Handmade books

Here are two small books I made using caulking and paints for the covers. The butterfly is a chipboard piece. I went through my stash of papers and cards which I used for doing samples, techniques, and experiments and came up with quite a bit that I could use for the pages in these two journals. They were fun to make:

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A Little Birdie told me

I had started this page a year ago, playing with gesso, acrylic and watercolor backgrounds.
I then drew a woman’s face, glued down parts of a garden napkin, and finished it up.
Sometimes I don’t finish a page for ages, as I love to make backgrounds…and have lots in my books, just waiting for the perfect image or whatever it calls for.

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Altered Art Journals

 These spreads were finished recently – just having fun with paints, stencils and rubber stamps (and anything that gets in the way whilst I am altering!)

These images are from an old French textbook. Watercolor background, plus some anaglypta wallpaper, a few stickers and background stencils.

A soft ghosty image of a little girl, rubber stamps, stickers, and watercolors. Here I used Portfolios and some Gelatos. yummy!

This spread holds a myriad of technique pieces, collaged. Just playing around with paints, stamps, embossing powder (top left)

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Small leather journal

I have been following Shirley’s Three Part tutorial for making/binding a journal – she has a wonderful website that you might like to take a look at. Super instructions! Thank you, Shirley.
I made a small book using a variety of papers – scrap and watercolor leftovers, with a leather cover. The ornament is made with cardboard and metal pieces glued to a drink coaster, covered with aluminum tape, and painted with Lumieres.

You can see my end-papers here, first time for me!

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All Ablaze

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You are Here

Playing in my art journal – again inspired by JournalArtista’s Ustream.
Sometimes my ‘layers’ get to be layers because I need to delete and cover up bad pages…lol.

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It’s all in the Eyes

Here I go with another drawing – trying my ‘hand’ at faces again. She is colored with watercolor pencils.

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Art Journal Gypsies Cover

This is the cover I made for my AJG Journal. It started with some molding paste, then colored with inks and acrylics. When dry I splotched on some Glass Bead gel from Golden products. I colored some places with alcohol inks. The plaque is made from air-dry clay, rolled thin and pressed over a carved jewelry box of mine, to get the bird image, then painted with H2O’s. The oval glass over its face is also covered with glass bead gel. The flourish is Tim Holtz grungeboard. Oh yes! – this cover was a lot of fun to play with!

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Cup of Home

This is a spread for the Art Journal Gypsies group. It has a Fall theme with a depiction of Home and cozy!

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