Steampunk Notes and a swap!

I had the great pleasure to do a swap with awesomely talented Candy Colwell lately and today is the day we both chose for showing to you what we swapped with each other.

 As you may well remember - if you have already visited my blog yesterday - she is our fabulous guest designer this month at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges! Yay!

All those who haven't already seen what she made for our August challenge "Matchbox Steampunk" - hop over to our challenge blog or to her blog to see the absolutely fantastic make of hers!!!

 She also created an awesome project for me! A truly terrific Steampunk note book!!!

It's soooo fantastafabuliciously great, isn't it? :)
The inside comes with beautiful papers and an envelope to store some tiny notes in too!!! I LOVE that! 

Loads of yummy texture and detail on the outside:

And the magnifying glass with the awesome portait of a gentleman wearing a top hat is the perfect eye-catcher! Yippeeh! And it's all MINE! *lol


But not enough - Candy also sent some wonderful goodies along with her fabulous note book:

Loads of great ephemera, ribbons, buttons and paper treasures AND also some fab metal embellishments. WOW!

It felt like Christmas (maybe even better!) when I unwrapped all the treasures she had sent me! What a terrific parcel to receive!! Thank you so much, Candy!!! (I already used some of the goodies you sent me *giggle...but I as I did use them on a DT project I cannot show you before 1st of September (yes, I am a well prepared crafting girl *lol).

I also had sent her an altered steampunk note book (but only about half the size of hers *lol). I really wanted to make something very special for her and when she told me that she liked it, I was very happy!  (I am still so very proud and happy that she wanted to do this swap with me as I am a great admirer of all of her work ;).

It took me some days to figure out what I wanted to create for our swap, but when I stumbled upon a little notebook (a free gift from my favourite "Schloss-Hotel", Burg Bernstein) and a folding yardstick from the 1Euro store, the project started to take shape in my imagination finally....

I cut the folding yardstick (with old large scissors) to pieces, alcohol inked them and  sanded them down afterwards for later use.

Then I covered the booklet with some papers from my Tim Holtz stash on the in- and outsides, leaving the paper with the inside of the booklet's back cover a little wider than the actual size of the cover so I could glue one of the yardstick pieces to it.

The edges of the front and back covers were distressed using a carpet knife. After that I blended the edges with DI "gathered twigs" and "rusty hinge".








  For the two "inventors" images behind the screens
on the front and back covers I first gessoed a page from an old book, then stamped the three inventors from the Artistic Outpost "French Flight" sheet onto it using Memento archival ink "rich cocoa" and tore them to three pieces, blending the edges with DI "gathered twigs" (one of my new favourites from the DI range).






I cut two screens from acetate (mostly packaging material from my Sizzix dies) and treated them with various alcohol inks. After they had dried I sanded the edges with a sanding tool and scratched the surface with the Tim Holtz "retractable scratching tool".



I mounted them together with the stamped images and some layers of heavily distressed ribbons to the booklet using brads and glue.


Both parts of the metal latch were glued to the cover and the yardstick using strong crafting glue made especially for use with wood, metal or plastic.

The gear and the yardstick piece on the front cover were also glued in place after
stamping and heat embossing the Paper Artsy "gears" image using Ranger "rust" embossing enamel and the heat tool.

The "notes" sticker is one of the Tim Holtz idea-ology chit chat stickers, blended with DI "rusty hinge" before adhering it to the cover.

I love the closing mechanism! I had been storing this one for a very long time and was so happy that it finally found its perfect "home" :)









For a finish I added some self adhesive ribbon on the back, covering the overlapping piece on the back of the paper where I glued the yardstick on. I added a tiny piece of a dictionary page for further embellishment and gave the edges of the pages a coating with copper rub on and  - done!

I hope you like it (and of course that Candy does as well ;)! I really enjoyed creating this booklet and using some of the stuff I love so much! Thank you for stopping by and staying with me this far. As usual I have added some more close-ups for you and hope you enjoy them as you enjoyed your visit here!

Hugs,

die amelie x

I enter this project into SimonSaysStamp's Wednesday Challenges "Anything Goes" and Fashionalbe Stamping Challenges' "Script/Book/Pages/Print" challenges