Tag book

I have been accepted as a design team member for
Debbie's Die Cuts. Imagine how excited I was! My first project for her was a tag book. She sent me all sorts of very cool little die cuts to play with in addition to the tag book, like the frame die cut on the cover. I used gold UTEE on it, then added glue, sprinkled on some glitter and microbeads, and decided I liked it. Very festive. The theme of the book is Dance Hall Girls.

I "painted" the cover with various Opalites, just dumped them on and spread them around with a sponge. This was over distress inks, so it has an interesting look, like there's a texture, but there isn't. Tricky, don't you think?

I found some great books of sheet music for organ and piano at a town wide yard sale. They were only $.10 each, so I grabbed five. I didn't have any dimes so I had to make it five. Of course. I've seen sheet music used in altered art projects and always loved it. So I glued the sheet music onto the pages, and when it dried, I cut the pages out. I used several distress inks - Tattered Rose, Tea Dye, and Vintage Photo. I used the Tattered Rose, the lightest, first, using a stippling brush and sponge. Then I edged the pages with Tea Dye (medium color), and then around the very edges with Vintage Photo. It gives the pages a very old feel, almost like they were exposed to the sun for a long time. Tattered Rose has to be one of my favorite colors in the distress inks. The little roses were a gift to me for hosting the inchie swap.


I then did a dry brush over the whole thing with white gesso to soften the look, make it kind of hazy and out of focus. I stamped randomly on the pages with TAC flourish stamps using Brilliace ink in Coffee Bean and Galaxy Gold. The photo doesn't pick up on the shimmer of the inks. In fact, I don't think you can even see it in the pictures, or maybe just the Coffee Bean. It's a pretty reddish brown. I made my stepdad a card, using it to stamp the paw prints, and he made a comment about bloody footprints on his card. Leave it up to him. I laughed. He's a funny guy.
The embellishment in the upper left corner was from some junk jewelry I scored at an auction on Saturday. Wow, did I get some GREAT junk jewelry.

The little envelope on this page is one of the die cuts, too. I used distress ink and the same flourish stamps, then added another piece of the junk jewelry I got. And three little flower buttons that I added down the right side. I made the white not quite so bright by rubbing Timber Brown Stazon over them and wiped it off before it completely dried.

The images for all of the pages are from Altered Pages. Love that place too. A whole lot. They have fantastic collage sheets. This is one I got on a transparency, makes the images look a bit ghostly. The lace was from Walmart. I bought the end piece for a bargain. It was white, so I put it in a pot of tea to dye it. My husband was thrilled to see a sheet of lace in one of my pans on the stove. He just kind of shook his head. I had to put a note on it, telling them to leave it alone so no one threw it out.

I used off white beaded garland to tie it all together (literally). I also added a bit to the last page, just because it needed something at the bottom. Debbie sent me that fantastic tassle. I used Caramel alcohol ink on it to make it not white (can you tell white is a problem for me??). Added a few sparkly flowers and declared it finished!

This sounds like it took a long time, but it was done in less than a day. I was surprised how quickly it went. Usually it takes me a long time to make something. I think altered art is definitely an area that inspires me.