AECP - Level 2 FINAL Altered item

I started working on my Final for AECP Level 2.  One of things we needed to do was to either Upcycle/Recycle something or submit an altered item.

I did both but the first thing I will tell you about is the altered item.   I took an old chipboard album that I have had in my stash for literally years - probably at least 10 years and created a Blessings Book.  A blessings book is a book that contains various scriptures that detail God's blessings.  It is meant to be an encouragement to the receiver/reader.  I think I will be sending this to my mom for her birthday next month.

I want to warn you in advance that this is a very photo heavy post.  And the post will be quite long as I detail how I created this Blessings Book.  Once I got started it didn't take terribly long.

First, I took the chipboard album apart and then took some spray white acrylic paint and covered each page and took a paintbrush to smooth out the paint.  After the paint was dry, I took various Altenew and Lindy's Magical Sprays and covered each page in shimmery goodness.

     

After covering all the chipboard with the sprays I then sprayed a bit of each color used onto my glass mat and got out my Altenew watercolor paintbrushes and painted my floral image.  Just the spray and a little water is all it took.  My floral image is from the Altenew Lovely Camelias set.

I layered the color until I got the affect I wanted.  I let the image dry and then used the coordinating die to cut out the floral image.

Next, I took a piece of vellum and applied double sided adhesive to it.  I show an easy way to line up the vellum with the adhesive below.  First, I cut the adhesive the same size as the vellum.  Then I add peel up a corner of the adhesive and put it in my score board right up against the edge, I lay the vellum on top making sure both are flush against the corner.  Then, I slowly peel the adhesive backer off until the vellum completely covers the adhesive.  Burnish with your fingers and you have a perfect piece of vellum with adhesive on it.

One thing I did to "step up" the technique on this altered item was to use this vellum as a backer to the front page of the chipboard book.  The front is intricately cut and you could see through to the pages behind so I layered the vellum onto the back of the front page.  Then I used some vintage glass glitter that I have had in my stash probably as long as the chipboard.  I applied that through the cutout and it adhered onto the vellum giving it a nice look while obscuring what is in the book.

The next step was to take the scripture I had printed onto cardstock cut into a size that would fit onto the inner pages of the Blessings Books.  Then I used a decoupage glue and adhered each page onto the chipboard pages.

I added foam tape to the back of the watercolored floral image and placed it on the bottom left of the album.

The first page of the Blessings Book.

The final result.

I did create an item by recycling or upcycling Altenew Bubble mailers that my orders had come in.  I created a little box or bin to put things in.