Birds of a Feather

Hello peeps :)
This is going to be a very short entry from me as it is late and I have to be up early for work tomorrow *yawn* (I wish crafting could pay my mortgage!).

There were several challenges that caught my eye this week and I tried to come up with a project that would cover a few of them together. I've never done a journal cover before and have many a 'naked' sketch book laying about the place so I decided to give it a go.

I was bought up in the countryside with a family who love gardening and wildlife. My grandfather was the president of the county's horticultural society which meant my sister and I grew up knowing the Latin names for most common garden plants before we knew our times tables. My grandparents' house was filled with old plant and wildlife books with beautiful hand drawn specimen drawings separated from the neighbouring page with a sheet of tissue like paper. I would sit for an age carefully turning those delicate pages to see what further treasures I could find. No afternoon on their veranda would be complete without my grandfather getting someone to fetch his binoculars so he could get a closer look at some bird sitting somewhere off down the garden..... happy memories.

So as you has probably guessed my journal cover is inspired by all things flora and fauna. I wanted to capture that sence of someone scetching and colouring specimens out in the countryside.  After laying panels of paper I coloured some texture paste with Lindy's Magicals and used the Tim Holtz Harlequin stencil to create some raised texture. I knocked the colour back with Ranger distress paint in Antique Linen and aged it with a Ranger distress marker in Vintage Photo. The paper flowers were coloured using Lindy's Starburst spray in Yellow Rose of Texas.  I used a couple of Memory Box dies to create the foliage and coloured them in a sketch type fashion using distress paints, distress inks and liquid pearls.  The bird was cut out of a post card I bought from Ikea and aged with distress ink.

I then added some pieces of interest from my stash including broken jewellery, vintage postage stamps and a bird cage embellishment.  I finally finished it with a spritz of Perfect Pearls Mist in Heirloom Gold.

I hope you like the end result :)

I'd like to enter this into:

The Mixed Media Monthly Challenge - Birds of a Feather

The Mirror Crack'd - Journal Cover

Country View Challenge Blog - Anything Goes

Now I must go and get some sleep!!

Good night

B
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