Thank you so much for your bloggy love and support for my PaperArtsy feature and Where Bloggers Create studio tour! You guys are the best and make my life happy! This weekend I had a little getaway with some artsy friends and went wild creating backgrounds and trying out some new mini album construction. This album was made from small file folders that were pretty thick. We cut them down to the long format.
First, I gessoed the pages lightly in the center. I love leaving the edges without gesso because it absorbs the color differently and creates a frame. Next, I dipped the pages into watered down Distress Ink puddles, drying between colors. Here's a close up of me adding some Infusions over the dried background. Instant earthiness and texture!
I used a variety of stamps to create my backgrounds. Mostly, I used Versafine colored inks because they are permanent. I tried stamping with Distress, but it took a long time to dry.
I stamped out a variety of Lynne Perrella ladies onto tissue and glued them over my background panels. I also used some rub-ons.
I made a few extra sheets of inked card to work with. The outlines were done with Distress Crayons and water. Here's another shot of those Infusions working their magic!
I truly wanted to use stamps in this book as the focus. So many times I feel like I use "gimmicks," rather than strong focal images in my work. I decided not to add any embellishments or fluff here and let the stamps do the talking. Do you think this is too old school? Do you agree that we use a lot of fluff to make our statements these days?
I did some faux stitching with a Sharpie to bring out some of the images.
I used a white Galaxy pen to create some highlights, along with gesso splashes.
All bound together with twine.
Layer after layer of stamping for dimension, rather than 3D elements.
A closeup of the tissue paper edge so you can see how that works out. The blue is slightly lighter in the harlequin under the tissue.
And the final page. I want to say a big huge thank you to the sweetest blogger on the block,
Lynn Price for sharing her duplicate stamp sets with me from our 3UP PaperArtsy run. Lynn, I love and adore them and will put them to good use! My friends here bought a couple of the other sets and now we can have a party with these girls!
One last shot...
I'm sharing the stamping fun with:
