Artistic Outpost - September Referral

Hello and welcome to Magpieheaven, followers and visitors, old and new. Last week at the big stamping and scrapbooking show at Alexandra Palace I bought my first plate of Artistic Outpost stamps. I had seen some wonderful examples of what could be done with these beautiful images and I had been wanting to own some of my own. I chose a plate with a spring theme, 'Birds of a feather' - not very seasonal, but I didn't think about that until I arrived home - I just loved the images, which I thought would be ideal for a project I had in mind: a handmade notebook for my daughter's twentieth birthday on October 4th. I should like to link this to the Artistic Outpost, September Referral Anything Goes Challenge.

I made my first one of these notebooks the other day and I used the same basic technique using two thin canvas boards as covers and drawing book pages as signatures, coptic stitching them in with waxed cotton thread, which I later gilded with Treasure Gold.

I stuck a metal cog charm and a die-cut frame to my front cover and then Grunge Pasted through a Crafters Workshop ledger stencil, after which I applied an initial coat of Snowflake Fresco paint by Paper Artsy, followed by Nougat. This integrated all the elements on my front cover. I then made up some sprays in little spritzers of diluted Vintage Lace and Lake Wanaka and randomly sprayed my canvas cover. This was rather nerve-racking, as I'm not very accurate with sprays and I did manage to squirt paint over the dining table and chairs! You can see why I tend to avoid CAS crafting!  But moving swiftly on...

I stamped the image of the two little girls onto pale yellow linen and then, using Frescos and fabric medium to aid the paint's flow on the fabric, I coloured them in. I aged the edge of my linen with some French Roast Fresco. I then took the stamp with the script and the eggs from the plate and stamped lightly with it over the canvas not using the acrylic block, as I wanted a random aged look. The space around the frame, I accented in copper-toned Treasure Gold, while I accented other raised areas with White Fire and Classic.

For the back of my book I stamped the page with the eggs on it onto the under layer of some napkin tissue, heat set and then fixed it with Claudine Hellmuth Multi-Medium. I then fixed on other napkin layers.

And edged the book with just-melted UTEE in gold. There is a beautiful flowery flourish on this plate, which I made into the image for my own Washi-tape edging.

For the finishing touches I added some handmade paper beads on pink ribbon sprayed with Wanaka Lake and a tiny fan charm.

Here is the front of the finished book resting on a selection of lace. I fixed some sprayed lace along the top of the inside page so that it peeps out, but it's probably too difficult to see this in the picture.

Thank you so much for stopping by today. It's really grey and miserable here at the moment, so I hope the spring images and blue skies of this little book will remind you that April - the month I started blogging in 2013 - is only  six months away!