Shell Notes - by Claudia

Servus and welcome to a holiday themed project today over here on the Calico Craft Parts Blog! Thanks so much for stopping by! I hope you are enjoying a wonderful summer!

I have made another little notebook (not as tiny as this one over HERE, but still quite small) - this time with a seaside theme - using two of the smallest size of the gorgeous Scalloped Seashell Wood Shape, some scrap paper, a bit of ribbon and thread and DecoArt media fluid acrylics.

It is actually that small...

...but you could as well use the larger sized wood shapes to get a larger notebook.

I used the wood shapes like a mask I traced around with a pencil to make my signatures and pages. I mixed different papers like index cards, designer papers, kraft glassine paper and copy paper and made three signatures with about eight to ten pages.

I primed the shell wood shapes by dry brushing them with white DecoArt media Gesso.

I have used only four colours of the media fluid acrylics - Yellow Oxide, Transparent Yellow Iron Oxide, Transparent Red Iron Oxide and Quinacridone Magenta (and a mix of the two darker tones) to paint my shell covers.

I started with the lightest colour...

...and worked my way towards the darkest, blending the applied paints in with a water loaded brush.

The insides of the covers were painted with a wash of this mix as well.

To darken the edges of the signatures I dipped them into the paint left overs on my palette.

 

I poked three holes as shown in the picture into all my signatures...

...and sewed them to a short piece of rough linen ribbon. I started with the hole in the middle from the inside, then went back in from the outside through the left hole, crossed over on the inside to the right hole and went out again. The final stitch was done from the outside to the inside again through the centre hole. I made sure both ends were on the adjacent sides of the thread, so I could tie a simple knot.

In the meantime the paints on the shell covers had dried. I added a final layer of DecoArt media Gold Interference paint to the covers for some subtle bling (which is - as always - impossible to capture in a photograph...but it's there...depending on the angle you look at it from).

Once that had dried, it was time to glue the ribbon with the sewn on signatures to the insides of the covers with matte DecoArt Decou-Page. I only glued on the ribbon's ends, but you could as well glue on the whole first and last pages if you like. This way the ribbon's ends get covered up by the glued on pages.

Voilà! My finished shell notebook! 

I hope you like it! The Scalloped Seashell Wood Shape can be found (alongside many more beautiful shell wood shapes) in the Seashell Wood Shapes section of the Calico Craft Parts online shop.

Hugs, happy holidays and happy crafting!

Claudia

xxx