Play time

Good morning friends.
Yesterday, for those of you who saw my What's on your Workdesk post, I hinted at something that I was working on that was peeking out underneath a book.....
Well here it is

I can hear you now moaning that that's not much more than I saw yesterday! Don't worry, all will be revealed as there's lots more photos! But you can at least see - it's a book; or is it........
Ok, let me give you a bit of history before I show you everything. While I was creating the samples for my new book kits I had ended up with an extra set of the cover elements for the geo kit, but no covers. What I did have however, was a hardback cover that I had taken off a sketch book. So yes you've guessed it, I decided to combine the two and create this book.

Doesn't it look cool? Lots of lovely textures going on. Here's a closer look

The base layer has been made by creating texture with gesso and once it had dried I went over with layers of Paint dabbers, Distress stain in metallics and colour washes of Decoart acrylics. The middle layer has been coloured with Tarnished Brass Distress Stain. I then added some Distress Embossing powder and heating to set. Once that dried I used Walnut Stain and Black Soot Distress ink to add more colour.
The top layer was embossed with a Tim Holtz folder. I find these work well to emboss thicker bases as they give a deeper impression. (One thing to note; when you emboss this you will find that it actually stretches the card so you will need to trim any excess to fit, yes it was a surprise to me too!) I used paint dabbers to add colour and further washes of Decoart before using the Tarnished Brass Distress Stain to add highlights to the surface.
Everything was glued down under a weight to dry. I found a leather closure lurking in my stash and used that to make a closure for the book.
So here is the whole cover....

So, do you want to see inside? Are you sure? Ok, here goes........

When is a book, not a book? When you have some spare configurations printer tray compartments! Pretty neat huh?
I had these spare from when I made my tray (which is my blog header). Being thrifty, I took some of the trays out that I felt I didn't need and now I'm pleased I did as they fitted perfectly! I covered everything with tissue tape and sprayed everything with Dylusions to add colour. It's not 100% finished inside but it's taking shape and there's enough to show you.
Inside each compartment I cut chipboard and then using a selection of embossing powders and my new background stamps to create gorgeous textures

I used Inka Gold to highlight the textures and began to add elements from my stash and words from Tim's Chit Chat stickers. I love the backgrounds so didn't want to totally cover them!
On the inside cover I added a border using my Cross Hatch Border stamp and my Characters, Franswar and Kiki. Once they were down I added some detail with my Winged Design Mask.

So there you have it, my book that's not a book.

My Book kits and masks are available from The Craft Barn HERE
My Stamps are available from The Artistic Stamper HERE

Hope you like it and hope you all have a great day.