An Altered Book

About a year ago I bought a papier mache book from Hobbycraft, I've been waiting for the perfect project for it and finally it came together with a chipboard house and some die cuts from my Cricut Expression...

 

First I covered the outside of the book with torn book pages using medium to stick it all down - I made sure to open the book half way through drying to ensure it could still open and that there was no cracking or bubbling of the paper. While that was drying I made the chipboard house and used a strong glue (Bostik) to glue it to the front of the book and painted it with a coat of white gesso.

When the medium was dry I run some fine sandpaper over so that the surface wasn't so shiny, then I sprayed it with my ink sprays in Midnight, Teal, Imperial Purple and Lipstick - I sprayed randomly and then used kitchen towel to blot and spread out the colour. When that was dry I painted the house in white and brown with acrylic paint and used gold acrylic paint for the side where the pages should be (the book reminded me of the old Readers Digest ones that my grandad used to collect - they all had gold edged pages - very fancy!)

I then cut shapes from the 'Heritage' expression cartridge for the fence (can you imagine trying to cut that by hand? eeek!), birds and trees and handcut the grass from a scrap of green bazzill. I cut the trees and braches from cream card and painted them to keep the hand painted look of the project consistent. It only took a few minutes to paint the leaves and trees. Once all the paint was dry I used glossy accents to attach all the die cut shapes.

 Finally I run some gold paint over the birds and butterflies just using a fairly wet brush so the colour wasn't too strong and it was more of a glaze.

I think the back still needs a little something but I've not decided what just yet - maybe some journaling when I've made the mini book to go inside (like a book synopsis) but I'll keep you posted once I've decided!

Today I've been locked in my studio again all day working on crafty projects until I had no drying surfaces left! This evening I have some designs to work on and emails to catch up on!

Sarah x