If you love all things vintage, you're going to LOOOVE the newest stamp set from Gwen Lafluer for PaperArtsy: Tickets! The minute I saw the set, I thought of traveling back in time, and of fully blooming roses, lace, old sepia photos, and ephemera. So, I pulled out my stash of papers and started making a beautiful mess.
I tested the ticket stamps on plain, printed, painted, and dyed papers of various weights and textures with both black and sepia ink.
Next, I found some 140 lb. watercolor paper that I had sprayed with sepia distress oxide through my newest Lemurian Garden stencils. I cut the paper into house-shaped pieces, then gathered my roses and laces and vintage images from The Graphics Fairy.
I tried out different arrangements of the flowers, tickets, and photos, snapping photos as I found the arrangements I liked. I selected the five I liked best, then glued the pieces in place.
I had the idea of using a Dresden Gold window on the front of the book and putting a photo behind it. The gold seemed too bright, so I wanted to grunge it up. I finally ended up, after trying paints and inks, using some of Seth Apter's Patina Oxide to age it.
It was time to "bind" my book. I envisioned it as a flip book, with three little rings on the side.
I started with some binder rings that could easily be opened and
reclosed, but realized that they were too big and clunky, so I switched
to smaller rings.
As I was putting the five house shapes together into a book, poking holes in three strategic locations, and adding rings to hold the book together, it occurred to me that the back pages were blank! Well, fortunately I have an abundance of flowers, lace, photos, and tickets, so I created the back pages.
Here's the final book (above) and all the inside pages (below).
