DELICIOUS COLOURICIOUS

Colouricious is a favourite company of mine. Owned by Jamie Malden (who just happens to be a very dear friend), Colouricious makes the most wonderful videos for artists - especially if you are interesting in quilting or fabric arts!

Here's my wonderful stash of wood blocks - which I will be adding to, you can bet! (Did you know you can have your own design carved, exclusively for you? Just like Anne Bagby?)

I had to photograph them before I used them: they're so nice and clean!

See how deep these wood blocks are? So easy to hold.

A hard choice - which to use first.

A lot of people are under the impression that you can only stamp onto fabric - not so!

BOOK COVER

I'm using heavyweight watercolour paper which I've already scored, ready to fold into a book cover.

I'm using just two stamps for this cover - the larger one for the central area in a repeat pattern, and the oblong one for top and bottom edges.

As you can see, I have coated the entire piece with gesso - very heavily (like buttering bread) and stamped INTO the gesso with uninked wood blocks. I stamped off onto scrap paper to remove the gesso from the bottom of the block before reimpressing into the wet gesso again (you need to work quickly, before it dries).

Here's a closeup of the stamped impressions: I've sprayed a little light green dye at the bottom to show up the indentations even more.

So dimensional: GORGEOUS!

Once gesso is dry, it's virtually indestructible - you can paint it, glaze it, spray it, and once the book is made up it will stand up to pretty much anything! The high points you can see here will not chip or drop off (at least, not for a year or three - and then, only if you treat it very roughly).

I'll be adding a lot more colour, also some metallic creams... just watch this space!