Autumnal Altered Book

Hello everyone and lovely to have you drop by here. Today is the first of the month and that means challenge time over on the Artistic Stamper. The theme this month is Alter Something. I decided to alter a book and make it into an Autumnal decorative piece

This was a fun project to do and I will put a quick step by step here. I saw the idea of this ages ago on Pinterest, but then I gave it my own twist.
Start with any old book you can pick up at a charity shop. A hard back book will make the project more sturdy. Fold all of the pages in half, about three or four at the time, until it looks like this:

I covered the covers with Gesso and then edged everything with a dark brown paint dauber. As you won't really see the covers I could have left that bit out really...

Next I inked the edges of the pages with gathered twigs Distress Ink and then created two background panels. As I wanted my project to have autumnal colours I used Distress Stains in Wild Honey and Rusty Hinge on pre-wetted water colour papers. I splatted the stains around, added more water to mix them well and added a handful of coarse kitchen salt for added texture. Once the papers have dried you wipe that off and are then left with a wonderful pattern.

I inked around the edges with some Aged Mahogany Distress ink, to deepen the colour a bit more.
I then used these cool stamp sets by Katie Fox available from the Artistic Stamper.

 And also this Chevron Stamp

Here are some close up photos so you can see more or less what I did:

I ran the top panel through a Tim Holtz texture fade, stamped my chosen stamps in one of the new Wendy Vecchi Archival Inks, Potting Soil, I also used an Artistic Stamper Script Stamp and one of the Chevrons in Red Geranium Archival. I covered the top panel of the book in some printed tissue paper first.

Then I glued my stamped panel on top. I curled the edges a bit an stuck some bits and pieces underneath for a bit of added interest:

The bottom panel was done in a similar way:

The bit on the bottom is a bit of chip board painted in brown acrylic paint and then embossed with some gold embossing powder. I love how the leaves when you stamp them and then cut them out look so realistic.

I adhered a piece of lace underneath the panels to hold the book open at an angle and then decorated the top with some die cut sprays and leaves and flowers. The flowers are from Wild Orchid Crafts and the leaves were cut with the Tim Holtz Autumn Gatherings strip die.

Well, hope you like this, it's great fun to do and of course you can do it in any style you want. I may well do a Christmas themed one for my Christmas table and I think a Spring one with butterflies and pastel colours would look lovely too.

Thank you for visiting today and you have a whole month to play in the Artistic Stampers challenge where one lucky winner will win a fab stamp set of their choice!