Am I….?

… the only one who loves this time of year?? I love it for many reasons..the changing leaves, the cooler days and nights, no humidity and yes, football season! This year I realized that I don’t have many Fall decorations. Yes, we have the spiders and ghosts and Charlie Brown window clings for the kiddos.. but no ‘grown up’ Fall decorations really. That bummed me out, so I made a couple to cheer me up. I’ll share one today and one on Thursday this week, along with a short tutorial along the way.

Front Back

Leaves up close (Sizzix) with Simple Stories Life Documented Papers. The bird is a Sizzix die and cut from brown canvas.

Jillibean Soup Corrugated Shapes, inked with Tim Hotlz Distress Inks~Crushed Olive, Walnut Stain & Faded Jeans.

Clouds are also Jillibean Soup, inked with TH Faded Jeans and I used my finger to add white craft paint lightly.
The bottom leaf is also a Sizzix Leaf sprayed with Ranger Perfect Pearls in Sunflower.

Here’s the book’s ‘paper’. I sparsely brushed on some ivory craft paint (Michael’s).

This is what I started with:

A plain, paper mache book from Michael’s. I painted the binding as shown with brown and black acrylic craft paint, also from Michael’s. Then I coved it with the Simple Stories papers, adhering them to the book using Mod Podge Matt Finish. As you can see the MP coating really gave it a leather-look when it was dry. I was really happy with how that turned out! To finish off the leaves, they were all inked around the edges using Versamagic Chalk Ink in Gingerbread, then sprayed with various combo’s of Ranger Perfect Pearls (Sunflower & Perfect Pearl) and Tattered Angel’s Glimmer Mists (Cranberry Zing, Tattered Leather & Bronze). I zapped the leaves with my heat gun and held the heat on them direct until they began to curl a bit. This made them nice and crunchy!!