Mamhead Album–More Backgrounds

Working on the album this afternoon, listening to the carol service from King’s College Chapel in Cambridge – sublime.

During my last session I did some stencilling on my sparkly black card, using Polyfilla One Fill (joint compound), which were now dried.

A couple of backgrounds I made in the last session, too.

The one at the front was made by smearing three colours of distress ink onto my craft sheet, spritzing with water, and smooshing the card around in it. The ones at the back were done with Black Soot Infusions. I sprinkled some onto the craft sheet and sprayed on a little water, and I then painted this in straight bands using a wide fan brush. This background was a mistake because I should have painted the stripes vertically rather than horizontally, but it doesn’t matter because I shall still use them. I sprinkled on a bit of water to make them blotchy and more interesting.

I didn’t quite like the shade of green on the inked ones, so I added a layer of Picket Fence distress stain, smoothing out the unevenness with the fan brush dipped in water.

Here are three backgrounds – on the right, the green ones with the Picket Fence distress stain added; in the middle, the horizontal Infusions ones, and on the left, Infusions painted in vertical stripes as I originally intended.

Taking the stencilled pages, I added a further stencil using Finnabair heavy body transparent gloss gel medium for a bit of contrast.

I didn’t like the flat white of the Polyfilla ones, so I covered the whole page with vertical stripes of painted black Infusions, which toned them down and added a bit of texture. I like how the Black Soot Infusion has a greenish tinge to it.

Paired pages – two pictures of beech trees.

The following background pieces I was particularly pleased with – I saw this technique recently online and was dying to try it.

To get this gorgeous woodgrain effect, I pooled some Golden Sands Infusions onto my craft sheet with water, and painted vertical lines with a fan brush. The walnut pieces give a lovely speckled effect that you so often see in natural woodgrain. The black ones above were based on the same idea but didn’t give such a dramatic effect because the brown speckles of the walnut pieces in the black Infusion don’t show up very well.

I had four different photos of tree trunks that I took in the woods. They were too large for my little pages, so I tore them down to a smaller size, which also gave them a more interesting shape. I distressed the edges with Vintage Photo distress ink, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster.

Here they are, stuck down onto the wood grain pages, using soft matte gel medium.

Finally, here are three more paired pages. I’ve used the blotchy horizontally striped Infusions one to go with the map – this will be the title page of the book.

The vertically-striped Infusions one was made to go with the Zentangle tracing with the numerous tree trunks, and the stencilled one to go with the other Zentangle tracing with fewer trunks.

Once I have finished making the pages and backgrounds, I shall add leaves and text, and maybe some more cut-outs using Sheba, my Cougar cutting machine – I’d like to cut some branches to stick down over some of the backgrounds, and add some leaves. So – still quite a lot of work to do! I am so looking forward to getting on with the binding, and designing the cover. No hope that this will be finished by the end of the year, I don’t think – but I shall do my best.