Creative Thoughts by Gill Humphrey

Its not very often that I abandon pretty papers and concentrate on stamping but this week I decided to do just that and have created a concertina book using the Oriental Tag Block as the starting point for the make. To join the tags together I cut strips of card 1" wide by 12cm tall and scored then at 1/2" on the short side so that the tags could be joined using alternating valley and mountain fold. You can make this minibook as long as you want by simply adding more tag shapes. Once I had as many as I wanted I sandwiched some ribbon with another tag to the front of the album leaving the left side as you look at it short enough for a bow and the opposite side long enough to wrap around the pages and tie to the first ribbon end.

The format for my pages is the same through out the album - I chose images from Florals 2, Florals 3 Florals 4, Flower Hug, Bubbles and Flowers, Flowers Collection Set 6 and Flowers Collection Set 7 for my focal image with one floral on each tag.

 

To stamp the flowers I added some of the Liquid Watercolours to a piece of Cut and Dry Foam so that I could dab the different colours on the appropriate parts of the stamp then lightly spritzed with water before stamping. This gives a soft watercolour effect in a really easy way. 

To add interest to the tags I then added elements from Miniatures #756 to the tags selecting different creatures for each page using black Archival ink.  The butterflies came from Delight in Flora stamp set. 

 

 

As finishing details for each page I stamped a word from Lots of Words set onto pieces of frayed calico before adhering them to the pages.

 

I think that this project will work well for many themes just pick one that you know you have lots of different images for in your stash or simply mix and match your images to your hearts content.