Nautical Altered Board Book

Here we are,another month has passed and we are now in to June...hopefully for some, the sun will shine as it is the start of our summer, for me I prefer the cooler months...
The challenge has been set over at Rhedd's Creative Spirit...as always altered art / mixed media / recycled projects only....definitely no papercrafts.
My project this month is an Altered Board Book...and I decided on a Nautical theme.

I took several photo of my progress with it, so hopefully you will draw inspiration from them...
The book was a charity shop find, a little dogged eared,but overall quite sound, especially the spine of the book.

I would normally tear away the printed layer on each page,but the pages weren't overly thick, so I just sanded them down a bit to roughen them up so they would tolerate the glue/ mod podge.

I glued the 2 pages either side of the centre to each other and left them to dry over night.

The next stage was to add some torn book pages and some die cut chicken wire shapes...once they were glued in place I then went over with a coat of gesso.

 I covered both pages with white tissue paper and mod podge...and left it to dry overnight.

It was at this point I realised I would have done better to have added the chicken wire die cuts after the tissue stage...lol.

Time to add some colour...so I brushed on some blue acrylic paint and wiped over some areas with a baby wipe...dried that using my heat tool....

Time to add some green paint...again wiping back with a baby wipe and drying with the heat tool.

I dry brushed some white paint over the green to lighten it a little more.

Time to play with the sprays...the green spray is a chalk one, which I had to decant in to another bottle...I used that very lightly as my board was beginning to become too green...I then sprayed the Ocean Blue by Docrafts...that gave an amazing shimmer and covered really well and I didn't have to decant that spray either!

 I did dab some areas with a  baby wipe so the green would show through.

I dried as before then went all over with the shimmery white spray...again drying with my heat tool.

For the left side of my book I stamped this fab image ( Rubber Dance Stamps) coloured her and cut her out...I assembled some nautical embellishments around her and then glued everything in to place...the grass effect was created by using some type of mesh. I've had it in my stash for years, an orange strip and a green strip, I can't remember where I got it from...anyway, I shredded some pieces out of it to create the grass.

Using some of my Crafty Individual stamps I added the birds and the verse.

The right side of the book I decided to use a bigger stamp  by Impression Obsession, which I coloured and then distressed the edges...I layered that over some muslin...finally adding some nautical embellishments.

Hope you like my Altered Board Book....don't forget,if you fancy a challenge, then I would love to see you over at 

Rhedd's Creative Spirit