Mixed Media & Re-purposing...

Hello and welcome back to my humble blog. If you are living in the Mid to South Eastern States of Australia at the moment you'll hopefully be taking advantage of the near-blizzard conditions to get some creating done. If not, I'm very jealous :(   However, the shortest day of the year has come and gone, so I'm looking forward to longer daylight hours very soon. I've been ensconced in front of our cosy fire most of the weekend altering a set of pre-loved bookends. This is just one of a multitude of projects I've been trying to get around to doing and I'm pretty chuffed that I finally finished them.

Lots and lots of texture layers using different mediums were used on this. The Kaisercraft timber letters are a recent purchase specifically for this project, but everything else is what I found in my stash.

 

The chippy clock behind the letters is from 2Crafty and I've covered it in Structure paste to get a really gritty, rough surface. I also used the same on the clock hands. I cut the clock in half to add to both sides of the bookends.

Except for the Tim Holtz film strip, everything on this has been altered in some way. The flowers were cream and I used water colour paints to change them as well as on the cameos. Heidi Swapp Colour Shine was also used, with a paint brush, as well as Viva 3D Gold paint and Kaisercraft Antique White paint.

I first covered the whole thing with newsprint paper and Gesso before adding some stencilled lettering with texture paste.

I added a chipboard semi circle and a metal butterfly to both sides as well as some German scrap pen nibs which I painted gold. Using my finger I rubbed a bit of gold paint over the lettering to make it stand out more.

I have probably said it before but.... hot glue guns and I have a love-hate relationship, but I managed to take a bit more control of it this time, so I think we are coming to some kind of understanding :D
Here is the finished product on a table in the corner of my library. It now holds the books that I am yet to read (when one is read another seems to take its place! I'm sure they are breeding), otherwise if they go straight into my bookcase I tend forget about them.

It has been a long time since I've altered anything and I really enjoyed the process despite the long wait between drying times.  Thanks again for dropping by xx