Wish You Were Here

I thought Judith made a very clever choice when she settled on Rachel Jackson's Designer's Palette project from May's Craft Stamper. We'd all been so busy it seemed sensible to choose a project that could be completed quite quickly if we chose. But I found myself quite tested by it. For starters I realised that my colour vision is quite unreliable and when I saw the article the latte colour seemed quite green to me. Not a good start. I searched my inks and found the bordeaux colour hard to match up. The closest I could come was Cranberry which semed far too red. But I had brand new Indigo Blu stamps I was itching to try so I jumped in with both feet and liked the way the cranberry went with the latte and cream. I always intended to get myself an ink which better matched the ones Rachel had used in the article but before I knew it my project was at the point of no return!

In April's Craft Stamper I had been very taken with Jo Firth-Young's shaped concertina book and made a mental note to try something similar with my Baroque Bigz die. After playing with the Indigo Blu Grand Tour stamps I decided I would make a travel themed book and as my first attempts had looked good in the latte and cranberry, I decided to go with that.

As I was making my pages I was still in three minds as to how I was going to put my book together. Only at the last minute did I decide to make acetate hinges. They worked well for most pages but looked a bit clumsy on the burgundy backgrounds and, needless to say, if I was making this again I might do things a little differently.

The book takes its title from my favourite stamp from Indigo Blu's Grand Tour I set of stamps. It is called Wish You Were Here and you will see it on a later page. The bicycle stamp is from the same set. The background is made with the map stamp from Grand Tour II. I love the stamp and can see I will be using it a lot. You can't tell here but the map is of a favourite place of mine - the Lake District near Coniston and Windermere. I printed the title plaque on my printer and used an Elusive Images Creative Acrylic piece over the top.

The left hand page here uses a variety of stamps. Boys on Bikes is an Elusive Images stamp. The bus ticket is from The Open Road by The Artistic Stamper. The striped background is Holiday Stripes by Hero Arts. The top half of the page is made by inking through punchinella and stamping with the postmark stamp from Paperartsy Man of Numbers Plate 2. The right hand page was made with the Starry Night and Woodgrain embossing folders by Craft Concepts. The flags are made from newspaper and remind me of the ribbons we used to win on sports day at school.

Judith very kindly shared with us some lovely wooden Scrabble tiles which I used here with the Indigo Blu map stamp again and the compass from CI-294 by Crafty Individuals. On the right hand page I have used a Crafty Individuals' crackle stamp and the Artistic Stamper bus tickets from The Open Road. The arrows are Grungeboard Mixed Minis.

The gears page uses stamps from Crafty Individuals CI-294 again. There are also watch parts from The Artistic Stamper and some Tim Holtz Idea-ology sprockets. The card cogs were made with Sprightly Sprockets Nestabilities. Cycling Knickers is from The Open Road and the background is made with stamps from the same Crafty Individuals elements set and Sun Rays embossing folder. I added a swivel clasp for a bit of extra movement on the page.

This is the aforementioned Wish You Were Here stamp. I stamped it over a background made by inking through a compass mask by That Special Touch and layered up the lady on the top. The crackle stamp is there again in the background along with the wheel from The Open Road.

This page features stamps already mentioned. I've used a tiny Tim Holtz file folder and made the page a little bit interactive...

Here I've used one of the Mixed Minis again with a number stamp taken from one of the bus tickets. I think this was probably my favourite page.

I needed to keep the back page fairly flat but couldn't resist layering up the scroll, which is from Elusive Images' Harlequin Mask. The wheel is from The Open Road and the text from Indigo Blu Grand Tour II. In the background the page is embossed with Starry Night again and I have picked out the texture with a gold rub-on.

This wasn't the quick and simple project I'd thought I would be making but I loved doing it and in spite of the time it took I never tired of looking at the stamps or enjoying the colour combination. I wouldn't have used these colours without Rachel's inspiration but I like them so much now that I know I'll be turning to them again.