April Memory Book Page

Today I am sharing April's flip-flap memory book pages from the monthly group swap that I have been involved in.

I try to use as many Dreamees products where possible to comply with the swap but more importantly, it's about having fun creating. 

There's a bit of a bunny theme going on here and I kind of enjoy creating a scene when using my little critter stamps as its so easy to mix and match lots of your sets to work together.

For these book pages I was working with a black and another colour of choice, so I decided to go with the Dreamees sensational sepia paper pad throughout.

One of the design papers created the backdrop for the scene of  "the carrot hunt" for my Easter bunnies

On the adjacent page a portrait of the golden bunny nestled in some die cut fretwork frill flowers. I decided to use some of Debbi Moore's metal magic for the bunny and a couple of the sentiments. This is amazing stuff. It works very much like an embossing powder except you stamp into it when it has reached its melting point. It sets like an embellishment in about 20 minutes. Also, this stuff lasts ages.

On the reverse side of my book page I have gone for a creativity theme.

The mdf dream catcher has been painted with black gesso and then covered with sparkly black embossing powder. On the background, I used texture paste through a brick stencil and then spritzed it with a Pretty Gets Gritty pearl spray in toffee, also adding some to the paper roses.

On my last page, I chose one of the Dreamees recipe stamps and created some artist easels with inspirational quotes.

Finally, I added some ATC cards, which always complete my book pages, one made with Dreamees stamps and the other using the Just Fly digi stamp by Vera Lane Studios.

Have a great day, whatever you have planned for yourself

Happy crafting

Gothic Book Box

I have finally finished my gothic book box which has been a work in progress project and I'm really pleased with how this one turned out.

All the inspiration for this project was taken from Sue Andrews - Magik Graphics mixed media live Facebook group.

I chose this beautiful image of the Midnight Roses CD by Magik Graphics, which decided the colourways for my box.

I used Pebeo high density modeling paste through one of Stamperia's stencils.  This texture paste is nice and smooth and leaves a great defined texture to your project but I would have preferred it in a jar rather than in a tube. It did dry pretty quickly but as I'm a slow crafter I normally leave things to dry overnight anyway.

The book box was given a coating of black gesso except for the inner edges which I painted in buff acrylic paint to look like pages, adding some texture to mimic the edges of the pages. My new favourite paint is the Finnibair metallics range. It's difficult to capture the true colour and shimmer in a picture but for this project, I picked plum, which was the closest to the colours in the image.  I dry brushed the colour, leaving some of the black to show through.

I think the gilding wax always finishes a project off and really highlights all that texture on your project.  I also used the alchemy tag moulds by Stamperia to create the tag and some of the embellishments for my box using air dried clay.

I knew those broken chains that I kept would come in handy one day. Attached to one of the tags that I had made, it was a perfect hanging embellishment. This was attached with a little leatherette cord, inside the top of the box. This is why as crafters we keep all these random little bits and pieces.

I can get a  bit carried away when I have a pot of gilding wax in my hands. Even the brass butterfly and key had touch of wax to lift them and the rose paper flower just didn't look right with its green stem, so that had to go too.

This now sits in my bedroom.  I don't keep many things that I make as I am so used to making for others and a lot of my own craft projects tend to sit on the back burner with the garden ones being the ones that do eventually get finished as that is where I tend to spend a lot of time.

As I am stepping away from making as many cards now, I'm hoping to focus more on some mixed media projects

Have a great day, whatever you have planned for yourself

Happy crafting

added to:  The River of Creativity Challenge  (Shoutout for May challenge)