Mo's Dream Team Project of the Month Blog Hop!

Yes, dear Crafty Bloglanders - it's time for another fantastic blog hop and this month our projects are inspired by Fairy Tales.  If you've arrived here from Liza's blog, you're on the right track.  If not, why not hop over to Elaine's blog and start from the beginning, 'cos' you won't want to miss out on all that wonderfulness!

So, once I'd recovered my mojo from under the sofa, where it appears to have been hiding for a few days, I had a good old think about this one. Mo has some wonderful fairy tale images in her store, so it was just a case of which one to use and how.  Now those of you who are regulars here might remember that I was once a bookbinder and fairy tales come in books so ...

Image: Mo's Digital Pencil, 'Grim Red'

Paper:  Hand-printed paper, bought some time ago at a bookbinding conference.

Tools:  Gold tooling stylus and gold foil.

This image is a perfect image for a book of Brothers Grimm fairy tales so I decided to make a slip cover for just such a thing.  This isn't a bound cover, just the sort of protective paper cover you find on hardbacked books, so it was easy to make. 

Because of my time as a binder, I'm lucky to still have some beautiful hand-printed papers and this one had just the old-fashioned feel I wanted.  I measured the book top to toe and then cut a strip of paper to that height, making sure it was long enough to wrap around the book and tuck into the front and back covers.  It's that easy!

I coloured the image up with my Copics - I had thought that maybe my Prismacolours would be a better bet but I wasn't sure I'd get the strength of colour I needed.  So Copics it was and, actually, it has come out better than I had hoped.  I was worried how to cover the immediate background (the bit behind LRRH) without the whole image becoming too heavy so I used random dots of various greens to cover the area, with the odd dot of red and white to suggest flowers.

I bought my gold tooling stylus many years ago, at a large craft fair at the NEC, if I remember rightly.  It's useful for addiing a touch of gold foil to all sorts of surfaces and, of course, when I was binding, it was very useful for tooling titles and designs on books.  So I brought it out of retirement and added the title 'Grimm Tales' to the cover.  ('Grimm' is spelled with two 'm's as it is 'Brothers Grimm' - I haven't forgotten how to spell, honest!)

It was really difficult to catch the light properly on the title, particiularly as I'm not the world's best photographer (as you may have noticed!).  (Note to self: must do better!)  You may see it better on this photograph, though.  I chose an old-fashioned font for the title, in keeping with the paper and the image, I hope.

So, that's my project today - a fairy tale dust cover. Now you need to hop off to Cheryl's blog, where I know you'll find something scrumptious to feast your eyes on. 

In case you get lost along the way, here's the full hop list:

Elaine Hughes
Rosette Camilleri
Lori Boyd
Jak Heath

Liza Carruthers
Peri (that's me!)
Cheryl Rowley
Debbie Pamment
Mina Hartley 
Michele Seward

Happy hopping!
xx