Friday yay and hello! Welcome to the third and final day of September Trio! This far I've made cards and an art journal page using alphabet stamps. Today it's time for a mini book!
Trios are posts that I started while I was a member of the Seth Apter Creative Team. I enjoyed making the series of three posts so much, that I decided to continue them at least for a while. If you want to see the older Seth Trios, you can find them under this label (link). The Trio posts usually had a topic, or a product, to which I concentrated, like Izink ICE (link). Or I could challenge myself with limited supplies (link) or use one source of inspiration for three pieces, like I did with "Mothers of Kalevala" (link). In a way they are extended versions of the "Inspired By" posts we used to make together with Marsha Valk. You can explore those posts under this label (link).
I've hinted it in the videos and I've hinted it in yesterday's post - today I'm sharing a possibly scary technique! But let's not jump to the end, shall we. I'm not sure if you have noticed previously, but I try to build the Trios so, that they go from easy to more advanced. I think in this series of projects it might be more obvious than other times. While the first project of cards played much on just ink colors and placement of letters, in this mini book there's no inks to be seen. Again, there's three different ways of the alphabet stamps used like in the journal I shared yesterday, but no inks included in any of the ways.
I'm definitely not a bookmaker. I haven't taken any courses on the subject but I did watch a step by step tutorial on Coptic Stitch once. So this little book probably is done all wrong, but I like the way the wonky stitches look on the spine! And the book holds together so that's enough for me. The funny thing about this book is that I made it several weeks before the album I shared last week (link). So while in the blogging timeline it seems that I made two books close to each other, they were probably done a month a part! But as I had made this book already when thinking about the make for Nathalie's Creative Squad, I wanted to use a different kind of felt. The thick one I used in this book is my favorite. It's thick craft felt. Easy to cut and wonderful textile material as it doesn't fray!
As you can see from the video, I started by making a bunch of embellishments. For those I used air-drying clay. I made different shapes, used different letters and added different amount of holes to them. The holes are for sewing or otherwise attaching the pieces to the projects. The experiments with the air-drying clay lead me to use polymer clay in the other book as some of the pieces broke near the holes while drying. The two materials have a completely different feel, though, and this book really shouted for clay-like embellishments rather than polymer clay.
After stamping the pieces and letting them dry I then colored some of the embellishments. I wanted them to have an air of a Chinese wooden box with the stunningly beautiful red lacquer. As you can see from the video (after the scary technique), I first painted the embellishments using black gesso, let that dry and then added a semi-translucent layer of red paint on top. To make my acrylic a bit translucent I mixed it with Aladine Izink ICE. To finish the look, I added golden touches to the edge using a golden wax after the acrylic layers had dried.
But now, let's tackle the scary technique. While the effect isn't that visible in the book, I really liked the effect and tend to use it again. I'm talking about stamping with bleach. Remember, I'm using rubber stamps and to me stamps are tools. I actually had done the book already but then wanted to make sure what an expert in stamps would say about the thing so I contacted Seth why in turn contacted Leandra from PaperArtsy. She gave a wonderful tip! While red rubber stands wear and tear well, bleach dries the stamps. But no worries, there's an easy way to condition them! Give them a nice coat of embossing ink and that will help with the dryness! It worked wonders to my stamps. Also, if you want to give this a go, remember good ventilation and you might even want to use rubber gloves to protect your hands. Read the warning signs on the bottle you are using. I used "Kloriitti", a bleach consisting of chlorite.
The last idea is quite a simple one again, at least compared to the scariness of bleach. I made a gel print using the stamps. As you can see from the video, I had made a white layer to my gel plate and let that dry. On top I then brayer a layer of red acrylic paint and before pulling the print I add some stamping to it. While acrylic paint is less scary than bleach, remember to clean your stamps well after using paints! If you can't clean them right away, put them in a bucket of water of otherwise keep the paint layer wet so it won't dry and stick to your stamps.
So, there you have it! A Trio of using alphabet stamps in projects! I hope I have given you ideas with these and didn't scare you away with bleach. If you make something inspired by this, please tag me!
Thank you so much for stopping by today! Have a great start to the weekend!
Materials: PaperArtsy, Sinelli, GelliArts, Aladine, Prima Marketing
1 comment:
Ihan voimaannuin pelkistä kuvista. I H A N A
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