Add Some Texture - Simon Says Stamp Guest Designer

This may be my favourite theme of all the October posts for which I've been in the Designer Spotlight at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge this month... let's Add Some Texture.  And with Halloween fast approaching, my texture definitely has a spooky quality to it!

As always, it's been a delight to be part of the inspiration team at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge this month, even as a temporary member!  

I'm so grateful to the team for inviting me, and it's been a joy playing alongside the fabulous creatives and crafters on the regular Design Team, especially this week as we Add Some Texture!

As ever, Simon Says Stamp are sponsoring the challenge, with a lucky prize draw to win a voucher for a shopping spree in their fabulous online store.

I love adding texture to journal pages, especially when I'm working in one of my altered hardback books. 

There aren't really any making-of photos in this post - though of course I'll talk you through what I did with some close-ups... but you'll be able to watch the whole process over on my YouTube channel from Wednesday.  (I'll come back and add a link here when it's live.)

So make a note in your diary, and you'll be able to see the layers of texture building on this page spread in all the detail you could possibly want!

For now, let me share some of the steps and the products I used to achieve them.

It all started with a layer of gesso to soften the book text and prepare the pages for the wet media to come.  I glued in some scraps of my PaperArtsy Printed Tissue PT08, leaving plenty of wrinkles, plus bits hanging over the edges of the page... lots of texture already.

Next, I used the Tim Holtz Shatter stencil to ink some cobwebs into the corners using Pumice Stone Distress Ink.  The little spider comes from the Mini Halloween 3 stamp set - though he had migrated onto my Apothecary set!  And the little bits of script detail are the text stamp from Apothecary, one of my all-time favourite script stamps.

I glued down some frayed linen ribbon and strips of Idea-ology Mummy Cloth next to Shakespeare (!), and used a spatula to add Ranger Distress Opaque Crackle Paste in various places.

Obviously, you need to leave that to crackle and do its thing.  Once it was dry, I added Pumice Stone DI and Distress Crayon over it to highlight the cracks.

Time for some collaging...  I had some snippets left over from the Add Some Text project in week two... typewriter letters made with the large Typewriter Embossing Folder and Black Kraft Stock.  I thought they would be great elements within the collaging, and also add some more dimension and texture.

Otherwise, I grabbed bits and bobs from various packets of Idea-ology Halloween ephemera that I've collected over the years - both paper and metal ephemera.  

I can't say for certain what came from which edition, but you can find this year's collection here (and of course you can also buy the packs individually).

And there's one of the Halloween Paper Dolls too, of course.  (Again, she's from a while back.)

She's the fortune teller who might take a hand in how your fate unfolds by using one of her poisonous potions on you.  You'll hear more about all that in the video when it comes out on Wednesday.

Once again, there are a few of the Curator Snippets labels in the mix... I don't know where I would be without them!

I think that's about your lot!  It's certainly my lot for this month in the Designer Spotlight for the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge.  Head over there to see what the Design Team have got in store for you - it's bound to be inspiring.

They'll pick out a few favourite projects at the end of the week, and one randomly-drawn winner will go shopping at Simon Says Stamp with a prize voucher.  All you need to do is Add Some Texture!

I hope you've enjoyed this spooky little detour into the pages of my altered book journal.  And don't forget to pop back on Wednesday to get the direct link for the process video.  Of course, if you already follow my Words and Pictures YouTube channel, then you'll spot it when it pops up anyway!!

Thank you so much for stopping by, and I hope you'll have a wonderful week adding texture to whatever you are making.  Happy crafting, all!

There are poisons that blind you, and poisons that open your eyes.
August Strindberg

BELLADONNA, n. In Italian a beautiful lady; in English a deadly poison. A striking example of the essential identity of the two tongues.
Ambrose Bierce, from The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Collage Quartet

Oh dear, I'm so behind here!  It's the 1st of June, and I'm still catching up with sharing what we got up to in April in Fodder School... but I promise it's worth the wait.  It was an absolute creative treat.  The lovely Christine Karpiak offered up so many different techniques and ideas, and the final project was definitely right up my street!

The classes took us through a process of gathering and making fodder in many different ways, and then using that fodder to create a series of dimensional collages.  

My finished collages have a subtle, natural look to them that makes me so happy, but it's easy to overlook just how many different elements went into the fodder gathering and making.

There's clay-work, eco-dyeing, rusting techniques, stamp-carving, several methods of creating fodder papers, nature-foraging... and it was all so much fun.

I did my eco-dyeing with red cabbage... it's a staple ingredient here in the Czech Republic, so I thought I might as well go with the local produce!  

I was astonished at how playing with the acid/alkali balance of the dye created a gorgeous range of colours, so subtle and all beautiful in their own way.

I'm no stranger to rusting - there's usually a bit of metal or two decaying (deliberately) somewhere in my art studio...

... and I really enjoyed incorporating the rusting side-effects into some of the paper fodder making.

Those papers weren't the only ones we made... we also played with other methods of creating delicious collage papers.  As usual, I was working with my happy colours.

And my colour palette was also strongly influenced by my clay pieces, which were actually one of the first things I tackled.  I added a bonus session to the Fodder School classroom on these, as I used a different method from Chris for painting mine.

(If you join Fodder School, you get access to all the monthly bonuses too, of course.)

Just the fodder by itself made me extraordinarily happy, so I knew the collaging was going to be a breeze!  Working in a series is one of my favourite things to do.  And using old book covers as a substrate is another of my favourite things...

I put on some music and just allowed myself to become immersed in composition.  So meditative as a process. 

That word composition is so apt... arranging the elements on the book board substrates is all about harmony and rhythm, balance and counterpoint, just as it would be in music composition.

My quartet didn't feel quite balanced until I had added a significant word to each panel. Tim Holtz Quote Chips to the rescue...

They're positioned for harmony, counterpoint and rhythm, of course, but also for meaning.

Since the collages are mounted on book boards, and book pages play such a significant role...

... somehow I needed words in my final layers too.

Really and truly a beautiful month of creative exploration and joy.  So many of my favourite things, and a few new ones too.

I found myself in that sought-after state of creative flow so often this month, and I think it shows in the final quartet.  They make me deeply happy.

If all this is getting your creative juices flowing then this is a great time to sign up for Fodder School 3.  We're just starting the June classes - which include a mailart swap around the world!  It's only for Fodder School 3 participants, of course, so find all the details for registering here, and you get access to all the classes already available, as well as to those yet to come... including mine in August!

Happy June to you all... I hope you're enjoying a creative or restful or excitingly busy time (whatever you prefer) and I'll see you again soon.  After all, I need to share May with you before June catches up with me too far!  Happy crafting, all.

A word after a word after a word is power.
Margaret Atwood

Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.
Jeanette Winterson

Books, Books, Books

Hello all!  I'm just dropping in quickly to let you know about a new series called Books, Books, Books starting soon on my YouTube channel. 

Given I started out working in theatre, deeply embedded in the Words side of things, it shouldn't be a surprise that books, words and storytelling played a significant part in things when I turned to exploring Pictures and visual art.  The Books, Books, Books series on YouTube is going to celebrate that. 

There will be flip throughs and storytelling from art journals, handmade books and altered books made across all the years of my creative journey. 

The first full episode will be next Wednesday, but there's a short introduction over there now with a taste of what’s coming your way over on YouTube over the next weeks and months.  Take a look at the introduction to Books, Books, Books here... 

I know I haven't got around to filling you in on last month's Fodder School adventures yet - and boy, did I have a lovely time with the April project!  I'm looking forward to sharing it here... I just need to find time to write the blogpost!  Hope you're all doing well, and I'll be back soon with my Collage Quartet. 

Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.
Jeanette Winterson

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

Something beginning with S

Hello all, and welcome to the start of a new week and another new theme over at the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge.  This week they are looking for "Something beginning with S", so I have a journal page Spread for you.

I'm thrilled to be guest-designing alongside the amazing Simon Says team for the month of June.

They always offer up such incredible inspiration, with such a variety of styles, techniques and ideas.  Once you're done here, do hop over and see what the others have been creating beginning with the letter S.

When my Idea-ology Portraits arrived - that's the large scale head-and-shoulders chap in the centre - I started by putting a few of them with some Pocket Cards as a first step in gathering ideas.  

This is the third of the portraits to get its expanded version.  So far they've all made their way onto journal spreads - one in this same altered book...

... and one in a square format journal.  But this is the first of the men to see any action.

The large scale of these Portraits busts makes them a really great focal point for a spread or a large tag, and then it's just a question of building the collage around them and, in my case, the story that tells itself as I'm making.

The Pocket Cards come in several different sizes and shapes, with the designs recurring in different scales, so they are great for coordinated collaging.

The ephemera here also includes elements from the new Memoir Ephemera pack (the Antiquités label for one), and the photographers advertisement panel behind his head is cut from some older 12x12 TH paper. 

There are Number Strips Snippets, and lots of my much-loved tiny Halloween Snippets labels.  Clearly, as a respected antiques dealer, he is meticulous in recording the provenance of every piece he buys, as well as keeping details of the journeys he personally makes to follow up each lead.

There's also one of the new Transparent Things butterflies, which I cruelly cut in half so that I could have half a wing on each side of the spread.  (It's always seemed to me one of the cruellest forms of collecting - those trays and trays of beautiful butterflies impaled on pins for the collector's pleasure.)

I didn't really mean the hinge clips to look like replacement bionic wings, but when I was taking the photos, I realised that that's what had happened.

These cheap clips were a dirty gold colour which really wasn't very appealing, so I used some Mushroom Alcohol Ink and Jet Black Archival Reinker to give them a more industrial look.

The Small Talk stickers add some words - you know I always like to have some words somewhere.  As always, the right phrases just seemed to appear... 

I don't remember noticing either of these before, but suddenly there they were.  And for a buyer and seller of antiques, the words could hardly be more appropriate.... don't you agree?

You can also see the crackle paste I applied fairly randomly over my gesso'd book pages.  I used various inks and paints to give the whole thing a grungier, vintaged look, as well as the Design Tape Trim which just adds another delicious layer of tiny detail to the spread.

A Muse Token and a Number Token give another little metallic lift to the whole thing.  I certainly think he has the knowledge necessary for the career he's chosen, and he looks a trustworthy chap to me.  

If you're looking to invest in some antiques, you could definitely do worse than to avail yourself of his services!

So I hope you like this journal SPREAD, and I hope your brains are now teeming with things beginning with S!  But if they're not, you can always hop over to the Simon Says Stamp Monday Challenge where the team will give you another nudge.  (Or check out the quote at the end of this post!!!)

As always the challenge is generously sponsored by the Simon Says Stamp store...

... and there's a $25 gift voucher available for one lucky, randomly-picked winner, as well as spotlight mentions if your project is chosen by the Design Team members.

I hope you have fun with your Ss, and I'll see you again soon.  Happy crafting, all!

The shelves of this store are stacked with stock. You will find a steamship, a sailing ship, and even a spaceship. There are several sorts of shoe and scores of signs and symbols. There is a sketch of a squinch, a selection of shells (not all from the sea), a siamang settled on a seat, a sponge to be studied, and sundry stuff suspended from strings. In all I included 1,234 Ss for you to see.

From The Ultimate Alphabet by Mike Wilks