Andy Skinner Workshop

Once again work took me to London so the week day home was neglected until the weekend when I attended another splendid Andy Skinner workshop with the lovely ladies at Paperarts. These are always great days, you get spoiled with drinks and cake while being inspired and getting time to play with new techniques.

Today we made a secret compartment book....

We started with a bare wooden book style box which we sealed before marking out two blobs and adding texture and little pieces of bits and bobs to it....

We painted the built up sections with white paint.....

For the spine, we spread modelling paste about 2 mm thick and pressed in deeply etched rubber stamps to add texture. Once dried this was painted burnt umber brown and a thin wash of black was painted over that until the black puddled into the sunken areas created by the rubber stamps.

Finally, we painted the built up sections and added modelling paste to create a crater rim around the sections. The modelling paste was flattened gradually to the edges of the book. Another modelling product was painted on top of this to give a sandy texture. The whole thing was painted grey and dry brushed with a lighter grey and then a white around the very edges of the crater to make it "pop".

The inside edge of the book where pages would be were covered with printed tape. And you can see how messy the table got and how much clearing up there was to do!