Floral Mini-Album Pt 5 Working on Pages 4 and 5

Recently I made a new mini-album, about my mum who died in December. I was unable to publish anything about this until now because it is a present for her best friend, who sometimes visits my blog, and I wanted it to be a surprise for her. I wrote a series of blog posts as I did each stage of the project, so I didn’t forget what I did, and they will be published in sequence now the project is finished and has been given to our friend.

If you want to see the finished project, please click here.

Starting work on another double-page spread today. This one is to have a musical theme.

I began with the second page, page 5. I placed the Tim Holtz music mask over the page and gently applied three colours of Distress Oxides with an ink blender. I used Broken China, Worn Lipstick and Peeled Paint. This is the first time I have tried the Distress Oxides on black paper and they really do work well.

The next photo shows the Distress Oxides having been spritzed with water, with the mask still in place.

The mask removed. I am pleased with how sharp the outline is.

There were some problems with this, though. Firstly, it was much too strong and dark, and secondly, this mask really annoys me because it isn’t proper music. I do wish when people design stuff like this, that they would consult someone who knows, if they themselves don’t know – the designer of this clearly doesn’t know anything about music! It’s the only mask I’ve got (maybe this is a hint-to-self: get on with it and make one yourself!!) so I made do with it, and thought that if I made the effect more subtle, the fact that it’s wrong would be less noticeable. There will probably be some sort of mat or flap over the top anyway, which will partially conceal it.

Here it is with a second layer of Distress Oxides having been applied, spritzed and dried. Already it looks better.

The final touch was to add some infusions to produce a bit of texture. These work very well with Distress Oxides – it’s the first time I’ve tried this combo. I used Royal Blood and The Sage from set 1, and Magenta from set 2.

I may put some sort of border around this. I had thought of using some Tim Holtz tissue tape that I had in my stash and hadn’t even opened. I attempted to use it, but this stuff is a total pain – it is very thin, and ultra sticky, and when I eventually found the end and tried to unroll the tape, it constantly ripped along its length, and was impossible to use. It has gone in the bin. Do not waste your money on this stuff!!! I was amazed because most of his stuff is such good quality. I googled the problem and found that I was not the only one who has experienced this difficulty with it. In the end I left the page as it was.

I then moved back to page 4 and made the pocket mat. I cut this from plain white cardstock and stamped it with a music background stamp. I laid the card strip onto the stamp platform an inch in from the edge, so that I wouldn’t get the edge of the music on the card, but a borderless effect.

It took some experimentation, and proved quite difficult to do because the card was longer than the stamp, and it meant doing several trial runs on scrap paper after I’d stamped the top half, in order to line it up and get the spacing correct, and when I moved the stamp down further on the stamp platform, it projected over the edge, so I had to press it down hard and hope for the best – that it would produce a decent impression, and also that it wouldn’t fall off mid-way through! All was well in the end. I stamped the pieces using black archival ink, and the stamp I used was “Music Background” from the Artistic Stamper.

Again, this looked much too stark, so I inked it with a combination of Distress Inks, using Inkylicious Ink Dusters, in Broken China and Victorian Velvet, and afterwards distressed the edges with Forest Moss, using a DIY ink blending tool.

For the mat for the remainder of page 4, I used some of the paper from the stack, and again distressed the edges with Forest Moss distress ink.

Here is page 4 with both mats stuck down.

This is the double-page spread of pages 4 and 5, laid onto the cover with pages 1 -3. I have not yet decided what to put on the flap of page 5, but underneath there will be a piano keyboard pop-up.

Once the basic structure of the pages is complete, I can think about the inserts, photo mats, envelopes, pull-outs, etc. etc.