One for the Birds

Hello lovely visitors and welcome!
It's Friday and every second Friday we have a new challenge over at A Vintage Journey, as most of you will know. Can you believe we are onto challenge 20 already! Wow, how time flies! But this week it's not just time that's flying, because the lovely Chris who is hosting this challenge has chosen "Birds of a Feather" as her theme, and this is what she had to say about the challenge:
Get out your inks, paints, chalks, Gelatos etc and grab your bird dies, stencils, masks, stamps, whatever avian stash you have and conjure up something that sings of our feathered friends. Whatever you create, we want to see Tim's influence clearly identified. Let's see your magic!

So onto my project:

With it being the end of November and the dreaded C word (really I LOVE Christmas), coming ever closer, my project turned into a Christmas gift for one of my crafty friends. It's big enough to hold a size 8 tag inside and there is also a place for a special Christmas message.

Below is a quick step by step with a lot of photos.

1.You need to start with a piece of A3 card, I am lucky enough to have Kraft card in that size, so used that as my substrate as it is so strong. But any card would do. Cut it to 7" (18cm) by 16.5" (41.5 cm).

Fold it in half length wise and then fold each side to close to the middle, gatefold style.

2. Open it out again and then fold the corner of each side down, like you can see in the photo below.

This is the inside view and as you can see, you have created two pockets once you glue the sides, the bottom and corners down, but don't do this yet!

3. For the outside, glue on a ribbon, this will make it possible to close your booklet/folder later.

Time to cover your base card

I chose two different kinds of paper, cut to about a quarter inch smaller than your out and insides.

Here are my approx. sizes:

Outside: 2 times 4 by 6 7/8" (10.3 by 17.5 cm)

Inside: 2 times 4 by 6 7/8" (10.3 by 17.5 cm) in contrasting paper

Inside flaps: 2 x 4 by 3.25" (10 by 8.2 cm)

Corner flaps: 1 time 3.5 by 3.5" (9 by 9 cm) cut diagonally and then trimmed to fit properly.

4. Now the fun begins, altering the papers with inks, stencils, texture paste, sprays, whatever your heart desires:

Below are some photos of how I altered mine:

Wendy Vecchie Crackle Paste through Tim's Latticework stencil

Adding some watered down gesso

Two colours of Distress Sprays: Brushed Pewter and Walnut Stain.

Embossing around the edges of the paper for a special finish. I used Stampendous Aged Silver.

The back cover was done in a similar way, but instead of using a stencil, I just scraped on the crackle paste randomly with a palette knife.

To alter the insides I just used inks as most of them would be covered by the flaps anyway. The flaps themselves were done in the same way as the outsides. Now it is time to adhere your altered papers to your base card and to glue the flaps down to create the pockets.

I chose to embellish with different die cuts and of course a bird!! Below is a selection of what I used:

The 25 was given a metal look with the help of the same embossing powder. The bird is an Artistic Outpost stamp coloured with Distress Inks.

Finally some close ups of the finished project:

The inside, after I glued down the sides. The embellishment on the left, was bright silver to start with. A quick spray with Walnut Spray ink turned it all aged looking.

Another little bird, one of Tim's ideaology pieces.

Finally I chose one of the tags made for a previous project to fit inside as it fitted perfectly.

Well, that's pretty much it. Make sure to check out the challenge over on A Vintage Journey, where you can see all the amazing projects from my teamies and of course we hope you will play along, for your own creative enjoyment, but also to be in with a chance to win a fab voucher from our sponsor Country View Crafts

Thank you for visiting like always and have a great weekend!