Halloween will be here soon!

I started this album last year before Halloween. This album has been shuffled beneath things on my work surface and can you tell I lost some chipboard?

The reason I am posting this album is to show you how I made the cover. This was a 4x6 premade photo album. Actually it's a 2008 graduation album. I covered the embroidered year under the green BoBunny paper. I ripped out all of the pages inside.

Here you can see I sprayed the inside cover with Black Gold Glimmer Mist and used a paper towel to soak up a bit of the spray to give a grungy look. My base pages are made of chipboard and they are painted black with acrylic paint. They actually  look like wood because I used the paint sparingly. The Bind-it-All got dusted off (oh I am sure it's got a good coat of dust on it again!) to bind all the pages together. I used a ribbon scrap to adhere the book to the cover. It's just strung through the rings and tied into a knot on the outside spine.

To ensure there was no shifting of the book, I used brads. I used the Crop-o-dile to punch through the cover and ribbon. Now i don't have to worry about having a stray book without a cover and I used up random bits of stash to get the job done.

Here are the other pages of the book, which is far less exciting than to use/re-use something that you thought was garbage to a scrapbooker. I mean seriously....haven't you gotten on of those photo albums and wondered what you were going to do with it? A  scrapbooker wouldn't dare  fill the thing in with just photos!!!

Shadow box makeover

Today I gave a Making Memories wood shadow box a makeover. Here is the before.

And now my AFTER!

Initially I combined a red and pink acrylic paint to match the red in the Urban Lily paper. Then I added Delta's Crackle Medium. I can't say that it is a crackle. . . it's more of a true wood finish. But I thinned some black fluid acrylic paint with water and brushed it on while the crackle was a bit tacky and wiped it off almost immediately.

For the chipboard pieces, I wanted to use Melody Ross' Chip Art tools to create an embossed, colored leather feel that is worn. So I embossed the chipboard and then while still wet, I bent the pieces to create the leather texture. The edges are worn and separated. . . again like leather. Spring is here and so are the cherry blossoms so I made my little flowers pink. After I curled the chipboard, I dried them with a heat gun (of course, right?) and painted them with my finger. Next I rubbed my finger in Distress ink and rubbed it onto the chipboard. I got the look of a torn leather jacket and that was exactly what I was hoping for. To highlight the pieces, I added a bit of Liquitex acrylic ink and Twinkling H20s.

Bead caps, bling and glitter later. . . it was done! Lately I have been in a "kitchen sink" mode where I use just about anything in my stash. . .and really I am loving it! Hope you give it a try too.

Canvas layout

You know I've taken a few classes from Donna Downey and haven't done a ton with what I learned. So here I am again taking her class at Big Picture Classes.  I took a piece of duck cloth I purchased from Joann's at 50% (can't help but love coupons) and a sheet of diecut paper and created the shape. I wet the canvas and blended three colors of paint. Next I impatiently dried the piece with a heat gun which I felt took forever to dry. I stitched around the sheet (which did shrink by the way) with brown thread around the edges and then created the stitching for the banner. Next I took a scrap from October's The Sampler kit (Echo Park) and cut out the little banner pieces and glued them to the canvas. From there it was a decision on what to do with the piece. I contemplated using an iron on, a mask, flocking and glitter. I hadn't yet scrapbooked riley's birthday party photos (probably didn't do last year's party either. . .hmmm and quite possibly the year before) so I was checking to see if I had balloon brads. Well I didn't have that but I had a few button embellishments which I have probably had for 4 years now. So I got to gluing. I tried to take a bit of the crazy color-ness (I know not a word) out of it so I added a black and white photo underneath the popped color image. Anyways, here is what I ended up with. I think really what took the most time was waiting for my canvas to dry.

The first project for the class was to paint a point and shoot camera bag. If you've seen my every day setup, you'd know that even the Prima DSLR camera bag is too small. So I opted to make a quick coffee cozy because I had Halloween iron ons from SEI.

I probably would make it differently the next time around. But who knows, I may not make another because I don't drink coffee. It was a shame that the end result was so small because there were some awesome iron ons from the same sheet. Riley gave the cozy to her teacher. . . I don't think she liked it. Plus when I made her a "Back to school" tin with cookies. . . I don't think she appreciates much. So I guess we'll stick to making teacher gifts for her dance and swimming teachers who LOVE Riley's gifts.