2015 #7 Treetop Owls {by Helen Chiltonl}

2015 Theme 7: Niches

Hi everyone Helen here, joining you this evening with a post about niches. This theme appealed to me as I wanted to puzzle out how to create a niche rather than use one ready made. Ideas of hammering metal cake cutters into my book page did go through my head (still considering that one!) but in the end I decided to try out one of Tim Holtz's dies and see if I could jiggle around the die sandwich so it would go through the machine. I'm very pleased to say it worked! The book pages were very brittle due to age and I didn't quite get the die truly aligned each time, but in the end it didn't matter - Lin Brown's owl still had somewhere to sit:

First of all get your book and choose your die. I used one of these thicker ones as they cut through more pages at a time. Play around with folding back pages until the die goes through the machine and cuts. keep repeating this until the niche is deep enough:

Coat edge of book and inside niche with glue and then gesso. Paint the book and extra loose pages using Frescos, Mermaid and Smurf for the sky and Autumn Fire, French Roast and London Night for the tree and branches:

Get out the Grunge Paste and tint some with London Night and Stone and scrape through a woodgrain stencil - I've used a Prima stencil here but any will do. Stencil the spare pages as well:

Next cut out branches from the spare pages and stick across the page, tucking the ends under the right hand side book page:

Get out the Treasure Gold (Olive Bronze and Spanish Topaz) and use to highlight the woodgrain texture:)

Accentuate the wood texture by drawing round with a black pen.  Draw round the extending branches with a soft pencil, rubbed with a cotton bud to create a soft shadow:

To finish the tree scene, stamp and paint lots of owls and birds, plus a couple of semi circular nests to make the sun. In addition to the paints already used, I chose Haystack, Butternut and Purple Rain.

 ELB17 

I love these bird stamps from ELB17 - they've got such wonderful expressions! By colouring them with the Frescos you can get great shading by diluting them with water. I've enjoyed making my niche and by using dies, you can create different shaped apertures to fit your theme. So find an old book, get out your dies and have a go!

Helen

Wow, Helen this is fabulous. What a truly brilliant idea, and that texture is so effective. Well done for being brave and experimenting with the book/dies in your machine. I can see lots of people trying this one. 

We would love you to join in with challenge #7: Niches If you are inspired by any of our guests who blog with us over the fortnight, then please join in and link up your creativity HERE. 

All links go in the draw to win a voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. The Niches link will close 17:00 (London Time) Sunday, April 26th, winner will be announced 2 hours later at 19:00.