Hi everyone
Victoria here with you today.
This year on the blog, we are being given free rein to do a deep dive into one of the PaperArtsy product ranges, and for this post I have been exploring Kate Crane products.
Kate has such a good mix of designs in her range, there’s everything from background mark making, to quirky focal points that are just adorable. So I decided to explore some of her mini stamps, and test out combining them into a mini-book.
I’ve had a Sizzix mini album die for a couple of years, that I still hadn’t got round to using, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to use this for the book construction, although you could easily create the pages using a hole punch and paper trimmer.
This was such a fun project to put together and used a mix of different techniques and products. The kind of fiddly project that you can get lost in for a few hours, or do in parts and keep coming back to, either way would work. So continue reading for a break down of my process, it includes techniques with watercolours, Mattints and Infusions.
I selected a bunch of Kate Crane mini stamps and a couple of her stencils to use in the projects. I love her quirky animals so of course I had to choose some of these, and settled on KCM004, KCM005, and KCM007. I also wanted some stamps to create background interest, so I chose, KCM001, KCM002, KCM003, KCM013 and KCM014. The last stamp I chose was all about the sentiments and this was KCM006. Then I added a couple of stencils into the mix, selecting PS426 and PS441.
Next up it was all about the colour. I knew I wanted to use my watercolours to colour the quirky birds and fish, so out came my Deep Deep Light palette. For background colour to the pages I chose Mattints in Ash for the cover and Infusions in Sleight Blue (CS13), In the Navy (CS15) and, Royal Blood (CS10).
I started off by creating the front and back covers. To provide some subtle background colour I applied Mattints in Ash using a brayer and the gel plate.
And glued the front and back covers together using the scalloped joining strip.
I wanted the front cover to be quite plain, enticing the viewer to open the album to see the pages inside. I used a die cut piece of card and stamp embossed a sentiment from KCM006 in black and used stamp KCM003 to create some extra texture to the title piece and the edges of the page. I attached the title piece the the front cover using foam pads and moved on to creating the internal pages.
To create some background colour on the internal pages in sprinkles each page with a different colour of blue infusions (Sleight Blue (CS13), In the Navy (CS15) and, Royal Blood (CS10)) and spritzed with water.
Then I added some extra background texture to ground the focal points using, KCM001, KCM002 and, KCM014.
And used watercolours to create a soft coloured finish.
Then I stamped out and mounted the three remaining sentiments from KCM006.
I stuck the quirky birds and fish onto the pages using foam pads to create some extra dimension and glued the sentiments in place.
I thought a couple of the pages needed some extra details so used stamp KCM013 to create some sea planting to the fish scene and stencil PS441 on one of the bird cards. With the pages complete I assembled everything together and secured with some blue sari ribbon.
The finished book project is lovely to flip through. The cover suggests more arty pages inside and entices you to flip to the next page.
The combination of the ‘take flight’ sentiment and the butterfly bird is so fun, you can just imagine him furiously flapping his tiny wings to try and fly.
The three fishes page is filled with texture. The hint of leaves at the bottom of the page works really well to imitate sea plants and the splatter of the infusions makes the perfect seawater.
.On the last page the infusions are watered down much more, which works so nicely against the colouring of the bird. I love how each page has slightly different elements, but they work so well together as a complete project.
I hope you feel inspired to try creating your own mini book. Until next time, wishing you a happy creative week.
Victoria x
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