Monday, November 16, 2015

"Love" Art Journal Page



My family and I moved into a really cool house a couple months ago and the place is huge. That meant I was able to take my 102 crafting books out of storage!! Yay!!

So I spent several days looking through them and I got inspired to work on some altered books. I had some old children's books that I thought I'd use to start my book project.

🌀 It is suggested when altering old books, to rip several pages throughout the book from it. So I did. Every 3-7 pages, I took out another 3-7 pages.

🌀 I also read to make the pages thick and sturdy, you should glue several of them together. So I did that also. Both sides of my spread are made from 3 book pages glued together and then I gessoed them. Don't forget that part. Working on a gessoed page is always better.

🌀 After the gesso was dry, I painted the spread a dark purple.

🌀 I then took two lighter shades of purple and painted bubble wrap with them and applied it to my page. I like to apply the bubble wrap several times so you can have many prints.

🌀 While my background was drying, I took a piece of 12 inch white cardstock and cut it into a thick strip.

🌀 I rubbed the strip with yellow, gold, and a little orange ink pads. I did it using a circular motion.

🌀 Then I took a dropper and dropped little drops of water on the yellow strip. When it dries, it gives a really cool effect that you can't see all that well in the picture. But it is fun. 

🌀I punched some half holes using a circle bound hole punch along the bottom just to give it some more shape.

🌀 I glued the strip to the middle of my spread.

🌀 I added some washi tape and glitter glue to finish that part off.

🌀 The hearts are made from some old background papers I had made awhile ago. The texture on the papers is glass bead gel medium and then painted over.

🌀 The red dots on the hearts I had to make up. I wanted a red bead type thing so I ended up using little dollops of glue gun glue. And when it was dry, I painted it red. Viola.

🌀 I have some chipboard letters and decided to use those. I had to paint them yellow.

🌀 The red squares are crafting foam that I punched with a square punch.

🌀 I layered the chipboard letters onto the foam squares and onto my pages.

🌀 Once they were all glued on, I added some dots of glitter glue in the corners of the squares.

I really like how these pages turned out. I was planning to devote the whole altered book to love as its theme. Do any of you have an entirely themed altered book?