newspaper....repurposed

This is the new art book I made the other day. The front and back are book board from 7 Gypsies. You can buy them plain and put your own holes in them where you want them to be. The bluish part with the face is copper that used to be a roof on a bird feeder. DH threw it in the trash when the wooden part of the feeder rotted. What! Are you crazy?! I am always digging my "stuff" out of the trash that he throws away. In 27 years of togetherness that is my biggest beef with him. Anyway....he thinks I am nuts and just shakes his head. Then I come back with my art and say SEE?! See what I did with your trash.


This is the back page....I had to have a tissue paper/napkin page. I found some good floral tissue at Dollar Tree last week.(It made my day)

The squiggly's are Elmer's glue put down on wax paper and sprinkled with glitter. When it dries it's clear and pops right off. They are held in with a sheet of tulle. The "sister's" are rubber stamped.

Another tulle page.

The bee's are stamped and the leaves just float around.

This is one of my favorite stamps. Tag's on the opposite page.

Napkin, tissue and stamp.

OK, the pages are all made from newspaper. I learned this technique from Donna Downey's blog. It's so much fun. You tear your pages so you get nice torn edges (texture) and then just glue about 10 pages together with glue sticks...yep! gluesticks! I use the bigger ones you can get at Big Lots...3 for 88 cents.

Next I put gesso on them and then paint. You don't have to be perfect. You can let some of the text show through.

Then get out the old sewing machine and stitch them around the edges.

And let the fun begin. This is where my imagination goes wild.

I made my pages 8X10 but before I sewed them I ended up tearing them down to 6X6 for this little book. It's for my class to see that you can get the board book and break it down by using the boards for front and back and fill the center with other goodies...you know ...get more mileage out of it.
Hint: To tear uniform sized pages I used a piece of plastic that was the size I wanted...or thought I wanted at the time. When I went to the smaller size I simply used the board book to teat the pages. Square quilt rulers work beautifly!