RSD Coffee Monsters Altered Book ~ Part 2

Hi everyone. I'm back with the next two pages in my mixed media altered board book featuring the cute monsters from Rick St. Dennis and explaining the importance of coffee. If you missed the first spread, you can find the post here. Like all of my altered books, I keep some things constant throughout for continuity but change it up a little each spread to keep it interesting. In this book, I have featured mainly browns, blacks, and natural colours on the backgrounds (a departure for me) with pops of brights. Each two page spread features a monster, a mug of coffee using Rick's Pencil cup image as the template, a coffee title, and a saying.

For the second spread, the adorable Fwayt, who was coloured bright red using a mix of Prismacolor and Polychromos pencils, is the star., He and his balloons were fussy cut leaving a narrow white border, matted in black cardstock, and trimmed again. The coffee mug was traced onto French book paper, inked with Barn Door Distress ink, and shaded with Inktense pencil activated with water.

The gessoed background was covered with Postale Tissue Wrap adhered with Matte Medium. A thin layer of gesso was added over that to knock back the text. Once dry, Vintage Photo, Black Soot, and Walnut Stain Distress inks were applied using several coats. This gave a very grungy, aged appearance in the tones I had chosen to repeat on each page. A Stamper's Anonymous Coffee stain stamp was applied in a few places using Coffee Archival ink. At this point, I sprayed a fixative over the background to set the Distress inks. Pieces of burlap and handmade paper that looks like it has embossed shiny coffee beans on it were layered behind the images. Harlequin and star rub-ons were applied and die cut harlequin border was added in 5 (odd number) places. The title was created from TH  AlphaTiles and dotty circles plus a doodled border finished off the spread.

The next two pages featured the sweet little monster, Threek, who has Get Well wishes for people like me who have no pulse until some coffee is poured into me. Threek was coloured with Prismacolor and Polychromos pencils and Glossy Accents was added to those big sad eyes to create a lovely shine and a little dimension. He was fussy cut and matted the same as Fwayt. The coffee mug was prepped in the same way as above, only this time using Picked Raspberry Distress ink for the background colour.

The background for this spread began as an experiment which turned out kind of cool. The gessoed pages were basecoated with Titan Buff acrylic paint and while still wet, narrow washi tape was crisscrossed in a grid pattern over top. The wet paint dried adhering the washi at the same time. Once that was dry, Walnut Brown Big Brush pen was run along the top and left side of each square and smudged with my finger. The bottom and right side of each box was lined with black pen. Stamping of a zigzag pattern and dots was added with Tree Branch Archival ink and black doodling was used to create a zigzag border.

The zigzags were repeated from the large flatline heartbeat which was drawn across the page with a black Pitt pen. Above the flat part, the letters for beeeep were stamped with Jet Black Archival ink Scraps of designer paper, corrugated cardboard, and drywall mesh were layered behind elements. The extra green tag was added behind the mug to pull Threep's lovely green colour onto the other page. The heart is a nod to the heart beat pattern. Pink and black dotty circles and Black Big brush pen edging completed the pages.

Thanks so much for joining Fwayt, Threep, and me today.We appreciate that. Stay tuned until next week when I will introduce you to more Coffee Monsters. As for me, I'm going to load on some more caffeine..LOL.

Life is good; so is art.
Bonnie