Trick or Treat in Wonderland

I just finished a spread for an altered book round robin that I am participating in. It's theme is Vintage Halloween. I came across a Halloween version of Alice in Wonderland and that was my inspiration for this piece. Here is the finished product.

Below are some of the steps I went through to create this. First I taped the center of the page with book repair tape, as it had a very thick section of book pages that had been cut out. The remainder was sort of prohibitive toward working on the pages, so the book repair tape was very helpful.  I then added some ephemera onto both pages to add texture and gessoed the pages again.

Then I scraped various colors of acrylic paint onto the page.

 I rubber stamped some images, including a crackle or aging stamp and added drops of walnut ink.

I felt the page was lighter than the look I wanted, so I covered the entire page with brown acrylic paint and then wiped off a lot of it with baby wipes, ala Paula Phillips at  Journal Artista. I love the look of her art and use a lot of her techniques that I learned from watching her free you-tube videos. I am so thankful for all the artists out there that freely share what they have learned.

I then added some drops of black acrylic paint along the sides of one page, closed the book and re-opened the book. You can't see it very well, but it left a cool texture as the pages pulled apart.

I dripped some acrylic paint and some ink down the pages. I then added the images, the bunting and the ribbon, along with some more yellow paint circles to tone down some of the black spots. I also re-stamped some of the images that had been obscured by the brown paint.

My final step was to do some shading to make each element pop, ink the edges of the page, doodle jack-o-lantern faces on two of the black spots & sign and date it. I just got the book off in the mail to then next recipient and I was pretty happy with the final product. I hope the book owner likes it! : )

ENTER IF YOU DARE!

I am linking up with Art Journal Every Day at Balzer Designs. If you are in the mood for some wonderful art journaling inspiration, visit Julie's blog - you won't be disappointed.

http://balzerdesigns.typepad.com/balzer_designs/