Happy place

This page was a disaster until the last moment – and then, suddenly, almost like by magic, everything fell into place and I was finally happy about it. Very happy, indeed...
It started with a pretty nice tissue paper that had some interesting patterns created when I played with my stencils and  Dylusion sprays.
Then I added some tape, including a striped handmade washi tape I didn’t particularly like.
And at this point it looked really awful. So I removed some tape and sprayed it with my new favourite product – Glimmer Mist by Tattered Angels. It didn’t help much.
So, according to my new matra - “when in doubt, add drippage” - I added black paint and then some gold on the sides. And ... finally it looked perfect.

[Litany against fear, Dune by Frank Herbert]

There are several “happy places” (a term I borrowed from Donna Downey) on this page – details that make me very very happy.

Leaves

I had a clear vision in my mind of how this page should look like. And... it doesn’t look like that. The background is OK, the quote-part actually turned out great, I love the leaves, but the tree is all wrong. I repainted it several times (and it doubled in size in the process) but I’m still not happy about it. It looks different in my mind’s eye and it annoys me I can’t recreate this image onto paper.

[quote by John Burroughs]

(Fear of) ruining my backgrounds...

Sometimes I treasure some backgrounds because I like them very much and I’m reluctant to do anything with them. I scan them and wait... 

I was really fond of this one... But I accidentally contaminated the edges with paint from a different page and ruined it completely when I attempted to fix my mistake. 

So I painted version two. Not so fond of this one but at least I scanned the original... 

[quote by Anthony Robbins] 

This one was a different story – it was only waiting for a suitable quote for several weeks.

[quote by Paulo Coelho] 

And finally, this gold-teal-greenish background features another fun technique I learnt from Barb Owen (and she learnt it from Traci Bautista). You first soak a paper towel with various watered-down paints. Then you place the towel on a white paper and stamp through the towel. Sometimes the result is awesome, other times not. I got several really interesting backgrounds and this was one of them. But I didn’t know what to do with it. In the end, I placed a strip of paper across it and I really like it.

[quote by J. K. Rowling]

As you might guess, I have several other backgrounds waiting to be (mis)used in the future...

Playing with my stencils

This page first served only to test my new stencil but it actually turned out pretty good.

[quote by  Ralph Waldo Emerson]

When I applied texture paste through another of my handmade stencils and painted the page orange, it looked like Curiosity’s tracks on Mars. So I decided the page needed a “curiosity” quote.

[quote by Albert Einstein]

This stencil is a bit unforgiving – it creates an impression the pattern isn’t straight (OK, maybe it isn’t) and it really annoys me. Adding shades and a bit of darker colour didn’t help either...

Dauber box step-by-step

Here are some photos of how I made my distress inks dauber storage box mentioned in my previous "distressed" post. 

1) I started by cutting the dividers. I usually don't measure anything. I only make sure that the space between the slits is a bit wider than the dauber. The slits are as wide as the thickness of the cardboard I use. 

2) Then I assembled the dividers - just like the bottle divider boxes. 

3) Then I added the bottom and the sides. I used regular PVA glue to hold it all together. 

4) I created a lid - the size of the lid depends on the size of the lower part of the box. At this point, I painted it all with acrylic paint. 

Note: I used two pieces of cardboard glued together for the sides. And only a single layer for the lid. I wanted a little bit of space between the lid and the daubers in the corners for smoother closing. 

5) Now it's time to embellish the box. First, I glued down my handmade tissue paper (tutorial found here).

Then I painted it with acrylics.

6) Finally, I added quotes and attached the lid with hinges.