Over at the Frilly & Funkie Challenge Blog, the design team wants us to create a frilly or funkie project using our favorite book/author as an inspiration. The basis for this challenge, used on October 5, 2016, is as follows:
"There are so many wonderful books that inspire the mind to imagine the worlds created within them. Think fairy tales, mysteries, romances or even science fiction and use that to inspire [our] art. [The] challenge it so create a shabby chic or vintage styled project inspired by a book. Provide an explanation of how the book and author inspired [the] project."
Well, now, that is not so easy for a book reader like myself. I have been a reader since I first discovered the public library in the 3rd grade and had read pretty nearly anything between two covers in that library by the end of high school. Text books dominated the next four years of undergraduate school but, in grad school I was back at it, reading paperbacks from the Student book store as fast as they could restock them! And by the time we moved to San Francisco, and I was employed in the financial district there where there were five or six bookstores within a few blocks of our office, I used to spend my lunch hour (well, lunch 45 minutes actually) going from store to store, searching for that one missing book in a series or that new author for whom I had read a review. I was primarily a mystery reader by then, but it was in San Francisco, in Stacey's Bookstore basement that I discovered the Golden Age of Science Fiction. And by the time we had moved through Houston (Murder by the Book was my haunt and the Mystery Writers of America was my monthly social event) to London (Murder One was my haunt and Crime Writers was my social event), I was reviewing mystery fiction professionally and attending mystery conventions annually.
Now how am I to pick a book from that history? Well, there is one that I have read over and over and over... and it isn't an easy book to use as an artistic inspiration. It's science fiction of a sort, but also political and apocalyptic. And the source of the apocalypse was Syria (who knew?). Anyway, I found it after we left Florida and since it was SET in Florida, I was fascinated by trying to locate the fictional town where the story takes place. I read that paperback copy so many times, the pages are falling out, so I have at least two more, more recent reprints on my shelves. I think that qualifies it as my "favorite book" because even through it is so very dark and frightening (after all, I am a child of the cold war, with drop-and-cover drills and backyard bomb shelters), it offered up hope for humanity amid all the carnage.
Now, how to use this in a card? Well, here is the cover of my very first copy as a starting point:
"There are so many wonderful books that inspire the mind to imagine the worlds created within them. Think fairy tales, mysteries, romances or even science fiction and use that to inspire [our] art. [The] challenge it so create a shabby chic or vintage styled project inspired by a book. Provide an explanation of how the book and author inspired [the] project."
Well, now, that is not so easy for a book reader like myself. I have been a reader since I first discovered the public library in the 3rd grade and had read pretty nearly anything between two covers in that library by the end of high school. Text books dominated the next four years of undergraduate school but, in grad school I was back at it, reading paperbacks from the Student book store as fast as they could restock them! And by the time we moved to San Francisco, and I was employed in the financial district there where there were five or six bookstores within a few blocks of our office, I used to spend my lunch hour (well, lunch 45 minutes actually) going from store to store, searching for that one missing book in a series or that new author for whom I had read a review. I was primarily a mystery reader by then, but it was in San Francisco, in Stacey's Bookstore basement that I discovered the Golden Age of Science Fiction. And by the time we had moved through Houston (Murder by the Book was my haunt and the Mystery Writers of America was my monthly social event) to London (Murder One was my haunt and Crime Writers was my social event), I was reviewing mystery fiction professionally and attending mystery conventions annually.
Now how am I to pick a book from that history? Well, there is one that I have read over and over and over... and it isn't an easy book to use as an artistic inspiration. It's science fiction of a sort, but also political and apocalyptic. And the source of the apocalypse was Syria (who knew?). Anyway, I found it after we left Florida and since it was SET in Florida, I was fascinated by trying to locate the fictional town where the story takes place. I read that paperback copy so many times, the pages are falling out, so I have at least two more, more recent reprints on my shelves. I think that qualifies it as my "favorite book" because even through it is so very dark and frightening (after all, I am a child of the cold war, with drop-and-cover drills and backyard bomb shelters), it offered up hope for humanity amid all the carnage.
Now, how to use this in a card? Well, here is the cover of my very first copy as a starting point:
This is a screen grab from an eBay auction but my copy, buried somewhere in my disaster of an office/library, looks just as worn and distressed...
So I played with some color bursts and finger painted with some Distress Paints:
And added some Floridian symbology (palm trees would have to suffice as I have no small stamps of refugees!) and a little radioactive symbol from a clip art page. I layered the trimmed background on a piece of black card and then on a white pre-folded note card. The book title was stamped in Archival Ink after final layering.
Products used in making this card were
- Stamps: Stamp Scapes "Palm Trio" (125C) and Karen Foster Mini-Formal Alphabet (00377)
- Inks: Ken Oliver Color Bursts "Orange" and "Alizaron Crimson"; Distress Paints "Squeezed Lemonade" and "Picket Fence"; Archival "Jet Black"
- Embellsihemtns: printed radioactive symbol
- Papers: Paper Studio Note Cards "white", scraps of cream and black card stock
- Adhesives: Viva Las Vegas "Miracle Tape"; Ranger Collage Glue Stick
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