Last page for "Sea" altered book

This one was a tough one for me. I just could not get inspired as lots of the usual sea/beach/seahorse/pirate themes had been done. After browsing through piles of my saved pictures, postcards, postage stamps, stickers, etc. etc., I finally found an old postcard of fishing boats in a harbor. I glued it to the page and gessoed around it, then painted around with blue paint. Then my muse skipped out for a few days! Today when I looked at the still fairly empty pages, I decided to add houses for the foreground harbor scene. The Fresh Fish sign is a sticker but I attached painted toothpicks to make it into a sign and made it into a "pop-out" - it pops out from the page when the book is opened. This is not my favorite page, but at least I'm now done with my three spreads and can send it on to the next person. I hope Pat likes the pages I've done in her book.

Busy as a bee

I seem to be as busy as a bee but don't have many photos to post as most everything is in various degrees of completion with nothing totally finished yet.

I did finish sewing two more throw pillows (20" square) for my friend today. I call this my neverending sewing project as the more I finish, the more there seems to be left to do!

I was reading on Gingerwood today about gals altering the popular Brides flowers (these are tins of white/ivory flowers sold in the bridal section of Michael's that everyone was talking about recently and are far cheaper than paper flowers found in the scrapbooking/stamping department). I had bought some a few weeks ago and since they were lovely as is, with a beautiful subtle sheen, had only used them "unaltered." So, I dug them out and here is a chart of my results of altering. The top left shows a plain flower. Top right is one that I stamped with Archival Black ink and a text background stamp. I wanted to try coloring the flowers to test different inks to see what would dry and keep the sheen. Of the four I tried - Palette Hybrid, SU Dye, Brilliance Pigment and Adirondack Dye - all worked well, dried and retained the pretty sheen. On the two colored flowers on the right, I applied the ink to the reverse side and like how ink did not get into the little outline groove. Lots of possibilities for these little guys and I like that I will always be able to have a matching flower if I choose!

Little Black Book

Here's a page I made for a round robin book swap my local stamp group is doing. Everyone had to make their own book and pick their theme. This one is "Little Black Book" and is just that, a small (approximately ATC size) spiral bound notebook with black pages. The only instructions were "Like the perfect black dress, my little black book is classic, sexy and timeless." So this is what I did. The image is a stamp from Rubber Romance which I embossed with Black Opals embossing powder on pale pink paper. This embossing powder is from Judikins and is very glittery - I adore this. I cut the image out and glued it to the black page. The white border is a rubon and the little "sign" is ultra-thin shrink plastic stamped with a Hero Arts stamp that repeats "Style is Eternal" three times. This was almost 2 inches square and shrank up to almost nothing! I attached a beaded fringe to the bottom. This is for Mette - hope she doesn't peek!

A Pirate's Life

Another page done! This one is about pirates - way out of my comfort zone! The photo doesn't show the pages well as there is vellum over both. I was going for the misty, gray sky look. On the left page I typed the "Yo Ho, Yo Ho, It's a Pirate's Life for Me" song and laid it over a blue painted sea and a gray inked sky. The sand is paper that looks just like sand. The Black Pearl ship on the right was actually a picture of a model kit. The treasure chest, jewels, knife and hat are plastic embellishments and I added a broken gold chain to the "loot."

"The Sea" Altered Book

I hope everyone enjoyed a relaxing holiday weekend and took time to remember those special American heroes, living and dead, who dedicate themselves and sacrifice so much for our freedom.

I took a little time to get one spread finished in the next book I received in the altered book round robin. This one's theme is anything to do with the sea, beach, mermaids, pirates etc. I tore several pages and inked them brown to simulate a sandy beach and added some vintage photos. The ocean and sky were painted with several blue acrylic paints. I added some water lines with white ink and wiped on a sparkle glaze to hightlight the water. For the sun I punched a hole in the page and painted the page behind with yellow acrylic paint and some more sparkle glaze. The final touch was adding some real shells and the little sand bucket and shovel.

Happy Birthday AAWA

I am a member of a small online group (AAWA) which celebrates it's sixth year tomorrow. The members are sending the group "mom", Jeri, birthday 4 x 4 squares to be bound into a book as a small token of appreciation for all she does for the group. This is my contribution, although the scan for some reason doesn't look quite square! I inked the background with two or three colors of Distress Inks, then stamped the sequin waste in white ink. It's hard to see but there are also tiny scrolls stamped all over the background in copper ink. The main image was stamped in black. The hat has three small orange sequins which I sewed on, tying the threads on top and leaving small tails. I attached the tiny tags (hand cut and inked with a soft blue) with orange brads. HAPPY BIRTHDAY AAWA!!

Another spoon fairy

I had so much fun making the other spoon fairy doll that I made another one a few days ago. This is a smaller spoon which didn't have the holes drilled in the top or the handle, so I just wrapped the wire around, adding beads as I went. I think I even like it better this way! I just used vintage images from the Internet, but my friend liked these so much that she made three for her daughter-in-law's birthday using black and white copies of photos of her three grandchildren. And for the little boy she used leaves instead of the flower petals. They came out really cute -- what a special gift!