Last Friday I was off work early and found myself with a whole wonderful afternoon in the studio. And all I wanted to do was play with paint. Not make anything specific mind you, I just wanted to get my hands dirty. Luck had it that I am currently reading the wonderful book Painted paper by Alisa J. Golden and that inspired me to just make pretty papers and not think about what to do with them yet. So I got my paints and I got out these babies:
They are pattern rollers that I got at a bargain at an art supply company. I hadn't used them yet and figured this would be a good day to test drive them. First I painted two dozen sheets of paper in just about all the colors I have in my stash. Not one color has been used twice. I painted both sides of the pages. Then I took out my gesso and started rolling away with the pattern rollers. And here's the result after two studio sessions of painting and rolling:
Yup, 24 sheets of unique patterned paper! Isn't it gorgeous? Above is one side of all the papers and below is the backside of all those papers. I love how they turned out and I love how colorful they all look together.
Now you may wonder why I did 24 sheets. Well, painting away like that gives you a lot of thinking time and while I was working on them I decided to make a book with them. A variation on the ROD style journal. Another book fully of my own making. Fun fun fun. Since I like the three signature format I did for the last ROD I made I figured I would do the same here. And lo and behold, here are three signatures that are folded of 8 sheets each, that's 96 pages for a book.
Of course every journal needs a cover and that's what I've been working on the past two nights. I had already decided to add butterflies and journaling questions to the inside of the journal (I still have to do this part by the way) so I figured the outside needed butterflies too. This was a good opportunity to try out the fabric transfer paper I got at a very cheap store my Dutch readers will know called Action. Because the paper was so cheap I was a little scared it might be rubbish, but it worked like a charm. I spent part of an evening ironing butterflies to white cotton so I could sew them on the cover.
Anyway, here's how the cover turned out:
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| Outside cover |
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| Inside cover |
I think it's awfully cute! I even added some lace to the top and bottom for extra cuteness. ;-)
Now all I have to do is cut out about 160 butterflies that I copied onto sticker paper (saves a lot of gluing later on) and then I have to collect journaling prompts/questions and ad those to the book (artsy stuff is hard work sometimes). I may also ad some stitching to the papers. I am going to call it the Butterfly Book of Questions (I know, another true find of a title). And when it's done (drums please)....there will be a giveaway! Yay! Don't know yet exactly when, but just know that this book will be coming towards one of you in the not so distant future. Just stay posted!
Hope you're all having an artsy Wednesday too!