Secrets of the Sea Carved Book and Mini Journal by LORI WOODS

Hello everyone! I'm so excited to be part of the new design team for The Mad Scrapper and I hope you'll like my first project for the blog.

I was recently reminded how much fun these carved books are to make and there are so many possibilities for decorating them - if you love florals you could fill them with flowers to create a little secret garden, you could make a mysterious and sparkly fairy doorway, if you love steampunk you can go to town with gears and rust, there are just so many options! I decided for this one I would go for an underwater theme.

The first thing to do is to carve into your book - this does take a while and you need to watch your fingers with the sharp blade but it is worth it in the end. I usually like to cut a big enough space to fit an assortment of things in but leave a little bit of text around the page edges to keep the book look.

Once I had a deep enough space, I started on the cover. I used Finnabair's gorgeous nautical tissue paper and slightly crumpled it as I glued to create a worn effect. I painted it with watered down Finnabair Liquid Acrylics and added some of the super sparkly Finnabair Mermaid effect paste to highlight my cover embeliishments. To finish off the cover I drybrushed it with some white gesso, added metallic wax around the edges and topped it off with some splatters of watered down gesso.

The dinky little nautical chipboards are all from The Dusty Attic and I painted these with a mix of Liquid Acrylics and Metallic waxes to give them some shine. When I began to add these pieces to the inside of the book, I started from the back so I could build up a pretty background scene with them. I like to cut a little notch into a few pages to glue them into and that way your pages stay quite flat. 

When the book was done, I made a little mini journal from the lovely 49 and Market Vintage Artistry shore papers and used the Ephemera and Collage stacks to create little pockets and tags. The packs are full of great bits and when you work on a small scale, they last even longer! I found a bit of old cord to wrap around the journal for a closure and then popped it into the space left for it inside the book.

I've made a video HERE if you'd like to see the process in more detail and please don't hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions. 

Happy Crafting!

Lori

Supplies from The Mad Scrapper

Finnabair 3D gel

Additional supplies - Old book, leather cord, circular resin frame.