Butterfly Album

After being absent from my Craft room for a few days I thought I would just love to create something useful, just for me, not for any special reason but just for fun.  I got out all my new Tim Holtz goodies (and yes there are many....cough, cough) and finally settled on making an album.  I have no idea what I am going to use it for.... and will probably give it away...

If you follow Jenny's (Buttons) blog you will know that she generously shares her wonderful new techniques, through tutorials and videos and I wanted to refresh my mind on her faux wood technique which you can find HERE.  It really is a fantastic technique and the wood looks so realistic (and weather worn) when it is finished.

I started by die cutting an album shape from Eileen Hull's wonderful Mini Album Scoreboard XL die using ivory coloured Daler Rowney mount board (mat board in the US).  The finished album measures approximately 5 inches square.

The picture below shows the album cover after I used Jenny's technique, with the colours I chose, although you can choose any colours you like.  It also shows one of the new thinlets die cuts - Mixed Media, there are four fabulous dies in this collection.  I 'rusted' the die cut by using a mix of Distress Paint and Distress Stains in Rusty Hinge and Gathered Twigs.  I wanted it to represent an old trellis.

The beautiful butterfly was stamped using Tim's new Perspective stamp set.  I love that he did a proper Swallowtail butterfly in this set and I have coloured it using Scattered Distress Paint onto plain white card and stamping with Archival Ink before fussy cutting it out and mounting it onto the album with foam squares. I also added some greenery from Tim's Garden Greens die, coloured with Peeled Paint Distress Stain.  The words 'remember to fly' are from Tim's new large chit chat stickers.

I used the same faux wood technique inside the album and added one of Tim's Idea-ology Ring Binders.  I wanted to tone down the silver and I 'rusted' it by giving a it coating of gesso and then layers of Gathered Twigs and Rusty Hinge Distress Paint, followed by a layer of Ranger multi matt medium.  I love how it turned out!

Finally here is a picture from the top showing how the Ring Binder is held in the album.  As you can see from the photo I added a second 'trellis' to the back.

It was such a lovely feeling to create something for no particular reason!  I hope you like it.  Thanks so much for visiting and even bigger thanks to those kind enough to leave a comment!

Hugs, Anne xx