Ancient History

Hello all!  When I shared my final GD piece for the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge - the Tic Tac Toe journalling pages - I mentioned that the spread was done in an art journal made in a class with the awe-inspiring France Papillon, and I realised I'd never shared any pictures of the altered book itself (or any of the other things made at the class come to that), so now it's time...

I actually took this weekend workshop back in November 2014, France's first teaching visit to the UK.

I've always loved her work, especially her art journalling and the great videos she shares, so I was thrilled to get a place on the workshop.

We were up in Middlesbrough, brilliantly hosted by the fantastic Sue Tucker, and we did all sorts of things over the two days.  I'm just sharing photos of the altered book art journal today, but I'll try to track down some of the rest at some point too.








Obviously, I won't be giving away the techniques France shared with us on the workshop, but if you ever get the chance to take part in one of her classes, then do!

The rusted, worn look of the cover really gives me great pleasure...













... especially with the rusty metal additions of the bolts...














... and the fabulous metal plate on which the WordBand is mounted.












These were all real metal pieces which France had pre-rusted on her balcony for everybody taking part in the workshop!














The process we used to add the soft focus to the image gives it a lovely waxy look.















It'll be no surprise to regulars that, given a choice of colours to go with the rust, I went with teal blue tones!















I love the additions dangling down the spine of the book.














And the worn page edges are just so cool.














This started as an absolutely bog-standard hardback book, in almost-new condition.
















You'd never know to look at it now but, in fact, it's Terry Wogan's autobiography!















The rusted file tabs in amongst the scuffed edges and frayed lace are another great touch, I think.
















I've always loved how France uses eyelets in her journalling pages and altered projects, so this one allowing the ribbon to loop through the cover is great in my eyes.














And the teal-dyed ribbon runs all the way around the back to fasten the book closed - that will become more important as I fill more pages and the book starts to bulge!

For now, there are only a few page spreads inside.  (If you'd like to know which ones feature in this book, then just click the "France Papillon book" label at the foot of the post and it will call up all the posts with those spreads.)









So I'm only a year and a half behind with posting this, not quite Ancient History I suppose, but it feels like aeons ago.

I've some more ancient history coming up - a project from a workshop even longer ago which I never got around to sharing, and I'm hoping I might manage to catch my travel posts up to Shanghai or even Hong Kong in the near(ish) future.

There might be some more Encores too, as I'm away from my own craft desk for another month at the moment.  I sometimes get a bit sad knowing all those exciting supplies are sitting gathering dust - but mostly there's too much nice stuff going on to be too upset about it!

For now, my thanks for your company today, and I wish you all happy crafting.

Does progress mean that we dissolve our ancient myths?  If we forget our legends, I fear that we shall close an important door to the imagination.
James Christensen