Left of Center Challenge- My favourite book

There’s lots going on at Left of Center at the moment – as well as the latest challenge, we are celebrating our first year as a challenge blog by sharing a project every day for the month and introducing the new sponsors who have generously agreed to offer a prize for future challenges.  Keep visiting LOC to make sure you’re up-to-date with the latest news.Today, though, our challenge is sponsored by one of our favourites – Delicious Doodles – and our theme is “Favourite Book”.  I’m using “La Rosa Muerta” to illustrate J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s story “Carmilla”. 

If you haven’t read “Carmilla”, it’s a real Gothic vampire story, full of mystery and imagination;  it was written before “Dracula” and may have given Bram Stoker some inspiration. I’ve coloured the digi with alcohol markers (Spectrum Noirs this time) in shades of brown and gold to try to mimic the look of old, faded colours, and mounted it on the cover of a mini-album, constructed out of chipboard and covered with brown card.  I’ve tried to mimic the look of leather by brayering PVA over the card.  I’ve tried this technique with a number of media - gel medium keeps its texture well as it dries; PVA flattens out a bit but the end result is like a fine-grained leather (if you try this, make sure you have a bowl of water handy to clean the brayer immediately, or be prepared to spend some time picking dried PVA off the roller.)  I embossed the card after I cut the oval for the picture out of it, and rubbed a tiny bit of gold wax over the surface to pick up the texture.

Inside, I covered the book with marbled paper which I’ve had in my stash for a long time – it was from Joanna Sheen but I don’t think she sells it any more (sad face) and added pages using Laura Denison’s “Stack the Deck” method.  Now all I have to do is decorate the pages ...

I do hope you like the mini album – and we’d love to see your projects.  There’s a prize from our sponsor up for grabs at LOC, and joining in the fun is easy.  See you there!

Crafty hugs,