You are my type of friend

Hello Fellow Bloggers and Friends

As many of you know I have been unable to access my Craft Room due to building works but they are all finished now and I can finally get to my desk!

I was so thrilled to have win Tim's Tags again, this makes the third time (woo hoo!), I can hardly believe my luck.  I spent my winnings on some more Tim stamps - Ringmaster Blueprints and the gorgeous Vintage Things Blueprints and it is this latter set that I have used today.

There are two challenges that I wanted to enter - Simon Says Stamp and Show where the challenge is to use your favourite ink and also Sunday Stampers where Hels has challenged us to make something Vintage/Old.

This is what I have created - a concertina book/card that could go to a good friend.  Please click on the photos for a better view.

This is the front cover of the closed concertina book, all the pages have been created in the same way.  My favourite ink has to be Ranger Black Archival because I use it for almost everything I stamp.  It is such a versatile ink and does not lose anything, no matter how many times I wet it with inks, stains, paints etc.

I did want to make the book from drink mats but one of the stamps was too large so I created my own mats by cutting four pieces of heavyweight card to approximately 5 inches square (130 cm).  I covered each of the squares, front and back, with some Papermania Bookprint paper.  The paper was too bright for what I wanted so I coated each with some Antique Linen Distress paint and then inked around the edges with my current favourite Distress Ink - Gathered Twigs to give it a very aged feel.

Once aged, I needed some lightness in the middle to do my stamping and I smooshed on Picket Fence Distress Paint with my fingers and then stamped with Ranger Black Archival ink (of course!).  I stamped each of the stamps onto separate white card, coloured the pictures with Distress Ink, carefully cut them out and mounted them onto my stamped images. They seem to stand out a little better this way.

I did not want to add lots of embellishments because I wanted the words to be the focal point, after the images.  I added some ribbon to hold the book together.  The words' Friend' and 'because' are die cut using an X-Cut alphabet die.

This shows the back with the added ribbon which I have coloured with Gathered Twigs Distress Ink.

This photo shows the whole of the inside of the book. I thought it was fun to use the whole set of stamps in one project.  I hope you like it!  I had fun making it.  Thank you so much for visiting and a special thank you if you leave me a comment too.  Big hugs, Anne xx