Such Stuff...

Hello and welcome, and an especially big welcome to the new followers - I'm so thrilled you decided to come along for the ride.  You've arrived just in time for one of my trademark War and Peace length posts!!

I'm sharing a mixed media canvas today which has been a loooong time in the making - not necessarily in terms of time spent on it, but in terms of when I first started working on it (about a month ago) and when I finally finished it (a couple of days ago)... squeezing in a few minutes at a time whenever I could spare them from other activities!

This one was just for me (no DTs, no bloghops).  I love playing with mixed media - I love all the texture and dimension, as you may have noticed - and I really wanted to have a go at some of the amazing spritzing and spraying that Finnabair does to such great effect.

I love her new Prima range of bits and bobs for creating dimensional collages, but rather than use lots of expensive stuff on my first go, I decided to go with mainly recycled stuff and household bric-a-brac.

This was the point at which the quote from Shakespeare's The Tempest started rattling around my head - it's just some "stuff", you see.





And this wasn't originally intended for the current challenges, but it does fit rather beautifully into a couple of them...

The layers of recycled material, paint, sprays, ink and texture paste, along with the central word of the quote, make it a perfect fit for the current Frilly and Funkie challenge to Layer It On and Share a Word.

It's also the first outing for a stamp set I really love, and which has been patiently waiting for me to use it - the Grunge Font Alphabet from Kaisercraft.

I'm completely addicted to letters, fonts and alphabets, and I grabbed this glorious stamp set months ago, with great plans for it... and it's taken until now for it to make its way onto a project.  It's partly because of its size - for a whole quote in this font, you need a sizeable space.

So this also goes into Simon Says Stamp and Show's challenge to ink up the Stamp You Love (But Don't Use).  Although now I've tried it once, I think you can look for it to be a regular from here on in!








Since I kept stopping and starting, I ended up taking photos of each stage - partly so that I would have a record of where I'd got to incase something happened to it while it waited for my return (like getting trodden on, for instance... this was my "floor" project for the duration).

So I can give you a pretty good idea of how the layers built up (and also come back myself and check out what on earth I did!).

It started, as so many of these things do, with some corrugated card, some book pages and some netting from a bag of apples (okay, not so much of that before now).

I arranged them around a large (for me - 10 x 12 inch) canvas board - canvas mounted on thin, hard wood, therefore good for stamping onto; and pretty cheap, therefore good for experimenting.

As you can see, the safety pins made a pretty early entrance too - and needed lots of glue and encouragement to stay in place!

Once that was all dry and secure, it all got a coat of gesso.  I used the mini-Antiquities mask from The Crafter's Workshop to apply some texture paste in various places. There was clearly some ink left on the mask, as the paste looks a slightly Vintage Photo colour... not to worry, it's all going to get covered up anyway.

Then I started playing with adding other bits and pieces - more "stuff": bubble wrap; some of the cheapo paper flowers from The Range (12 in a pack for £1 I think it is, plus they come attached to little wooden clothes pegs, so you get 12 of those too!); some bark hearts that were being sold off in the local plant nursery's Christmas sale; and some feathers I pulled off some other decorations bought for peanuts in the Czech Republic last summer.

As you can see in the photo above, the quote was already starting to take shape - I knew that dreams, as the most significant word in the phrase, would take centre stage - cut with the Tim Holtz WordPlay die - but I was still playing with how the rest of it would make an appearance.

Here is one experiment - which actually almost made it onto the finished piece - very jagged edged pieces of paper with the words stamped on in Archival Olive.  Obviously, I'd've inked and spritzed them rather than leaving them stark white.

Buttons are starting to gather now, you'll notice.










The final bit of "stuff" pre-spraying was some plastic roses bought in what I'd decided was an over-hasty moment... they were supposed to be ivory/cream coloured and turned up in this hideous peachy colour.

But I figured this was make it or break it time for them - a chance to prove themselves worthy of a continued place in my stash!









And yes, they started to disappear very nicely, thank you, under the next coat of gesso.

You'll see the flower's gone missing temporarily.  At this point, I was toying with leaving the flowers out of the spraying and having them stay white, as accents against my planned turquoise onslaught.





Another few days passed before I had a chance to come back to the piece... and, to be honest, I was a little afraid of the next step: colour!  And lots of it!

I'd gathered together all the spray, inks and paints I had which were in the turquoise, blue or green tones I was after, as well as some white ones to rescue me (especially excited about the new Dylusions White Linen - my passport to Dylusions sprays, as it offers a way to tone them down and give them opacity, while keeping all that amazing blendability and coverage).



But eventually, I had to bite the bullet - or this would have sat on my floor (honestly - you can see the blue rug in all the photos - although once the sprays kick in there's also a big wodge of cardboard underneath) for another month.

And I had a blast!!  As evidenced by the fact that I forgot to take any photos as I went along...  Pretty obviously the flowers made their way back in there, and I'm so glad they did.

The whole thing went through various stages of brightness, whiteness, shimmeriness and inkiness... and your next view of it is at the point when I'd just dribbled some white India ink all the way down it in various places and blown it everywhere with a straw to soften the effect!







I had decided by this point that I wanted my dreams letters basically in white... so they've had a coat of Picket Fence crackle paint, and then I rubbed Chipped Sapphire onto them, wiping away the ink on the surface with a baby wipe to leave it in the cracks.  In the photo r and e are inked, a and m aren't yet...

But I was still in two minds about my sharp-edged other words... everything else seemed suitably swirly and indirect...

I thought about stamping directly onto the canvas, but there's so much texture in the way.

Can't believe how long it took me to come up with one of my favourite things to do - stamping onto tissue paper...  I got nice and messy gluing them on, but it was worth it.




One element which I knew would have to wait until after the spritzing was the addition of the seed pearls I'd been hoarding.

Though I'm not one myself, there are some scrapbookers whose work I absolutely love - Kim Price of Inkognito (for pure beauty, and inky effects I'm still experimenting to emulate) and - from the school of glorious embellishment and inky/painty altering - Keren Tamir and Kelly Foster.






To be honest, I can't remember which of these latter two it was that gave me the seed pearl idea... but they're both worth a visit for sheer inspiration!

Anyway, I sourced myself some seed pearls (mainly turquoises, but I've got some white ones up my sleeve too) and I had a lovely time adding them to my little collections of stuff.

I'm also really happy with how those little peach roses have turned out!








I think the dreams letters are gorgeous - the Picket Fence crackle paint worked like a dream.

I had to smile when the Funkies released their inspiration projects for the Frilly and Funkie challenge on Wednesday, and there was Donna - with a canvas and white crackle painted letters right across the middle of it - great minds, you see!







There's also a good chance to see the texture paste script in this photo.

I can't quite work out at what stage of the proceedings I reversed the whole canvas, so that the texture paste writing is now upside-down... ah, well, it all adds to the "dreaminess" of it all!

Some of my favourite bits of texture come from the white netting.  Most of our fruit comes in those orange coloured nets (which would probably work out okay), but it was nice to start with white, knowing it wouldn't matter if it didn't quite absorb the inks.






Also it's a finer weave mesh than most of those nets, and pulled apart and frayed to give some really pleasing effects on the canvas.

And boy am I glad I decided to include the flowers in the spraying?!

Those cheap as chips white paper flowers look completely different - but that's the wonder of the heavy spritzing as Finnabair does it - transformation.

And in the end, only the feathers remain truly white and ethereal.

The other elements that, for me, really triumph in the transformative spritzing are the humblest of all - the safety pins, the bubble wrap and corrugated card.  

Now, regulars will know I love my corrugated card - and it really delights me in this project!

I'm also really delighted how, with the tissue paper stamping, you still get to enjoy all the texture underneath the letters.  

And most of all, I love how the rest of the quote hovers in and out of visibility, leaving the dreams holding centre stage.







Well, I have to apologise for another marathon post - but I hope those that needed to have just scrolled down looking at the pretty stuff; and I hope anyone who has ploughed through has done so because they were enjoying themselves!

Thank you for spending some of your precious time with me here today at Words and Pictures... I really am so grateful for your amazing support.

Prospero:
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd tow'rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. 
From The Tempest by William Shakespeare

I'm entering this in the following:
Layer It On and Share a Word at Frilly and Funkie
Stamp You Love (but never use) at Simon Says Stamp and Show
Anything Goes at Simon Says Stamp with a touch of Tim Holtz in the Word Play die

Escape Into A Book

Hello everyone!  We're kicking off a new Get Altered challenge over at eclectic Paperie today.  It's hosted by Tracy, and she's chosen Altered Books as her challenge theme.  Come and play... there's a prize on offer generously sponsored by Kim at the eclectic Paperie store.

I was a solitary child, a reader, and books have always been hugely important to me.  A book is a route into an enchanted place - an escape to other times, countries or even worlds; a place to discover, learn and explore to the edges of your imagination and beyond.  And, yes, a place where even if there isn't quite a "happily ever after", there is at least a sense of resolution and completion.  Though a "happily ever after" is obviously the best option...


When I first found out about altered books, I have to say my spine crunched slightly... surely this was a desecration of my holy places?  Books are for reading not altering!  
But as we've ploughed through the thousands of volumes my mother and I have collected over the years, I've come full circle.  

I've been holding on to books that are now unwanted as books and using their pages to craft with and, on occasion, taking whole books and changing how they live in the world.  Turns out that if it's a choice between the scrapheap and being altered, I'll do anything to save a book from oblivion!

So here's a book which was being (reluctantly) offloaded, and it's now got its very own "happily ever after"!




Sadly, I forgot to take a before photo - too slap happy with the gesso! - but it was just an old hardback book - in fact, a version of Hamlet with the original on one side and a German translation on the facing page, so it's got my "other life" built into it too!

I started with the outside covers with, as I said, a coat of gesso all over, including the page edges.  I then started playing with my new - and first ever - Dylusions sprays.  

I picked the London Blue and Vibrant Turquoise as part of my shopping after my lucky draw at SSSaS the other week.  (And I've got a couple of the new colours on order - I'll leave you to guess which!)  I seem to be on an incredible roll with lucky dip draws at the moment - sorry, everyone!











I used the Crafter's Workshop Chicken Wire stencil, spritzing through it, and then turning it over to use up the ink left on the surface.  

Since I only have the two colours at the moment, I also added some spritzes of Luminarte's Radiant Rain shimmer mist in Fern to add both some greener colour and some fairytale sparkle to the look.

Next step, of course, was stamping.  And it was inevitable that the Donna Downey Delicate Flowers stamp would get in on the act.  

Anyone who read my Hedgerow Tag post will know that I've become slightly obsessed with these Unity stamps - there's a whole line of projects inspired by them waiting to be blogged!

I also used one of the stamps from my trusty Stampology Silhouette Blossoms set.  These were all stamped in Archival inks - Olive and Sepia mainly - incase I wanted to do some more spritzing later.

I love that you can still see the debossed panels from the original book cover, as well as - if you look closely - the original decoration.  

Those sepia coloured simple flourishes in the central rectangle are from the book itself, not me. 










And I also love the distressed look of the aged book underneath, lending its character to what I've created (though of course it has had some additional assistance from some Gathered Twigs DI).

I let the book choose where to fall open... most of them will have a natural place, and it's no use trying to force them to do things they'd rather not do.  

I then gave the internal pages a coat of ground - yes, ground - a new medium I've been playing with, considerably thicker than gesso, and it gives really good coverage and a great surface to work on.










I used the ground (feels like it should be "ground") on the long edges of the pages too, where it had the happy effect of "gluing" them together into a fairly solid block.  

Then I let rip with the stamping once more... the Delicate Flowers again and the rose branch, in Olive, Sepia, Coffee and some Memento Teal.  










I also tried out spritzing the stamp with the Fern mist which gave me a much more watercoloury look, though most of those ended up getting covered up by the quote I'm afraid.












I was delighted to find that I could also stamp quite nicely onto the ground (grounded?) edges... this has ended up being one of my favourite elements of the finished piece!











And on the narrow edges, I added some music stamping (music - another escape, another way to journey into someone else's imagination) in Teal, using my lovely Hero Arts music background.













(These Hero Arts background stamps are on sale at eclectic Paperie at the moment, at real bargain prices - I'm afraid the music may already have sold out though!)

The quote had been hovering at the back of my mind from quite early in the project (hence the plant stamping on the covers)... 



A garden is another enchanted place to escape into, though perhaps Cicero meant it more practically in terms of growing one's food?




It's written on some leftover packaging using the Inkssentials white gel pen.  



In fact, it's the card peeled away from the corrugated side of a cardboard box, so it's got some internal stripy texture which I've highlighted with Gathered Twigs DI.

I used a Pitt pen in sepia to doodle some ivy onto the quote panels - I'm finally starting to allow some freehand onto my projects!  

I wanted some more texture and dimension, and I also wanted to reintroduce some book text, so I cut some book pages from another rescued book using the TH Tattered Leaves die.  

I doodled on them with both the white and the sepia pens, crumpled them up and arranged them into messy leaf mulch to rest the sentiment panels onto.

Having covered up all the book text with ground (hmmm - still sounds weird), it seemed the least I could do to add some back in - plus I just love the look of book pages!












Obviously, the book wouldn't stay upright without some support, which is where the garden twine came in.


It seemed the perfect ingredient, such a simple solution, and also added some great rustic texture to the piece.


The filigree corners give some extra sturdiness.  I embossed them with the Ranger Weathered White powder, so that they aren't too smooth and shiny but have a bit of a roughened texture, which will also hold some Gathered Twigs DI for a bit of gentle distressing.






There were several stages of this where it really wasn't working for me, and I was tempted to start all over again, but I kept on going, altering, adding, covering and changing things and, in the end, I've got a piece which really enchants me.  I'd like to "get inside it", if that makes any sense...  

It makes me happy looking at it and that, I hope, will make the book happy too, even if it can't be read any longer.


Another long post, I'm afraid, but thank you for sticking with it.  If you've made it this far, then hopefully you'll be inspired to alter your own unwanted books and join in with our eclectic Paperie Get Altered challenge.  

All the details are here.  You have two weeks, so there's plenty of time to read the book first too!

A room without books is like a body without a soul.
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
Mark Twain

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.  Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
Groucho Marx

I'm entering this in the following:
Simon Says Stamp and Show's challenge Ever After
Papertake Weekly are playing Anything Goes

Just click on the image to go straight to the goodies!