And We're Off!

Helloooooooo!!!

Long time, no see on this poor neglected little blog!  First of all many thanks to anyone who drops by to see the first project post in a blooming long time but there you go, life gets in the way sometimes doesn't it.

Elaine liked a little book of Kate Crane's which you can see here and suggested it as inspiration for our return round of projects so today I have my version to show you.  Now confession time!  I started this several months ago and made some very basic mistakes and almost binned it but I kept it on one side and decided to have a faff last week to see if I could make it presentable.  Having learned from my mistakes I could do a much better job on another one but thought it only fair to show my gaffs, lol!

Unfortunately, I forgot to take step by step photos and because most of it was done a while ago I have almost forgotten what I did but I'll tell you what I can remember.

First of all I created a concertina 'spine' from black card.  I chose to have 3 pages plus front & back covers so needed a total of 5 valley folds.

I then cut 5 pieces of black card 4" x 8".  I decided to colour my backgrounds with PaperArtsy Fresco Finish paints so I put puddles of paint on my craft mat one colour at a time, spritzed quite liberally with water and then dragged my pieces of card through.  I dried with my heat gun between each colour and kept adding colour until I had an effect I liked and good coverage.  I then used various stencils and Fresco Finish Snowflake paint to create the next layer.

 

Next, I used a selection of PaperArtsy's JoFYstamps to stamp on each page with black Archival Ink. I also stamped the flower heads onto white card and heat embossed with clear EP before dragging out my much neglected Twinkling H2Os to colour them with.  I also added some of this colour to the stamping on the pages.

I folded each of my pages in half and stuck the blank sides together with double sided tape so that I had five 4" x 4" pages. I cut out the separate flower heads and decoupaged them onto the pages with dimensional glue.  I also decided to add a few highlights with a white Posca Pen.

Then came the assembly ...... and this was where I realised my mistake!  It's glaringly obvious now, lol, but have  you guessed it yet?  I had forgotten to allow for sticking the pages to the concertina and had stamped over the whole page and even some of the raised elements and wording ended up being slightly covered by the black 'mountain' folds. Never mind, we learn by our mistakes and I don't think I'll make that one again ;D.

I cut some strips of fairly thin black paper and used a border punch to decorate the edges before folding them in half and sticking them over each concertina fold to give a more finished appearance.  Finally I used some 7Gypsies sticky backed fabric tape to hold the spine together.

In the end my little book didn't turn out too badly I don't think.  The part I was most pleased with was the paint & stencil layers in the background.

Well, that's the end of my post for today.  I have no idea which of my lovely buddies will finish their project next or exactly when but as we all have different commitments now our posts will be as and when we can fit them in.  I do hope you'll keep an eye open for when they pop up and let us know you dropped in by leaving a comment if you have time.

Hugs
Lesley Xx