RhondaMum: The State of Being Free

One of my favorite color combinations is deep purple, green and blue. When I saw these Summertime In Blue Papers, I knew I had to create with them and that whatever I made was going to turn out beautifully.

I can always find a use for old dictionary pages. We have a huge used book store in my town and I found my first vintage French Dictionary there. A really old and beautifully illustrated one. The older and dingier the pages, the better. They are especially useful when you are creating with a certain theme in mind, like fairies, butterflies, and freedom.

Freedom was the main word that came to my mind as I kept seeing all of these wonderful, free fairies. The thought of being a free fairy, flying about in the depths of nature sounds so heavenly to me.

I love the richness of the Olive and Purple Crepe Ribbon. Not only is it beautiful, it also helps to hold the album together and easily turn each page.

The first thing that I did for this project was to put my Birdcage Shaped Album through my sticker machine. Then, I covered each page in one of the Summertime in Blue Papers. This gave me my "canvas" to create on.

For the album cover, I decided to line the back of the "cage" with a dictionary page, then one free fairy, escaping from the cage, with magnificent wings. These Open Half Butterfly Gold Bezel Wings are available in this smaller size as well as a bigger size that have a Swallowtail design. I covered the back with a colored resin to make them stand out even more.

The next thing I did was gathering the different collage sheets that I wanted to use (see link below). I cut out all of my favorite fairies and made sure each one had wings. Most already had wings, but for a few I cut some out and added them.

After I had all of my images cut out, I decided on words that I could add from my old dictionary. Some words I tore from the page, some I cut out, and some I used a paper punch to get a desired shape.

Then, I just played, adding images to one side, then finding others to add to the opposite side. It seems to be the way that works for me. I can't sit and finish each page in order when I am making an album or book. It's fun for me to just add bits here and there and it always comes together.

For all of my fairies, I added some antennas first in pencil, then outlined them with a black get pen. The cover fairy has wire antennas that I created with the trimmed off flower stems of the Mini Rose Buds I used below. I used a black Sharpie to color it black and wrapped it around a toothpick to make it swirl.

The extra fun part was choosing chipboard images and decorative metal pieces to add.

And as usual, I used a few matching colors of ink pads to add a boarder to my pages, to make everything blend together and to make the color in certain areas really pop.

I think that this chipboard image is my favorite, Swirly Thistles Chipboard Set. I dabbed several colors onto this one and love the end multicolor result.