Imagination Crafts Inspirational Project - Altered notebook, birds on a branch

Hello all, it's the 15th of the month so that means it's time to share with you another inspirational project for the Imagination Crafts Challenge Blog.
Please pop over to the blog to see what the rest of the design team have created & to join in with the challenge.
The theme is always anything goes & there is a prize to be won too!.

This post may be a bit picture heavy so you have been warned!.

I had a couple of blank, plain brown notebooks that had been waiting for me to do something with.
I decided to alter one of them & here's how I did it:

I gave the notebook a coat of white gesso as a base.

Next I cut & embossed a piece of blue card to fit the front cover. It didn't have to be blue, it was just what I had to hand at the time.

I then used the Imagination Crafts Birds On A Branch stencil with some silver texture paste.

Once dry I then stuck the embossed layer & the bird design panel onto the front of the notebook & painted over the top with anotger coat of gesso & heated it with a heat tool which made the texture paste bubble slightly with the heat.

I then began to blend some blueberry ice & gooseberry fool inkadink inks from the brights set over the note book.
Then I added water & dried it off with my heat tool.
I loved this effect!.

The next step was to blend some distress inks to add an aged effect & then I replaced the stencil & added black soot distress ink to make the birds stand out a bit more followed by some treasure gold gilding wax.

I die cut some flowers with my tattered floral dies & added gilding wax & micro beads to the centres to tone in with my colour scheme.

I decorated the back cover & the inside covers to match attaching ribbon between the layers to tie the book together.

So, that's it!. Thanks for staying til the end!.

I'll be back again soon with the first project of 2015 for our Out Of The Blue Workshops that start this week.

Amy x