Welcome to today's Guest Desginer, Alison !

Today we are welcoming a very talented lady who I'm sure most of you will know in blogland, Alison Bomber ! Alison was the winner of the In the Meadow challenge and was therefore invited to join us for a day. Let's move on to see what Alison has created !

Hello all, it’s Alison (a.k.a. butterfly) here from Words and Pictures.  My “real” job is as a Text and Voice Coach for the theatre, specialising in Shakespeare, so that’s where the words come in, and these days I love combining words with pictures as an addicted mixed media crafter.  When I’m working on a show it’s quite a struggle to fit in as much crafting and blogging as I’d like, but between shows I get to play whenever I want, so I feel very lucky.  I love that I get to spend my life following creative journeys at work and at play.

I’m delighted to be a guest here at Stamps & Stencils this month, and what a lovely theme to get to play with.  I've altered the cover of a very cheap journal to create this grassy meadow.  I think it will inspire me whenever I pick it up to play.

It's actually very good quality for the price - nice, strong kraft pages on the inside and sturdy kraft cover boards.  (It's from The Works - good news for those of you in the UK.)

I had to get rid of that black ribbon closure, of course (not my style), and then I was ready to start getting painty and inky. 

I forgot to take a picture of the very first step, which was just a plain coat of DecoArt chalk paint in Vintage (a soft, pale green).  Over that I sponged some PaperArtsy Fresco paints using a natural sponge.  The grassy bottom is a combination of Dusty Teal and Hey Pesto, and the sky is made up of Sky (of course!) and Ice Blue.

I did take some pictures of the next steps, but sadly my camera didn't capture them for some reason.  It was all pretty simple really to get from the stage above to the finished stage below.

 

I started by stamping some of the lovely new meadow flower sketches designed by Lynne Moncrieff for That's Crafty.  These ones are from Lynne's Wildflowers Set 2.  

They're stamped in either Olive or Leaf Green Archival, and sometimes a combination of the two.

They don't have very long stems, but because they are clear stamps (which I really don't use very often) you can line them up very easily to re-stamp the stem part until you have a long enough stem to reach the ground.

I also used the partially-inked stems to create some grassy stamping at the foot of the cover, as well as adding some freehand brush strokes of grass.

I added some doodled spots to the flower heads with a white pen, and in the long run added some spots of white paint too for a softer look.

The wispy grasses in the background are done with a paintbrush using the same grassy Fresco colours.  I like the depth they give to the scene.

Any paint left over on the craft mat got spattered onto the book covers to create that summery haze.

 

There's a Quote Chip to remind me what we're here for.

 

The ring binding just got coated in whatever was going on and, yes, I'm happy to say the pages all still turn perfectly happily.

I really like the contrast between the soft blue/greens of the cover and the earthy interior kraft pages.

 And the back cover allows you even more space to wander...

The final touch was to add a lightly-inked piece of seam binding to create the closure... far preferable to black in my opinion.

I hope you've enjoyed this little tour round my altered journal cover.  I always like to spend time wandering in the meadows!  Thanks so much to everyone here for having me along to play, and I hope you'll be inspired to come and judge a book by its cover this month.

Alison xx

 

Thank you Alison for such an inspiring post ! There is still plenty of time to join us for the current challenge Do Judge a Book by it's Cover.