Hello, dear friends, and welcome back to Scraps N Pieces Blog! A new challenge has just started, and this time it’s all about the magical world of books! Old and new, big or small, novels, fairy tales, historical, romantic, fascinating…just think of how many adjectives you can use to describe them. Well, that alone tells us how glorious books are!

I was totally inspired by this new mood board and decided to create something vintage and mystical, at the same time, using the color scheme and the elements from the board. The notebook is in size A5 and the cover is made from scratch. This time I played it hard and used tons of mixed media materials :) It took me several days to create the notebook because I just couldn't stop until I was completely satisfied with it. But it was a very pleasing creative process.

As a base for the cover, I used pieces of cardstock. First, I applied black gesso, and then a combination of texture paste, sand paste, crackle texture paste. To color it, I used acrylic paints, alcohol inks, and crackle varnish. I also did some stamping. The front cover is decorated with patterned paper, metallic embellishments, chipboard, beads, brads, and textile hydrangea flowers.

The inside covers are decorated with patterned paper by 7 Dots Studio. Their "Garden Party" collection suits our mood board 100 % :) Plus, I did some stamping and used a single 19th Century biology book page that I had kept on my shelf for ages.

This time I decided to make a decorative object which is kind of a shadow box. I used the wooden Jillibean Soup 6"x6" wood plank crate as a base for it. I filled the crate with all sorts of paper and textile roses of different colors. The top roses in the middle are handmade of paper. They were originally just white, but I colored them with Lindy´s Magicals. I also decorated the crate with Prima colored chipboard and other chipboard branches embossed with beautiful Ranger Verdigris embossing powder. The chipboard fence is textured with Prima sand texture paste and colored with rust effect pastes. The crate itself I also touched up with the rust effect pastes and colored black with Prima black heavy gesso from inside before adding the flowers, so it created additional volume and dimension. Among the decorations, you can also see metallic embellishments touched up with Prima Opal magic rose-gold paint, bead branches, and sisal. I also sprinkled the project with Prima gold rush glass glitter here and there for extra bling and added a suitable text sticker to the base in the end.

Scraps N Pieces picked a very traditional moodboard for December! This month we start to prepare for the future festive days. I decided to create a photo album which is meant to celebrate this time of the year! It’s an artistic book, that measures 20cm x 20 cm (8"x 8"), with lots of hidden pockets and winter decorations and I will fill it with my family holiday pictures. I was mainly inspired by our red-green-brown color scheme and the natural elements of the mood board. The album is made of thick kraft cardstock and mainly decorated with Christmas themed patterned paper. I also used white corrugated cardboard and some white texture paste with stencils to add a rustic effect to the pages, and a lot of washi tape with text to enrich the layouts even more. Among the decorations you will see chipboards and scrapbooking tops, colorful paper doilies, lace and colored gause, brads and overlays. The cover is also decorated with metal embellishments, red ribbon and glass beads.

Cover close-ups

One of the layouts

Another one

My favourite layout

One more

And more overview here