Hello! Adventure Awaits You Within – Altered Notebook Cover

Hi friends!

It’s a big hello from me!  I hope you are all staying safe.  We are still in lockdown but it is easing gradually.

It’s time for a new challenge over on More Than Words Challenge Blog and so today I am sharing my DT project.  Our Main Challenge is based on a word inspiration and a creative challenge and this time the theme is:

Word Inspiration – Hello
Creative Challenge – DOORS & WINDOWS

I have a mini step by step and a little story to go with it.  So back in February I watched this FB live from Kasia and Louise (Louise of Thompson’s Craft Supplies) showing a tutorial for this notebook kit.  It was about a week before my friend V’s birthday and I thought it would make a perfect gift for her, so I decided to buy two kits so we could do it together.  We were not in lockdown at that time but there were already delays with the mail and so by the time I received them and posted hers overseas, well everything went to hell and we were suddenly in a lockdown.  So with one thing and another, I never got around to making it, and my friend is a key worker so she hasn’t had time to do anything at all.

Fast forward three months and we are still in lockdown here, and the only doors and windows I see are those in my own house and those of the houses across the street.  I remembered this notebook kit so I decided to pull it out and use it for my DT project.  I have no idea when/if my friend will get around to making hers so at least I can make use of mine now.

You can watch the very excellent tutorial that Kasia did on the above link.  From memory she used sprays and pretty much everything in the kit to put her design together.  I decided to do it differently using my favourite Paperartsy Fresco Chalk Paints and no sprays, and also left off quite a few elements from the kit (foam flowers, moss, little stones etc).  Actually I did plan to use the foam flowers and you can see one of them in the photo below.  We can consider this “exhibit one” as shortly after that, it disappeared along with the green flower, only to be discovered downstairs chewed to pieces by kittens!  As if that wasn’t bad enough, these little flowers have metal stems and I only found one of those, so I was a bit panicked wondering if one or other kitten had swallowed it!  Of course I searched for it and I kept finding little chewed up bits of foam flowers in practically every room, so they clearly had a great time destroying playing with them but I still haven’t found it. 🙁

Anyway, I started to lay out how I envisioned my notebook cover to look using some of the elements from the kit.  I liked the idea of the rectangular resin piece being like the doormat in front of the house, but in the end I didn’t use it.

I’ve been trying to reduce waste as much as possible and so I decided to die cut my HELLO word out of the chipboard offcuts.

I also wanted to try and use the frame that contained the honeycomb chipboard though at this stage I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it.  I then covered everything with white gesso.

After gessoing my notebook cover, I grabbed some stencils, and yes even with all this lot, I still wanted to use my little cardboard brick stencil!  I’ve used it so many times now and it is holding up great, so I used it again.

Before I got to stencilling, I took the covers off the notebook to make life easier. I covered the entire notebook with this Wild Berries stencil from Finnabair.

Then I painted it a very pale green using Fresco Paints and started playing around with the placement again.  You can see the frame from the honeycomb is placed behind the resin door.

Then I added my favourite stencil – the cardboard brick one – and after that, rearranged the elements again.

Then it was time to start gluing everything in place and hold them down with something heavy while they dry.

A bit more painting of bits and pieces,

More elements in place and painted and it was time to decide what colour to paint my door.

So it was at this point that I lost my mind for a little while LOL so here’s the condensed version.  I wanted a purple door.  I painted it purple.  I wasn’t happy, so I painted it a different purple and went nuts and painted some elements with BANANA paint.  No no no.  So I painted the door again, this time in aquamarine.  Still no!  And then finally settled on this dark green colour {crazy eyes}

And so here is the final project which is painted in all shades of green.  That was a wild ride eh?  LOL

I’d love to see what you make so don’t forget to enter the More Than Words Main Challenge which is open till the end of the month!

Challenges

PROJECT RECIPE:

Notebook kit
Cass Art white gesso
Paperartsy Fresco paints
Collage Medium
Texture Paste
Finnabair stencil
Tim Holtz Small Talk stickers
From Stash: cardboard stencil,

I started something new for April and continuing for May and June:

Since we are all stuck inside and can’t leave the house, I thought I would try and do two things:
1. use this time to finish any unfinished projects
2. use as much recycled materials as possible (I do this a lot anyway) but also not to buy new stuff!
So, with that in mind, I will note the above on any posts, if applicable.
UNFINISHED PROJECT – NO
RECYCLED MATERIALS – NO but used up chipboard offcuts, nothing new used, no new purchases except the kit which was purchased in February!

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