TMC 06 Album/Journal Cover

It’s time for February’s challenge over at The Mirror Crack’d. This month we would love to see your Album/Journal covers. We are sponsored by Woodware Craft Collection with a fabulous £12 voucher to be spent at your favourite Woodware stockist, either online or in store. Please note though you will be responsible for your own postage!

My cover is for my Journal. The words on it come from my inner desires I guess. Right from a very early age I have had the most vivid dreams of flying. I used to live opposite a park and in my dream it would start off with me playing on the swings. I would swing higher and higher until eventually I would go right over the top of the bar and it would launch me into the air. At first I would be terrified I was about to crash to the ground, but quickly I realised that actually I was levitating there or floating.

When I relaxed and stopped being terrified of falling I started to fly. There was no flapping of my arms or legs, I just glided effortlessly in the sky, swooping and swirling with no effort. It was so vivid I could recall later what the park looked like from the sky, how my house and garden looked from above. What people I knew looked like from above them too. When I used to wake up I would rush to get dressed and go out to the swings to try and repeat what had happened in my dream, as I was convinced that the dream had been real. I was always deeply disappointed when the swing would only go so high and I couldn’t really fly.

Years later, when it became fashionable to buy one of those aerial photographs of your house I realised that what I had been seeing in my dreams all those times was actually very accurate! Who knows, maybe I was having an out of body experience, or maybe I really was flying! As I have gotten older the dreams have lessened in frequency, but nowadays if I have that dream, rather than being disappointed it hasn’t happened for real, it feels like an old friend has come to visit me.

Anyhow, that is why I chose the words and the images for my journal cover because they reflect what is truly inside me, a deep desire to recapture that fabulous feeling of my dreams……

There are no holes in my cover yet because I am a bit of a tidy freak and will want it to line up with all the pages neatly, so once I have enough pages to fill it. I will punch it then! Anyhow, I started off with a 9x12” canvas board, which had been pre-gessoed, and roughly laid out what I fancied.

 

I had a play around with butterflies and where the words should go until I came up with this, which I gessoed over a couple of times to cover up the brown of the lazer cut birdcages and the difference in colour of the letters. When I was happy with that I used a stencil to add texture paste to the butterfly, as you can see from the finished piece I later added a second butterfly, which I also texturised. I added more texture paste to the background just to give a bit of a more textured feel. I realised at this stage I should have added some stencilled areas before sticking my letters and bird cages down, but it was too late at this stage as I couldn’t get the stencils flat enough to paste through, which is why the rough areas of paste instead. A lesson for next time!

 

Then I just went to town with Prima Color Bloom Sprays.

When I finally had them roughly how I wanted them, I went over the letters with spray and a paintbrush with a different colour to the background because otherwise the words were lost. I also used gilding wax on the birdcages in Silver and on their hanging supports on one in pink and the other in blue. I did the same with the birds themselves. I buffed up the cages and holders to a shine.

 

The dragonfly I painted with sprays, and when it was all dry I added some stickles to it’s wings and body, and also to the butterflies.

The next picture captures the glitter trails I added to the butterflies and the dragonfly.

I also went all around the edge with the silver gilding wax to give it a more lived in look.

And finally from a different angle, showing all the different dimensions.

I am entering this into:-

2 Creative Chicks – #23 Anything Goes (no cards)
Come and Get It - Texture
Decorate to Celebrate – Anything Goes with 3D
Fantastic Tuesday – #71 Anything Goes with Twist of Purple
Fussy and Fancy – #131 Things With Wings
Hiding in My Craftroom – #185 Freestyle
Imagination Crafts – Feb: Anything Goes
Not Just Cards – #12 Anything Goes
Rhedd’s Creative Spirit – Feb: Mixed Media/Alt Art Anything Goes
Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers – #26 Snarkers Choice ‘U is for Unused – The majority of the letters on the piece above have been in my stash since before I grew a beard (the menopause sure is a killer!)’