Tissue, Tissue and More Tissue

Hello everyone!!! Donna is here again with a great gift idea.  I found this very basic address book at a store recently and since I needed a new one for myself  I decided to fancy up the covers by using tissue paper, Tim Holtz distress stains, matte mod podge, sprays, and decopauge. It actually ends up looking much like crinkled leather.  Very easy and very inexpensive.  Here is what I came up with.

I first took the book and painted a good coat of white gesso all over the surface.

Let the gesso dry completely.  I then took a sheet of white tissue paper and tore it into small pieces.  I rolled each piece into a ball.  Slightly unroll each ball and adhere individually to the surface of the book using the "matte" mod podge.  Simply apply a good amount of the podge then press the tissue pieces to the podge.

Keep going until the surface is covered.  I also did the back cover as well.  You can go over the binding of the book, however, I chose not to.  Next apply a good coat of podge over the entire surface of the tissue, making sure that you get the complete surface covered.  You can take your finger and press here and there to flatten out, but not completely.  You want ridges to be prominent.  Now let the podge dry completely.  I used the matte mod podge as the stains and sprays will soak in better and stay in place.  

Take your chosen colour of Tim Holtz distress stains.  I carefully took the foam cap off the top as I found I was able to control the next step better by using a paint brush instead of the foam cap.  This is up to you. You want to apply the distress stain over the surface.  I applied a small amount then used the brush to get in and around the raised parts.  You will notice that I let some of the white from the tissue show through.  Let this dry.  You can speed up the drying time by using a heat gun or a hair dryer.

When the stain was dry I took a black ink pad and slightly rubbed it here and there on the raised parts.  Just a bit here and there.  I then took a turquoise blue spray (Perfect Pearls turquoise mist) and sprayed this a couple of times, just to break up the brown colour. I then simply inked the binding.   I let the book sit for several hours to dry preferably over night.  This is optional but I wanted to apply a protective coating of decopauge to the entire surface before embellishments.  This helps to seal everything especially for an item that could get used a lot.

I added some embellishments at the bottom left corner (burlap, leaves, flower and some metal items) just to give it some decorations.  And there you have it.  You can also do this technique on a journaling book, even an old hard-covered chapter book which can be used a decorative piece on a coffee table.  The sky is the limit.  Have some fun.

Until next time!!!!

HAPPY SCRAPPING!!!!