Guest Designer: Karen Bearse

Oh my- what a feast we had for Thanksgiving… complete with all of the kids and grandkids! It doesn’t happen every year that we all can be together, so when it does it is always a special (and loud!) occasion. I hope you spent the day with those you love… and also make sure you visit the Sizzix site for the Black Friday savings- this is one of their largest sales events of the year!

Today I am so happy to share the work of my friend Karen Bearse, Guest Designer for this weekend. Karen is an amazing mixed media artist. We met a couple of years ago at a local scrapbook store. I ran into her at Angela’s Happy Stamper and was telling her that I was driving out to the Paper Arts Show this past July. She offered to ride along with me from Virginia to Illinois and let me tell you– it was quite the adventure. She will be posting a story of something that happened on the trip on her blog on Saturday. I’m not sure which one- but I’m certain it will be entertaining.

Karen is sharing how she combined two dies to make this cool project- I love how it came out! The colors are fantastic and each page is a miniature canvas that could stand alone. Make sure to head on over to Karen’s blog, Scrap Owl, to see more of her unique work.

Here’s what Karen has to say…

Hi and Happy Thanksgiving weekend!!!! I hope your turkey is tender, your family fun and you make some great memories. In July I had the privilege of traveling on Paper Trail 6 with Eileen Hull. If you come back Saturday I will share a funny adventure from that crazy fun filled trip!

This is one of the sample’s I made for the Paper Arts Show in July with Eileen‘s die cuts by Sizzix. Eileen has a large range of awesome dies both steel rule and thinlits. Two of my favorites are the Square Box and Needle Book dies. I used them to make an art journal book collection. *The magic of Eileen’s dies is they both cut & score your material and can be used with very sturdy mat board. Basically the bends are created (scored) when your board is cut using the dies and makes assemble easy and your project sturdy.

 Here is my finished project. I am tempted to add some flowers and bling to the box but that thought is just marinating for the time being. I used the cube die and ran it through embossing folders before putting it together.To create a box instead of a cube, I simply left off the top – tada!

Each of my journals were made using the wonderful Needle Book die. Seriously love this die! As I love all things inky each book used a different technique which I carried through that book.

This one for example was comprised of gelliprint papers. I art journaled each page using some of my favorite stamps.

Taking paper signatures I bound my books with wax linen and added beads either on the threads left dangling or directly on the spine. An awesome paper to use is Rendr paper by cresent. It has the ability to prevent bleed through to the other side- that is right no need to gesso your page first! 110 LB weight it is truly a wonder that even a wet spray ink does not bleed through.

My covers were each different in structure using either modeling past, embossing folder or stencil but all with Glimmer Mist sprays by Tattered Angels. Each cover is sprayed with a different color combo yet together they look fabulous!! I hope you enjoyed my tutorial & be sure to tune in Saturday when I share a fun story from PaperTrail6!!! Happy Thanksgiving!