Mixed Media Books and Crab Apples

 

 

 

It's been a pretty busy time for me in the studio lately, which just proves that my shoulder rehab is coming on leaps and bounds! I made a couple of grungey mixed media books for family this week. They loved my Steampunk Seahorse illustrations and I thought turning them into books would be a good idea. I am really getting into image transfers now and managed to transfer my own work onto the mixed media backgrounds pretty well. The book covers have a leathery feel and are pretty flexible. I attached a signature of plain cartridge paper into each one, as well as embellishing them with a matching polymer clay bead  

 

I love how they turned out, and I know my cousins are excited to receive them which is a great sign. I hope I can get more efficient in making this type of project as they're proving popular with my facebook friends too, and is another item I'd love to be able to add to the future arts shop. Aside from these, I also added to my Daily Sketch Project with a watercolour-y illustration of zesty apples! (see bottom of this post). I will however be turning the project into a weekly one, and will select my favourite sketch from the week to feature here. Anyway enjoy all the photos and thanks for stopping by :) 

 

 

 

 

 the back covers....

 

Thanks for looking ...



Samantha Braund

Mixed Media Soft Bound Book Experiments

Happy New Year 2015! (Image heavy post by the way....)

I am still rehabbing my shoulder, which still means no jewellery making for the time being, so I have had to be creative about being creative lol. I have been really getting into my painting as you may recall from my last couple of posts, and really felt a strong urge to transfigure my 2D art form into a 3D artform. I loved the idea of book covers incorporating my work in a grungy style and did some research and found a lot of interesting ideas (on Pinterest of course) and online courses about how to proceed

I am still in an experimental phase, especially with regard to getting decent image transfers of my work onto irregular fabric like surfaces, but it is looking promising overall. The books will be soft bound eventually, and the covers have a wonderful, flexible, leather like feel to them (see the image below). The edges are satisfyingly grungy and it reeks of old world charm, like undiscovered pirate maps found on a shipwreck !

My first attempt went "wrong", my image transfers didn't work and left strange marks on the surface and I went overboard trying to correct the composition, but I found that I can get very satisfying cropped images (see the end of the post) which I can use as transfers themselves or incorporate them into other work...nothing is ever wrong really in expressive work - that's the moral for me at least lol)

Anyway it has been a wonderful start to the year, and I hope my health improves further too, so that I can become my normal studio obsessed self  again lol. I hope to create some wonderful books and paintings for an arts shop , so this is a nice first step . I have embedded a slideshow video of the experiments so far


































Mixed Media Book Cover Experiments

Cassie's Celtic Forest Book

Happy Valentine’s Day all! I haven’t been around much this week due to pesky hospital follow up appointments etc, but I have finished a little project for a dear friend that I wanted to share here



My friend Cassie loved the grungy effect on Pete’s box book thing (technical term) and has been hinting heavily to get me to make her something similar. She is a bit of an amateur chef and collects recipes from everywhere, so I decided to try out an idea for an organiser notebook on her, as a gift.

She wanted something “earthy” and “Tolkien-esque” Blimey! Not an easy request lol…. Anyway, I finished it today and will present it to her later as a sort of Valentine’s Day pressie. I saw a couple of You Tube videos on mini book album making and combined a couple of them to come up with this design. It has a signature of good quality plain paper, either end, with 2 pages in the middle with pockets galore to store her recipes in, adorned in pretty patterned paper. The plain paper can be written or even painted on





  There are many niggles to iron out with the design, like making the spine a shorter width and curving it more gently before strengthening it. There is an obvious kink, which bugs me. I have diligently written down my process, which is so unlike me, but I am determined to do it again and improve upon it! I think I’ll also watercolour paint my plain paper first before binding, it needs some subtle background colour

  The front cover, has lots of texture, created with die cut shapes and stencilled modelling paste (my new favourite thing to do). Then the whole piece has been painted in acrylic paints, with additional touches of metallic, courtesy of Decoart Metallic Lustre - "Iced Espresso". The focal is a copper wirewrapped Snakeskin Jasper gemstone that compliments the earthy tones I think. I was going for a forest, Celtic kind of look, but grungy! Well, I hope she likes it - she better lol, “Tolkien-esque” indeed!

I entered this piece into the following challenges:
Country View Challenge #12 Painty Pleasures

Anyway, thanks for stopping by :)




Samantha Braund

I Made A Book From Scratch!

The Marble Book

This is a very image heavy post I am afraid, so I apologise up front. This is a book I made over the weekend for a friend. I made it from scratch, starting with painting the pages, then constructing the hardback cover, and finally decorating the cover . I wanted it to have a more feminine feel, with a touch of sophistication, like my friend :)

The cover has a faux leather effect I created with acrylic paint on a textured surface, and the marbled eff...ect is a something I came up with a few months ago using collage materials, and wax. I blogged about the process in this post HERE and this is a link to a finished mixed media piece I made using the same technique I call the piece "Squidy" lol

I had some left over scraps of wax papers from these projects which I incorporated into making the book. I’ve included plenty of pics including some process ones of the book, so I hope you like it! The reaction to my recent foray into book making and altered book covers has been sooo positive that I that these will feature strongly in one of the shops I'll be setting up within the next 12 months or so.They are almost like a guilty pleasure for me, and are polar opposite to my jewellery work in terms of discipline. I usually do something like this for fun to unwind as a break from the jewellery,so it's fab to know people love this side of me too! I think altered art is so much fun and I know the hubby loves that he finally gets to be able to use the things I make, as they are not restricted to being pieces for women to wear lol. He has already taken the Twisted Tree and Shipwrecked Pirate Captain's book for himself...he did not get this one though!

























Process Photos













Samantha Braund