Good Saturday morning....

Staying with the Christmas theme - here's something a bit more involved - a mini book which incorporates all your favourite christmas cards and more...
For anyone who stops by my blog from time to time, you may have noticed I'm a sucker for a hand made one off mini scrapbook and I love to use my fave cards in these random styled books - I've even used pretty wrapping paper in them. I always save the girls letters to Santa and put them in one of the pockets and I just find it a great way to save christmas memories. So let's have a look at one I prepared to use in my demo which I have saved to use as this year's album...

I made the covers for the book with some corrugated card from an old box which I first painted with a layer of gesso. Once this was dry, I gave it a coat of gold acrylic paint. Next up I slapped on a really thick layer of cheap PVA glue then quickly "laid" a layer of red acrylic on top of the glue. Now, this is the bit where the magic happens... I think the science behind it goes thus - The PVA takes longer to dry than the (red) acrylic on top and this causes that top layer of paint to split. The PVA then goes on to dry clear, revealing the under colour behind it making for a cool distressed effect. It's a great way of achieving this look without having to invest in expensive ready made branded distress paint and although I haven't tried it, I believe you can use this technique on bits of furniture too. I would imagine that would require a sealing with varnish once dried tho! So that's the technique for colouring up the covers front and back - next job is to decorate!

This is the creative bit! I die cut a doily in green glitter card stock, cut this in half and stuck either side of the cover. This left a space in the middle for a pic. I cut out a frame which will hold a family pic (once the event itself has happened!) but for now there's a cute little christmas kitty keeping that space cosy, lol! I tied a bow from organza ribbon and chunky twine for embellishing the top corner of the photo. I added a big glittered wooden sentiment (Christmas) which is from a Create Christmas pack of seasonal sentiments from DoCrafts. These are great because they are a really good size for making a main focal point on your project. I used some DoCrafts adhesive chipboard numbers from a set of alphas and numbers for adding in the year and die cut two leaping reindeer to decorate.

I'm not going to bore you all with every page inside but here's a look at how the whole thing hangs together. You can see all the mis-matched cards and different sizes of pages inside - I even have pages of acetate stamped with staz-on ink. The joy of these makes is no two are ever the same - love it!

I hope this inspires you to try one of your own. As always, if you have any questions re this minibook, leave them in the comments section and I will try and answer if I can!

Have a lovely crafty weekend everyone!

Love Jak xxx