Inspired by Jo

Over at Paper Artsy Jo Myhill has been creating some stunning projects using the most exciting techniques. Please click HERE and be prepared to have your socks knocked off by the vivid use of colour and the wonderful textures of her creations. I really wanted to join in the fun, but - once again - I had a busy week with my daughter's twentieth birthday and lots to sort out and arrange with my mum's house sale. Now that the Autumn Term is well and truly under way I'm busy tutoring too! However, I recently learned how to make little notebooks using canvas boards and Coptic stitching. I have already created one for my daughter and one for myself so I decided to use something I'd learned from Jo to decorate one for my collection of possible Christmas gifts and I would like to enter this for Jo's Paper Artsy Challenge.

I started with the image transfer. I used a vintage photo of two gypsy girls that I had downloaded. I used Satin Glaze to transfer this onto yellow cotton. I then die-cut it into an oval and mounted it onto a slightly larger oval painted with Fresco Butternut, Smoked Paprika and Blood Orange and edged with Wendy Vecchi's Archival ink in Potting Shed.

 My image suggested a vintage theme for the notebook, so I decorated the background with Grunge Paste through a Harlequin stencil, stamping a little script into some of the raised diamonds. I had a go at filing the edges so that they seemed to blend into the canvas background a little more as Jo had done. I stuck corrugated cardboard to my corners to give a grunge look and painted the whole cover with first Snowflake then Butternut, Smoked Paprika and Blood Orange. I randomly stamped script from a Hot Picks plate in Potting Shed and accented my diamonds and my corners in Rose Quartz Treasure Gold. For a little extra dimension I used gold UTEE in the corners.

 The embellishments are a Mini of a feather, embossed with clear embossing powder on Black Archival to make it contrast strongly with the background and a wax paper flower painted with Treasure Gold in Aquamarine and Classic with a Prima brad at the centre. I added charms to the right hand corner: a tiny fan and a hand-made paper bead and finished off with one of the lovely resin roses I bought from Paper Artsy, coloured with Aquamarine Treasure gold.

The back of my notebook was painted in the same colour scheme and decorated with tissue napkin images and script from a Paper Artsy Mini.

Although time only allowed me to complete one project inspired by Jo and not put into practice all her techniques, I should definitely like to have a go at some of the other wonderful projects one day, especially something inspired by her truly impressive final piece. Thank you, Jo for sharing so much creativity and talent this week! And thank you, visitors and followers for taking a look at Magpieheaven today.