Sunflower Notebook Cover for Bee Crafty

Hello!

Today on the Buzzy Goings on at Bee Crafty blog I am sharing a notebook cover that I have made for one of my son's teacher gifts as it is heading towards the end of the school year...

I started by cutting two pieces of mount board with a journal die that I have and coated it with white gesso.  Then I used crackle paste through the Mandala 5 inkable and the circles d'inkable and left it to dry naturally...

As this is a gift and an item that will be handled I wanted to use colouring mediums that are permanent and not water reactive, so I painted on acrylic paints but added water to make sure the crackles were still visible...

To help the pattern to stand back out I got my inktense pencils in orange and grey and added shading which I activated with my water brush.  If the colour got a bit too intense I added extra water and blotted with a paper towel...

Once I was happy with the shading I used the Script XL stamp to add extra detail and I used watering can archival ink to match the pencil colour and also because it is a permanent ink...

The Doodle Art Sunflowers were stamped out in both sizes.  Once cut out I coloured them using permanent markers and then added glossy accents over the top, this was to create a nice finish but also as another layer of protection...

When creating journals or notebooks I love to add long dangly charms to the spine, so I started by stamping the sunflowers onto white shrink plastic before cutting them out, adding a hole to each and then shrinking them with my heat tool.  After that I used alcohol markers to add some colours and coated with glossy accents...

Using my stash of beads and jewellery findings I put a selection of beads in matching colours onto head and eye pins to create my dangly charms...

The project was finished off by adding eyelets and ribbon for a closure and the elastic to put my pre bought notebooks inside and also to add my dangly charms to...

To create this project these are the products I used:

* Inkables - Mandala 5
* D'inkables - Circles
* Art Stamps - Doodle Art Sunflowers (regular and XL)
* Backdrop Stamps - Script XL
* Archival Inkpads
* White Gesso
* Glossy Accents
* Shrink Plastic

Thank you for looking and happy crafting!

Jane xx