Quirky Dutch Summer week 1 and 2

Last month I discovered a new blog, Marit’s Paper World. This summer she shares 10 Quirky Dutch Summer posts to keep creativity flowing during the summer months.

I thought this would help me to fill my second altered book Rood, but the first week was a post about making your own book or alter a book. I was inspired by all the eye candy in the Quirky Dutch Summer facebook group, so I started a new altered book.

I used an old English book about karate.

I removed more than half of the pages. Of course I keep those removed pages for experiments. I’ll decorate the outside of my book when it’s filled from cover to cover.

QDS #2 is called Masking with Watercolor. Marcia Beckett was the guest blogger for this challenge, she showed us one of her favourite watercolour techniques to get shapes with crisp edges. This is my first try with contact paper on watercolour paper (bottom) and one of the removed pages from my book with gesso (top).

I used blue and yellow watercolour paint.

The result on the page with gesso. I could remove the contact paper very easy, but the gesso was not such a good idea. No crisp edge here.

The result on watercolour paper.

It was badly damaged when I removed the contact paper.

A second try in my watercolour journal with a better quality paper.

The wet watercolour paint looks very nice.

The result was much better, . . .

. . . but some of the paper was damaged again.

Time for a third try. I used freezer paper on watercolour paper.

I used purple and green watercolour paint.

I forgot to take a photo of the result, before using it. This is the first spread in my book. I painted the background with black acrylic paint. Then I cut the experiment and attached it with double sided sticky tape. I added the date and doodled with a black pen.

You can take a closer look at my spread here.