Recycled Mini-Album–Scottish Pages

Over the past couple of days I’ve been working on the next section of the album, concentrating on Scottish ancestry, and happy memories of holidays in the Highlands.

The first picture shows the materials used for the Scottish pages. On the left are two stamps – Designs by Ryn: Leaves (CM-F5) and a swirl stamp (CI-182) from Crafty Individuals. This latter is one of my favourite swirl stamps because it is nice and big, and you can use parts of it to good effect. Versamark and Perfect Pearls (Cappuccino and Green Patina), and Black Soot distress ink. Also regular matt gel medium and my normal white marker pen and my thickest black drawing pen. You can also see two cards extracted from my Zentangle album, of patterns to use on one of the pages – Miander and Bilt. These are two of my favourite Tangle patterns – the former, not just because it’s really pretty, but because it can be used to create a lovely border as well as a fill. Finally, the Tim Holtz Dot Fade stencil.

First of all I made the tag to fit in the tag holder I created from the centrefold of the signature by gluing the top and bottom together. I made the tag from some cream card scraps I’ve got, and made a tartan-effect background using distress stains in Salty Ocean, Dried Marigold and Evergreen Bough, swiping over the middle with Picket Fence distress stain to lighten it. The background and journaling are continued on the reverse. I created the puller by cutting two small squares of the cream card and drawing a thistle on each one with a waterproof black marker pen, and painting the details using distress inks as watercolours.

I cut a notch in the tag holder page to match the square tag puller, and this is what it looks like in situ. I painted the cut edges of the notch with black acrylic paint.

To create the background for the left-hand page, I downloaded and printed out an image of the ancient hunting tartan of the Fraser clan, which was then cut down to size. The ancient and hunting tartans of each clan are much more subtly coloured than the more familiar dress tartans, and personally I prefer them.

I also downloaded, printed out and cut to size a map of Scotland, and distressed the edges using Black Soot distress ink. I cut a small fragment of cream card and wrote the name of the village, and distressed the edges with the Black Soot distress ink, adding an arrow on the map and a red circle to mark the location.

The tartan and map page complete, with the tag inserted.

The images were stuck down using regular matt gel medium.

I added a tartan-effect border, and copied the letters of the text from a Google image of Scottish lettering – I love this Celtic lettering. I drew it with the white pen and then outlined it with black. I mimicked this font at the bottom of the page, this time in white only, giving the details of the tartan, and drew a thistle for good measure.

A detail of the title.

On the map page, I stuck down the village name so that its edge butted the edge of the page, and added a border of little thistles, drawn with the white pen.

Turning the page, I stuck down some photos using regular matt gel medium, and added some stamping using Versamark and Perfect Pearls. Finally, some text in white. You can see the tag puller on the right.

A detail of the bottom right of the page, showing the Perfect Pearls stamping and the borders.

The tag partially pulled out.

Turning the page again, we find the Scottish holidays page. When I cut the tartan image down to size, I saved the offcuts and cut them into strips to embellish this page. Again, you can see the tag puller in situ on the left. Before sticking down the tartan strips and photos, again using regular matt gel medium, I stencilled over both pages using Versamark through the Dot Fade stencil, and on the left, leaving some blank page in the centre. I brushed over this with both colours of Perfect Pearl and heat set it.

Detail of the left-hand page with the text and tag puller.

The right-hand page. I embellished this with two Zentangles, Miander at the top and right, and Bilt down the left-hand side.

Detail of the Miander border. As you can see, I continued the tartan effect border of the page beneath, onto this page a little, to add a softer edge and to follow the line of the Miander border.

Detail of the Bilt border. What a lot of legs in the photo!

I hope you have enjoyed this particular trip down Shoshi’s memory lane. By the way, Shoshi is on the right in this final photo.

I am feeling better about completing this album before the end of the year, if I can do more than one page in a sitting!! Also, these pages have no thick embellishments added to them and are no less decorative for that – I do need to be careful and restrain my natural instincts to add huge amounts of texture or the book won’t shut! I’m such a texture junkie that this self-discipline is going to be hard to maintain!