A Book for Annabel Lee

This is the final sample that I made for the Seth Apter event back at the start of Sept. It turned into a 24 page book, so I won't show the making of the book or how each page was page.. seriously it would take several posts to show all that. Instead I will just walk you through the book so you can see the pages and read the poem. 

All the page backgrounds are made of layers of PaperArtsy paint and Seth's stamps and stencils, on top of that I used PaperArtsy stencils and then the focal image on each page is one of Seth Apter's die. The final step was to add the lines of the poem : Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe. 

O

Hope you liked that, it was a labour of love, but I like how it turned out. 

Darcy.x

Houses

As you know on the PaperArtsy blog we run challenges every two weeks. A recent challenge topic was 'Our house' I have been doing the topics in a junk type journal as i did last year. Never spending too long on the pages and not trying to make them pretty, they are more just reminders of the topics and for trying out new techniques or products. 

Generally I don't take photos of the steps, but for this topic I did. So here is my house page. 

I began by painting the page with blues and greens, then I added grunge paste through a stencil. Once dry I sanded this back to back a smooth surface and added a little stencilling in darker shades. 

 Next I added Ranger Crazing medium all over the page and left it to dry. The cracks are very tiny and don't show up well here, but after more layers they show up really well. 

I dug out some old scraps of painted papers and used my house stamps on them. I love these houses, so funky and full of interest. 

I also coloured this die cut using PaperArtsy Infusions. I sprinkled them, then spritzed with water and allowed them to puddle, before leaving to dry. 

Then I added more powders, building up the colours till I had this shabby wood look. 

I used Prima watercolours to add drips to the top of the page. 

I also used Prima watercolours to add more colour to the houses. 

 I stamped out my title, but it was a bit small, so to beef up part of it i coloured this circle and heart die cut again with Infusions. 

once layered up it worked really well. 

a few splats of yellow here and there again with the watercolours, these act like stars in the night sky and start to lift the page. 

White highlights with a posca pen add pops of light too. 

Here you can see how well the crazing stands out after all the layers and washes of colour. 

 Although the houses were stamped on painted papers, by adding more colour with the watercolours they are now really vibrant. 

the finished page. 

Hope you are enjoying the topics each fortnight, if you haven't seen any of them yet then do check out the PaperArtsy blog. 

Darcy. 

Fabric Tags

Over on the PaperArtsy blog this week there is a challenge topic of Fabric. This can be scary for some, and others just don't like sewing, or don't have a sewing machine. So I put together these little tags using fabric but no sewing. 

I started by die cutting some tags, and then did cutting a shape in the centre. I did several, all different shapes. I also cut a piece of fabric for each tag the same size as the overall large tag. All the shaped dies that I used are from PaperArtsy. (Hearts, leaves,bird)

I glued the fabric to the back of the large tags so that it shows through the die cut shape... and basically that's it.. All that is left is to add a little embellishment. 

This was a white tag, I painted it with Fresco Lilac, then edged the tag using Crayola Twistables.(available from PaperArtsy) 

As this tag is black card I needed the edge to have a bit of shimmer, so I blended some Treasure Gold around the edges. 

I then added a ribbon and this sentiment from ESN20 using WOW embossing powder in Brass Sparkle. 

This one on Kraft card just needed twine and a little ink around the edges, and the sentiment from EKD02.

The painted tag had a little lace added and the sentiment from  ELB28,

To cover the edges of the fabric on the back I added a skinny frame of card and glued that on. 

If you fancy a go with fabric but no sewing then try these out, they are really,really easy. 

Darcy x