Wanderlust Kate Crane Part 1

I fnally got around to starting the actual lessons on the Wanderlust course, not all have appealed to me so I am picking out my favourites to do. Going right back to the beginning of the year { I am so far behind lol} I chose to do the Kate Crane class. 

Before the main lesson we had to fill some pages with mark making, I had done this many years ago, but it is always handy to have a collection of scribbles and marks and patterns that can be used in other projects. 

I had some very very old sketchbooks that I had taken apart, thus giving me a huge pile of paper. Not really good enough to do good drawings on, but ideal for quick sketches and for mark making exercises. From some of these I made some tiny signatures, the pages are only 10 cm by 14cm. 

I compiled 7 signatures each with 4 sheets, giving me lots of little pages. I have bound them into a piece of canvas, whch I painted. 

Front cover:

Front and back covers, showing the stitching in the spine where the pages are attached. 

Here you can see I have lots of pages and I wil fill them all over time with patterns and ideas for use on bigger pages. 

Here are a couple of the pages done along with Kates exercises. 

Not a new technique for me, but nevertheless I did enjoy doing the pages. Sometimes it is good to revisit old techniques. 

Darcy x

Skully Cover

I wanted to make something else with my sugar skull cover stamp from Craft Stamper, and decided this lil skull would look cool in a repeating pattern. I was thinking along the lines of a pop art layout, but instead of the bright colours I wanted to use black,grey and red. 

I began with a piece of cartridge paper long enough to wrap around my journal plus extra for turning over. i marked out the whole piece into 5cm squares, using the left over space to create borders between the squares. 

The colours I used were Concrete, Elephant, Slate, Black, Cherry Red, Blood Orange. I painted all the squares.

Then using the skull stamp, {available for free on the front cover of this months Craft Stamper..}I stamped into each square. I used several ink pads in greys, reds, black and white.. so that the skulls were a different colour to the square they are on. 

I then trimmed some strips of white card. 

I glued these between the squares. You will see there are areas with no strips, these are the fold lines. If I added strips there they would just come off when the book was folded. 

Once dry I trimmed the strips, and turned the whole piece over. I glued brown parcel paper to the inside and then painted this with black gesso. 

using the journal as a guide I folded in the ends and stitched them into place. 

I use a zigzag stitch.. 

I gave the whole of the outside a coat of acrylic wax, this makes the cover wipe clean. 

Darcy x