Box Book and Faux Leather

 It started off like this:

in the beginning - stage one

A bit of a tatty mess with watered down pva and crumpled serviettes, a technique I wanted to try. ( Note I was very good and removed the hinges before starting!)

When dry, I used sandpaper on the edges to remove the excess tissue and then gave it a coat of red Pebeo acrylic pant, and over-painted that with various Pebeo DYNA iridescent paints: red/blue, bronze, golds, orange/yellow, yellow/green, and a bit of plain brown acrylic. Some applied with a brush, some with either a sponge or scourer.  I just kept going until I was happy with it.  The edges had two shaded of Pebeo gold gilding wax applied.

For the pages, I applied a pale cream acrylic and then with a scourer applied brown and gold DYNA paints, and also a bit of gold gilding wax - also applied with a scourer.  I also painted the inside with cream acrylic.

getting there

and hinges back on with a little gilding wax over them

I created some faux leather with some of Sheena Douglass's embossing folders and die cut some owls from the wood-grain "leather" using Joanna Sheen's owl die.

wood grain faux leather

The leaf folder faux leather was coloured with DYNA iridescent paints - green/yellow, blue/green, green/blue, orange/yellow, bronze, two shades of gold and a smidgen of brown until I was happy with the effect.  Again some applied with a brush some with a sponge or scourer.

leaf faux leather

The owls had various shades of brown distress ink pads applied, before I painted them with a mix of red/blue, bronze, orange/yellow and gold DYNA iridescent paints, with finally a little gold gilding wax applied.

Finished "book" box

There is actually a perspex cover for the centre part, but it caused too much reflection to photograph it with it in situ.

The whole project was sprayed with Crafter's Companion Spray and Shine inside and out to seal it and give it a nice shine.

Thanks for popping by to read about my experiment.