Sharing Some Words of Wisdom

My idea for Hope's "Words of Wisdom" book was based on a motto that a friend of mine had shared with me years ago.  It took some time to find just the right image of the woman I pictured saying these words, but eventually, I found her!  This spread says it all for me!

I printed the words and the image onto transparencies.  To prepare my pages, I gessoed the pages and then used a variety of metallic sprays in lime green, turquoise blue and purple.  Next, I cut the windows so the transparencies would show through.  Simple and fun!

Industrial Revolution

What a fun little book Hope has in our Altered Ladies AB RR!  Her theme is Industrial Revolution--metal, machinery, steampunk...I had a couple of ideas about the materials that I wanted to use in my spread.  To my surprise, I started playing with my stash of Mrs. Grossman's "Scrap Metal" sticker line. I cut up old cereal boxes and adhered sheets of the metal finish stickers to them.  Then I took out my Tim Holtz "Gears" die along with my Big Shot and started mass producing gears in all sizes and antique patinas!  I affixed the gears with glue and foam tape to create many different layers.  Finally, I embellished my spread with real metal gear parts and look what happened!

Chunky Time is Back!

After a brief hiatus, my chunky page swap has resumed!  To start off the new year, we decided to recycle those 2012 calendars to create our chunky pages.  I chose a calendar with beautiful artwork and showcased all the vibrant colors and bold patterns with an iris-folded circle.   Since we had 12 pages for this round, I used each month's artwork to create a unique iris-folded circle.

For the backs, I punched out a bunch of the numbers from the calendars, but instead of using only the numbers, I realized that the back sides of the punched out numbers had some interesting designs and colors on them too!  Couldn't let those go to waste!  All in all, my calendar pages were bursting with color!!

The "Ooh-La-La Mailbag"

Darrell's "Ooh-La-La Mailbag" book asked us to go postal!  Stamps, postcards, letters, catalogs...anything goes!  I chose to put all that junk mail to use in my spread.  What fun!!  I had seen paper beads made from rolled magazine pages.  I adapted that concept to create the background seen here by tightly rolling strips of magazine pages about 2 inches wide by 10 inches long.  You never know exactly what your finished tube will look like, but I tried to use pages that were full of color.

Next, I glued those tightly rolled tubes right onto the page to create my background.  I finished my spread by spelling out "What's in your mailbag?" in die cut letters.  I needed to find a way to make the letters stand out against the busy background.  Instead of using catalog pages again, I cut the letters out of white cardstock and painted them red for maximum visibility.