patience: noun

capacity for waiting ( not something I possess )

Well the above statement pretty much sums me up when it comes to crafting. Elizabeth says it's hurry up and wait....hmmmm Hard for me to do, hard to do! But she is correct, there is a lot of waiting.

Anyway so I almost hate for Elizabeth or any true AB peeps to read this post, so I am just going to tell the truth and the let the paper fly! lol And please do go over to her site ,Altered Book Lover and follow her directions to do it correctly...I'm just impatient and cheap...I do not recommend doing it my way.

First thing to admit is that I didn't have the gel medium but as I was creating my sand dollar I kept thinking that the embossing paste was kinda gel like....hmmm....but first let me tell you about the sand dollar.

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I used a brass embossing template, spread the embossing paste on, when it dried I used my brown ink pad over it. It now feels almost like leather! I then strung the brass word dream onto the sand dollar which I slid into a slit in the beige material. The material was an after thought as I was trying to find something suitable to strengthen those front pages. I also glued suede strips as seaweed. And as a side note, I love liquid glue, and have used liquid glue all through my steps. It does mean waiting in between steps but I'm addicted to the stuff.

Now the niche...it was truly a pain in the you know what, and here is another confession: I do not have any clamps. So I used the heaviest thing I knew of to weight it down while drying: my Big Shot!

So I covered the longest side first with the embossing medium and weighted it down with my Big Shot, I also used cooking parchment paper as I didn't have any wax paper in the house, but that worked very well. Then when it dried I alternated the other sides, again weighing it down as I went along. The embossing paste did very well, it sealed the pages, gave them a smooth finished and filled into gaps on the inside cuts. I was stoked....err...pleased.  ( I did do a little bit of sanding just to get my corners better but I did know I would be using tissue paper over everything so a lot could be forgiven using that medium.) I pop dotted my glass dolphin and painted the sides to the pop dot with blue paint so it wouldn't be seen.  For the tissue paper, I laid a thick layer of glue down, crumpled the tissue paper and  laid it over the book, and then gently patted it down with my finger. Twisting or pinching the tissue together as needed. Now the glue feels damp through the paper and at this time I applied my powdered Jewelz.

You apply this iridescent powder with a brush only using very small amounts by swirling and brushing it into the paper. It needs the tacky-ness to stick. This is also a good time to check your paper for any lifting edges and making sure everything is laid down tight. (I am sorry this picture is not very focused! ) I am a wee bit tired after visiting a billion blogs today on WOYWW and also working inbetween on a submission for Cricut Magazine. My head hurts from all the eye strain!

One of my favorite parts of the niche are the sea shells I used from a necklace I had since going to Hawaii. I also added the brass starfish and a pearl, There is seaweed over on the right hand side but you can't see it too well in the picture. I added some glass beads to the paper for just fun! I also enjoy making the front title and the last title of the book go together...I dream of the sea...and the sea dreams of me.

So I didn't follow all the directions, I veered from them, but that's me, lol The paper renegade!

hee hee

:P

Oh, I never officially stated my theme, but I think everyone knows, lol

MERMAIDS