Journal cover

Hello everyone, this is Astrid here from the UK with my very first post for Sin City Stamps.

I was over the moon excited when they asked me to become part of their team as I adored their stamps just from looking at the pictures of them in the store. But when I received my stamps to work with, I got even more excited as these are the best stamps I have ever laid my inky hands on, - they are so deeply edged you just cannot go wrong. No ink in places where you don't want it with these stamps!




Anyway, on to my project: I decided to finally make the cover of the nature journal I have been working on all through my summer break, the Art Journaling with Terri Sproul set seemed just perfect for this, specially when teamed with the Love of Butterflies set, because of the nature theme of course.
I started by embossing a piece of 5 x 7" white card with one of the new Spellbinders 3 D M Bossabilities folders.

Next I coloured it with the help of some Ranger Distress Stains and Inks in the following colours: Willd Honey, Shabby Shutters, Rusty Hinge and Forest Moss

I squeezed some of the stains onto my craft mat, swiped my embossed piece of card through it, spritzt water over it to blend the colours, dried it with my heat gun and then blended the inks over and around it all until I was happy with the result. By that time I had lost quite a bit of the embossed detail but I did not mind that for this project. If however you do want a deeply embossed background, it is better to colour your card before you emboss it.

Next I cut and embossed one of my labels dies that matches this embossing folder and coloured with the same inks while it was still in the die, I then stamped some of the background stamps of the journaling set in Forest Moss and Rusty Hinge Distress Ink, these little stamps are just perfect to add some interest to a background..
Here you can see some of the detail:

Now for some more stamping to add a vocal point: - I stamped one of the butterflies twice in Library Green Archival Ink, cut them out and blended some Peeled Paint Distress ink around them to colour them further. I then adhered them together just in the middle, bent up the wings of the top one a bit for some dimension, added a pen nib and glued this onto my label

Time to start layering my background to create the actual cover....

This is what it looked like to start with:

I covered it with Kraftcard, inked around the edges with Gathered Twigs Distress Ink and stamped one of the journaling stamps along the left hand  side

Next I made a layering piece from a saved bit of corrugated card, coloured with various sprays and distressed around the edges

I then adhered it all together with a tiny scrap of lace tucked in between one of the layers

Time for the final embellishments and some more stamping fun:

I cut a piece of plain cotton ribbon, coloured it with distress stains, distressed it a bit and stamped another one of the butterflies in Library Green archival along it:

Then I put it all together with some further stamped and cut out butterflies and some home made flowers and leaves. 

And here finally are some close ups still:

Another stamped butterfly, tugged between the flowers

Two words from the journaling set adhered with foam squares for some dimension

The stamped ribbon attached together with a little key charm

Well, there you have it, hope you like my first project and there are just a few days left still to use a fantastic fun scratch coupon code to get yourself a bargain! Click HERE, hover your mouse over the squares and your code will appear, how much fun is that, - keep scratching and you can get up to 40% off!!

See you next time