I don't know if I told you....

but I am crazy mad making cards to sell at My MacMillan Coffee morning in a couple of weeks. However, yesterday evening when I got in from work I had an overwhelming urge to take a break and make some art (no disrespect to card makers everywhere intended!). I really wanted to make sure I had an early entry for my altered art challenge group on flickr, 'Art n Soul' because I have missed so many lately. The September challenge is to alter a beer mat or coaster to the theme of nature. Initially I was going to do just a single mat for speed, but after looking at the Tuesday Taggers theme of 'Books' I decided I would make a little book and satisfy the requirement of both challenges.



I took three mats and covered them with old book pages and then had a lovely fun day splodging and inking and stamping - sometimes I think the end result is more gunge than grunge but I usually have a good time and I find a bit of gold paint here and there tends to lift the whole thing!!



As a title I took half a quote stamp 'Honour the Seasons of Nature' and then made four inside pages using a set of seasonal tree stamps by Whispers/docrafts that I have had forever - I think they were one of the first sets I bought, well before my current affliction took hold.


I particularly liked the way the autumn page turned out.
For the back page I kept it quite simple and after abandoning my split rings as fasteners because they were just too big I just knotted some cord to hold the whole thing together.
It's rare that I get a project finished in one sitting so to speak (well I did start last nighht so a bit more than one session) but for once I really knew what I wanted to do and not too many things went wrong. Just you don't love it when a plan comes together? Ah well, that's my fix over, back to the cards lol.