2022 Topic 07: Specimen Jar {by Liesbeth Fidder De Vos} with Vintage Ink and the Dog stamps

Hi everyone, it's Liesbeth here with you today, and I'm here to share with you my Specimen Jar project! However it's not a jar...it's an altered book with niches and drawers, in a vintage style.

Starting a project like this, I never know where it will end... I was inspired by this two wonderful stamp sets! Very vintage and a bit mysterious, they made me think about a cabinet book with secret holes and drawers. So I just started with that idea and this is what I made!

5 cards in the side opening.

Two niches and two drawers.

I challenged myself to use ALL the stamps in the two stamp sets, and it worked, I did! :-) I used PaperArtsy Vintage Ink and the Dog ID05 and ID10. I really love them!

The basic item for this cabinet book is, needless to say...a book. I used an old one, a nice blue color, gold printed at the spine. A newer one works too. I chose the color combination blue/turquoise/brown/off-white, so these four PaperArtsy Fresco Finish paints were perfect: Captain Peacock, Blue Lagoon, Chocolate Pudding and Nougat.This combination always works perfect for a vintage style. (And the blues are my favourite colours).

 

The cover of my old book is made of blue fabric, with a nice golden print, so I decided not to paint it and just leave it the way it is.

Let's start: The drawers are made out of two small match-boxes. I used the last part of the book, a stack of pages as thick as the match-boxes. I drew the size on the side of the book and also a niche in the center.

I also drew the match-boxes and the niche onto the top page.

Using a glue stick, I glued the edges of all the pages of the ,drawer part' together... yes...every page. ;-)

Onto the first page of the book I drew a house shape, using the house stamp as a guideline as shown. Again, I glued all the pages under it  together, until about 10 pages are left between this house piece and the drawer piece.

Now the big job started: carefully I cut the layers off, until 10 pages are left (Tip: put a small cutting mat in between).

I also cut out the hole for the drawers and the niche. I glued the boxes into the holes. I covered the sides, the cutting edges, of the big niche with a strip of bookpaper for a nice finish (no picture). Now I also glued the ten left over pages together to cover the niche and the match-boxes. Everything is glued together now.

Using the Fresco Finish paint, the two blues, Nougat and a tiny bit of brown, I painted the insides of the house niche and the boxes. I mixed the paints on my brush and I didn't work very neatly for a nice old and weathered effect. The left page and around the house niche I painted with Fresco Finish Nougat, Distress ink Vintage Photo, water and a little brown paint I made spots and smudges, again to create an old effect.

I stamped the left page here and there with the fern and text stamp using Distress ink Vintage Photo and Gathered Twigs. With these two Distress inks I also sponged the edges of the entire book and the match-boxes to create a very vintage look.

That border stamp is so perfect for this!! I spread a thin layer of Fresco Finish paint Blue Lagoon on a piece of paper and used it as an ink pad. I stamped it at the bottom edge and on the small pieces at the top. Later on I also stamped it with Distress ink along the niche.

Using black ink (Tsukineko StazOn Jet Black), I stamped some texts in the niche. I covered the sides with lace and made a cardstock shelf at the bottom of the niche.

In this phase I still didn't know exactly how I was going to finish it. If I start stamping like crazy, the ideas always come naturally! :-) So I took pieces of brown, white and kraft cardstock and started the stamping. I used almost every stamp of the two beautiful sets! I used the black StazOn again, and also Ranger Archival Coffee.

Then I realized I needed a bit more colour, so I painted a piece of kraft paper very raggedly with the four Fresco paints. I started with Nougat and after that I added Fresco Finish Crackle Glaze here and there. After drying I painted the colours with an old credit card and (the right piece) with a pallet knife. I stamped some of the texts onto this painted cardstock.

Now it was time to put everything together and combine things, and to fill the boxes and niches! I cut out lots of the stamped images and assembled them till I was satisfied. Of course I had lots of left overs, but I will use them later, I never throw things like that away! I painted the faces with pink watercolour and sponged the edges with the Vintage Photo and Gathered Twigs Distress ink using a blending tool. I used a colour pencil (red) and a white gel pen here and there.

Time for some embellishments: I inked one of the text stamps wth StazOn and rolled small bottles over the stamp.

Using PaperArtsy printed tissue paper (you can also stamp on tissue paper yourself) I tore out small pieces of text and glued them into the match-boxes using gel medium. I also glued some small shells and pen nibs in the boxes and  added ring fasteners at the outside.

I composed five cards/tags to keep in the niche on the side of the book. I combined lots of stamps and also affixed some metal pieces and  sometimes an extra layer of black cardstock.

Left page finished.

Right page finished. I attached the stamped house and wings using 3D foam tape.

The little bottles are filled with mini beads, glitter, tiny shells, and I tied string around them. I also added some metal stuff and glued everything with tacky glue.

Detail of a drawer.

At the very last minute I decided to stamp this wonderful stamp onto the front cover of the book, using gold embossing powder. 

I think it's all done now!

Oh how I love to do this kind of time-consuming projects, it was so much fun! The process of combining the different PaperArtsy stamps is great! Cutting out the niches is the hardest part. If you can't or don't want to cut this much, why not try something like this in a shadow box, or onto the backside of a canvas? There are so many possibilities! Hope you give it a try and hope you will enjoy it as much as I did! Have fun!

Thanks for stopping by!

Liesbeth

Blog: Liesbeth's Arts & Crafts

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