it's a party!

You are cordially invited to an ARTFUL BLOGGER party!

One of my favorite girls, Kari (ArtsyMama), is throwing a party in honor of the supremely fabulous new Stampington publication, Artful Blogging. It is a thoroughly gorgeous magazine! I hope you've had a chance to take a peek at it. If you do, be sure to put your eyeballs on page 106 where you'll find a picture from the bloggy world of yours truly! :-)

As party attendees, Kari has invited us to share some sort of an "artsy" doo dad. She is linking all of us on her blog so please feel welcome to join in the festivities or go have yourself a look around and visit each party goer!

Kari gave us a whole bunch of ideas on what we could share for Arful Blogger party. She suggested we could create a tutorial, show instructions from a magazine or website, show pictures of how we display our own art, show art we’ve received from others, or even just share what artful blogging means to us! "Anything goes" was the name of the game!

For Kari's party, I thought I share with you some pictures of my last and final fatbook I've been working on for a Yahoo group project I joined as part of Art and Soul. The theme of this fatbook is "ArTiTextural: The Fabric of Our Society" and is being hosted by the fabulous Marian McBryde.

For this fatbook, the pages had specific size requirements and had to have a peeked roof. What a cute idea!!! For the "foundation" of my houses, I used canvas paper. I LOVE this stuff. You can get it at Michael's Crafts. It takes just about any medium just super plus you can sew onto it and it holds up!!!

With the previous fatbook I worked on, I used acrylic paint. I wanted something different for this project. I looked around my craft room and saw a bunch of inks just sitting unused from back when I was taking calligraphy classes. (See! It pays to have things "out!") I fell in love with these blue and purple inks and had to have them!

At first I started applying the ink to the paper, just like paint. I found the ink going on much too dark and opaque. Also, it was goin’ real fast. I needed this stuff to last long enough to make 55 pages! Solution: I mixed the ink with Golden’s Acrylic Glazing Liquid. I knew the acrylic glazing liquid worked like a champ to extend acrylic paint so I thought it’d be fun to give this a go. Finding the right intensity of color was easy: if the mix was too light, I added more ink. If the mix was too dark, I added more glazing medium.

Once the ink mixture was on the paper, I began stamping. I used acrylic paint.

You might be able to pick out that there is a piece of fabric underneath all these pages. This served to add some texture. Once the ink mixture was applied and just tacky, I lightly pressed it into the fabric. I also inked strips of corrugated cardboard and "stamped" with them to add more texture.

I edged each page with a bronze glaze. That was a mess! It really didn't have to be but I love a good mess now and then and this was one of those times! I was NOT careful with any of the inking, painting, edging or anything I did with these pages. I wanted that messy, distressed look!

Here you can see how pliable the canvas paper is. And you can see more mess too. :-)

For the backs of these pages, I applied blue ink to a rubber stamp with a foam brush and stamped away!. I loved how that turned out! The ink would slightly bleed.

An element that was required for this fatbook was that there needed to be some fabric..as in The Fabric of Our Society. :-) I decided my house needed a door so I dipped into my huge stash of fabric scraps and made little collaged doors as the fabric element.

Here's the doors once they were all stitched and all the pages ready for their doors to be installed.

 

Before I stitched the doors onto the pages, I added a few embellishments - a button for the doorknob and some beads just for interest. I thought the doors also needed a top and a bottom so this time I dipped into my stash of old lace and used that.

In case you can't pick out any detail in this crazy sea of purple and gold, here is a picture of the front of an individual door...

And then the back...

This was SUCH a fun, fun messy project! I can't wait to go to Art and Soul and get my book, which is going to filled with pages from 50 different artists!!! I really kept trying to add the word "welcome" somewhere on each page. When I considered "Fabric of Our Society," my mind went to how I love people to come into my home and instantly feel welcome and comfortable. That's something I can contribute to my community. I ultimately just left it off. I'm hoping that the colorful, cheerful door will convey the sentiment, "In my house? In my heart!" :-)

Thanks for visiting and hope you had fun!!!

Comments

[Bonnie]

Thank you for sharing this! I really love this idea and it is great for art journaling too. Looks messy and fun! Come on over to my blog too for a visit and enter a giveaway!

[Laume]

Making a mess - my favorite type of art. It's amazing how everyone comes up with such unique new ideas.

[Hanna]

I'd love to make a house looking page some day, how great that you could you use the inks too! thanks for sharing

[Miss*Laurence]

I'd never heard of fatbooks before. I think it's going to take me a month to recover from all these fabulous ideas!!! Thanks for the tutorial, I'll come back for more!

[Eva Birdthistle]

These are beautiful and so inspiring I can't wait to try it out too. Thank you for sharing!

[marsha]

The pages look beautiful. I have never seen a 'fatbook', and now you have made me really curious...

[jennalee]

that was so fun and messy. thanks for sharing and being artful.

[Karla]

So beautiful! Definitely reminds me of finger painting. Messy is so much fun!
Karla

[Sharon at Norah'S]

These are fabulous. I enjoyed your mess.

[Natasha]

Fabulous post and instructions, I am itching to start using inks now!!!