piece of leftover painty paper using  cerulean blue, phthalo blue and paynes grey media fluid acrylics.

The quote was stenciled using black modeling paste.

The background was created using a cracked distressed technique I have used before. The blues were chosen to get a retro look.



Short and sweet I'm afraid but sometimes time is of the essence.

Thanks for popping by and -

xxx