Victorian Nature Album

    

I have made a smallish thing - for me it is miniature, but compared to other entries, I think not, lol!! It is a "miniature" Victorian Nature Album, which holds pressed flowers and leafs, and a pair of jay feathers.  It is inspired by Diana Taylor's Winter Garden series.  

What follows is photo-heavy for my own records, so feel free to breeze by - but please do leave a comment - I appreciate every one and love hearing from you!  

 I continue to work with the weathered paint look, which I have attempted several times before, all based on this from Liesbeth Fidder.

This was a special birthday book (and my first mixed media project) which  you can find here.

I also made a smaller Christmas mini book for a friend, and used this same weathered paint technique for the cover.  If you want to see the post, you can find it here - apologies but this was before I realized I should make separate posts for different projects!

 I remain entranced by the weathered look of paint, and wanted to work with it for this current project.

It took me a while to get the covers to look like what I had in my mind.....

I started with chipboard (about the weight of a cereal box).  The two covers were gessoed, and then I applied texture paste through a Michelle Ward stencil to both covers.

 These were painted with DecoArts Transparent Iron Oxide.

And then colored with a deep blue acrylic  paint, which when dry still needed something, so I added a bit of Quinacridone Gold from DecoArt in the non-stenciled areas.

The non-stencilled areas received a thick layer of DecoArts Weathered Wood, and once dry, everything was painted with a light minty green mix of acrylic paints which produced the weather paint look.

To better emphasize the stenciled bit, I followed Liesbeth's lead and colored with a thin wash of DecoArt Quinacridone.

I didn't like the light look, so added Weathered Wood and Pumice Stone Distress Stains, spritzed with a bit of water so the stains could flow around all the texture.

The covers were further distressed with DecoArt Raw Umber in a thin wash.

Once dry, I covered the other side with some paper that had not worked out for another project, covered the edges with washi tape, and feathered it all in with some paint.

The book was made with brown envelopes using the hinged binding system from Candace Scarborough.  The envelope pages were covered with highly distressed paper from Tim Holtz, inked on the edges with Vintage Photo.  (That is my consultant's little white foot at the top of the photo.)

I edged the outer covers with Victorian Bronze embossing powder....

and then applied the die cuts to the pages inside.

 I have three more pages to fill, one of these days.   But wanted to get this into the PaperArtsy challenge, even though I am on the late side.

 Thank you so much for visiting, and please do comment - I love hearing from you!

xx Lynn

I am entering this into Brenda's no-challenge blog hop, Country View's Anything Goes challenge, Mixed Media Monthly's challenge Birds of a Feather, and PaperArtsy's Miniature challenge.