Vintage Altered Book

Hello everyone and thanks for taking the time to come by here.
Today I want to share a first spread in an altered book I have started.

I have been hugely inspired by some of the vintage book projects I saw on Pinterest recently and wanted to try one myself. I want to make it into a kind of family chronicle, using old photos from both sides of our family to pass on to my grand children when they are older. This photo is my husbands great grand mother on his father's side.
Here is the original photograph:

I love the look on her face.
Anyway, I started by ripping out some pages from the old hard back book picked up at a junk shop.
Next I coated the first double page with gesso and when dry added texture with the help of texture paste and some stencils. I also used a texture tool for the texture in one of the corners.
I chose a neutral colour palette to go with the vintage theme using acrylic paints, a baby wipe and some kitchen roll to add further subtle textures to the background.
I stained one of the pages of the book with coffee to use behind the photo.

I tried to make it genuinely old looking. The way to do that is to crumple up the paper, then flatten it out again and cover it with some strong coffee made with instant coffee (never drink it, just use it for crafting lol, I only drink real coffee...)
Put the coffee dipped paper on a flat baking dish on top of some grease proof paper, sprinkle some more coffee grains on, because I used instant they started to kind of "bloom" out, making lovely spots. Next put it in a low oven until it has dried out (about 7 minutes or so) and you are done.
Here is a close up of the page

The other bit of paper behind the photo is a stamped (Finnabair stamp) piece of photocopy paper, inked with Vintage photo. The colour matched the coffee stained paper exactly. I also added flowers, background stamping, tissue tape,some die cuts and some Golden Brand Gold Mica Flake paste. The paste dries completely clear and you are left with some wonderful mica bits in the background. The stenciled word Hope was first coloured with a Faber Castell Big Brush Pen and then highlighted with Treasure Gold.

Here is the other side, done in a very similar way but leaving a large blank area for journaling.
The final step was to cover the photo with a wet baby wipe and then using some sprays on the embellishments and textured elements to bring them out more.

Here's a close up so you can see the effect of the mica flakes a bit better. I have had this stuff in my stash for ages, and only just re-discovered it, - it will be great to use on Christmas cards too I'm sure, but it's really hard to capture the effect in a photograph.

Thank you for visiting like always and I hope you are have a good week!

xxx