GPP Crusade 42 - Strip Ease

This month the theme for the GPP Crusade is Strip Ease.  You can read all about it here.

For my contribution I took some printed papers and tore them into strips.  I had these hibiscus flowers I had cut out of a piece of scrapbook paper that I wanted to use for a journal page but I wasn't having any luck figuring out what to use for a background.  Then when I was thinking about the Strip Ease idea I thought that might work so picked out some papers, tore them into strips, glued them down and gave it a try.  I played around with where I wanted papers torn with a white edge (thinking that went well with the white edge on the flowers) and where I didn't.  I like how, just by accident, the words "WIN WIN" ended up showing up so well. 

I had the following page in an altered book that I did last month so thought I'd share it also.  The theme for this book is color and for this blue page I tore strips from magazine pages and glued them down.  I tore these strips so the white edge showed for more contrast between the blues.  The middle of the page had part of a fuzzy butterfly body which made me think of big hairy moths which give me the creeps so I had to cover it up!  I punched one inch circles out of the magazine pages and covered the partial body with them.

There's still plenty of time this month to check out the Crusade and participate yourself.  Go here for all the details.  Then see what you can come up with.  It's a great way to spark your creativity and move your muse into action mode , plus it's alot of fun!

Thanks for taking a look!

Color Inspiration and Grids

I'm working on an altered book with the theme Color Inspiration.  I'll use it to help me out when I'm stuck for ideas or need to check out colors or color combinations.  Color inspires alot of my art ideas - I'll see what I think at that moment is the perfect color and will be stuck with it in my head - I'll have to create something using that color to release it from my head!

This month is Michelle Wards' GPP Street Team Crusade No. 41 and the challenge is Grid Lock.  You can check it out here.

Here are some pages I did recently in my Color Inspiration AB using grid layouts:

For this page I masked out the squares then painted the page with black acrylic paint.  When I removed my masks the text showed through.  I really like to leave some text showing in an altered book when I can.  I like the way it looks.  I then stamped the puffin rubber stamp in each square and hand colored the beaks.  I love the contrast of the black and white on this page.

This page is photographs I took at an Oregon State Park called Thompsons Mills.  It's an old flour mill and I was fascinated by the rusty gears and parts I found.  I took alot of photos so may definately have another rust page for this altered book.  I thought the specks of paint and the haphazard stamping of "RUST" sort of fit with the subject matter of rust. 

The facing page to this one follows and has a rust background.  In addition to looking at this page to see the dif shades of rust it also gives me ideas for combining colors like rust and turquoise.  I love the way they look together.  Although I would say the turquoise background does enhance the rust more than the rust background enhances the turquoise. 

This was a page in a magazine.  As soon as I saw it and the "Tranquil Turquoise" I knew it was destined for my color book.  And since I had already decided to do the rust page with a turquoise background this seemed like the perfect stuff for the facing page.  It was alot of fun to cut up the pieces and figure out how to arrange them.  Just cutting out squares all the same size was just not going to work for this grid!

Thanks Michelle for the Crusade idea.  I'm really enjoying working with grids!

Cutting out red and blue!

Here's a couple pages I did in the Color themed altered book I just started.  Just started going through magazines and garden catalogs looking for red and blue stuff and started cutting.  All images on both pages are adhered with a glue stick.
I actually had been saving the bottle of hot sauce for awhile for just the right use - probably therefore the Red Hot Red title!  I first painted the background pages with gesso for these red pages.  The text still slightly shows through which I really like the look of.  I used the non brush end of a paintbrush, the non foam end of a foam brush and a q tip to stamp the dots.

The blue page all started with an ad with butterfly wings and this word - 

It pretty much fits perfectly with how I think of blue thanks to blue in nature - blue skies, ocean, mountains, etc.  Guess I didn't just cut out blue, for one page I simply tore strips.  Then punched circles and squares out for both pages.  And used a stencil and midnight blue craft acrylic for the word "Blue". 

Thanks for taking a look!