New Journal..

My friend Miriam found some cheap journals recently and very kindly sent one to me, we have decided to do paired journals. We each do a page in our own journal and then swap  and work in each other's journals and then swap again and so on.. 

So to start with i decorated my covers, using Grunge Paste through stencils, painting this black and then using 2 coats of Glossy medium to seal and protect. 

The pages in this journal are very thin, so I have gone right though the whole book glueing pages together in pairs. Although this cuts the page numbers down by half it does mean you have thicker pages to work on, very helpful when using wet media. 

So here is the first page done by me.. I began by scraping layers of Fresco paint. 

Then adding black, more white and then brighter translucent colours. 

More black, and some portfolio crayons, also some white dots in the black areas. 

I love all these layers

I then sketched out my focal design and whited it out. 

Added in some underpainting. 

I also added some texture , using Grunge Paste on the mushroom tops and on the stalks. 

I added shading with paints and once dry I added more shading with coloured pencils.

The last shading was around everything with Stabilo pencils. 

I added the text.. 

I think this might be my favourite area, love the layers and bits of texture,

This now needs sending off to Miriam so she can do the next page, can't wait to see what she does. 

Darcy x

Have your tickets ready please...

I adore vintage ephemera, especially tickets. I would love to have a roll of old bus tickets lol I have simple ambitions hahaha

Recently I was pointed to this video, in it the lady decorates and paints some die cut tickets.

Aren't they the loveliest tickets you have ever seen? I immediately wanted to buy the die....

BUT THEN..

the wonderful Dana made this video showing how to make blank tickets without the need for a die..

All you need are strips of card, a pattern wheel and a hole punch..simples.


So I made loads of them, some in smooth card and some in watercolour paper.

I contacted Dana to say how brilliantly simple her way of making them had been, and asked if she wanted to swap some. 

These are the ones I made for her, the flower ones are more vintage style and are on watercolour paper. The bottom ones are more modern and funky, done with markers on smooth card. 

Here are the gorgeous tickets that Dana sent back to me. I just love them, thankyou. 

working so small is definately a challenge, but I love how they all turned out. 

why don't you give it a go, and better still swap some with a friend. 

These were made for an online  swap,each measure 2.5inches x 3inches.

First I took some photos of buildings that had nice stone/brickwork and windows. I printed the pics and cut each down to size.


Next I painted over the front of each pic with some acrylic wax to make them stronger, then when dry i folded over the top of each piece to create different roof shapes. I also scrumpled them up and then opened them out and sanded them, to distress them.



Next i layered 3 colours of sheer fabric over each house and stitched them together using straight and zig zag stitch.


I then cut the excess fabric off, and snipped in between the stitching to reveal the sheer underneath, I frayed all the edges.


Next I stitched on little pieces of grey card, on which I had doodled windows.



I then cut open the windows.


Finally I hand stitched a metal key onto each house. Some of the keys were black and were used as they were, others were silver and gold and to darken them I used alcohol inks.

 

Thankyou to everyone who sent me keys to use in this project. Barbara. and Denise.and Linda.x