hidden in the woods...

Unknown things are hidden in the woods...

Are you scared to know or are you just as curious as me ? ...

When my enveloppe tagbook started almost a year ago in our local round robin, I was curious what the title "into the woods" would mean for them... Which creatures would they create ? 

Some gave me pages with the animalworld that you can find in the woods, but some saw through the hidden layers in the woods and found a dragon, a fairy,...

When my book came home, there were 3 enveloppes not decorated ( we started with 15 enveloppes with 12 participants, so I knew there would be left over pages.

Perfect for me, so I could create in my own book and put some more hidden secrets into the woods...

First I wanted to create a twopagespread that had a mysterious feel to it, making a viewer curious about what is hidden there.

I colored sturdy pages with different sprayinks ( dylusions) and let them dry. I added some more layers and in the end I sprayed with selfmade glimmermist through a treestencil ( craftersworkshop).

Through the glimmer you have a slight vue on Aspentrees.

When I was a child there was a couple of singer-songwriters, Elly and Rikkert Zuiderveld and they made imaginative songs about the chewinggumtree... and "het Oinkbeest" (Dutch for "Oink-animal").

This was a musical story with different songs about a strange creature that arrives in the woods during a huge storm.It's not from this world, but where does it comes from ? 

It feels lonely and cries, but can only communicate through the sound "oink".... That's why the little fairies call it the "oink-animal".

They take care of the little creature together with all the animals in the woods and protect it against the evil in the woods.

The story ends well and the 'Oink-animal" is able to return to it's home in the end...

I always loved this story ànd the music, so when I started this book I hoped someone would put an "oink-animal" in my woods... but no one did ( maybe they don't even know this heartwarming story ! ), so I decided to give it a home in my book.

I scanned the original images from the original LP.. and sized them to suit in my book.

So, if you open the flap behind the shimmering aspentrees, you see the meeting of the little fairy and the "oink-animal" together with a squirrel and a fawn who are also curious..

This is a pop-up-scene... ( you know I love pop-ups and did one in every enveloppe tagbook, but I didn't made one for myself yet ! )

The back of the scene has again the aspentrees but with other sprays and a shimmering moon.

I stamped the group of toadstools with a masking technique so it looks the toadstools are in a group and standing before and after each other.

They are colored with distress markers, just like the fawn and the squirrel.

The branch and the leaves are cut outs of Tim Holtz dies. The large branch was colored with distress stains, the leaves were cut out of sprayed paper ( with dylusions ink).

But there are more secrets hidden into the woods...

On these pages I wanted to evoke the feeling that you go deep in the woods, through shrubs and then you find a path... leading to a little door with a butterflyknob...

I used a stencil with leaves on the right page and in the innerpart I used the treestencil.

With a piece of torn paper I inked the edges to make it seem there is a wooden door between the leaves...

If we go in... CAN we go in ? 

Where do we arrive ? ...

Look... we aren in the house of gnomes !!

These must be the gnomes that fix your sewings deep in the night...

They have a little sewing machine and cute red buttons.

The gnomes are on little tabs and fixed to the background so they pop-up when you open the page.

They are on a "floor" made with a buttonstencil and their thread is on a "wooden spool" ( paper cut with the Tim Holtz sewing die, stamped witha woodgrainstamp and inked with distress ink)

Here again ou can see the tab that makes the gnome move. I inked it with the same pattern as the floor, so it's less noticeable.

On the back I inked over the sprayed paper with the woodgrainstamp so it looks like the house of the gnomes is on the inside of a tree.

They have a garland in their house with buttons of course...

The button is cut out with the sewing die of Tim Holtz, stamped with dots or toadstools and covered 4 times with UTEE, so they look like real buttons.

My inspiration for this scene came from a vintage tinbox I found some years ago on a fleamarket for only 1 euro !!

In this cute box all the stuff you needed for your sewing machine was kept together. This means you got this box for free when you bought your sewingmachine ? 

Why don't they do that nowadays...:/

I scanned this box and printed the image on canvaspaper months ago waiting for a project.

Now I sewed the canvaspaper to the big tag and used the images also for my pop-up-scene.

The large tag was embossed with a button embossingfolder.

On the back side I added stamped tissuepaper with a selfmade stamp of patternpaper.

A selfmade button and a needleholder ( stamped) were added.

I'm really happy with how my two pop-up scenes came out. I still have one enveloppe left to do, but ideas are coming...

This book will be part of an exhibition I have from coming saterday until the 24th of january in our local library.

In the exhibition I show most of the books and roundrobinbooks I collected through the past years.

It's Art with the little 'a', but I love to be able to show what you can do with creativity.

There will also be 3 moments I'll be present in the library so people may hold the books in their hands, touch them,.... and ask me about the how and why's... 

I'm looking forward for this encounters ! 

Inge