Tando Mini Book Tutorial

Hi everyone, Nikki, from Addicted to Art, here today to share our mid challenge project tutoral post. This month's challenge is all about using Sentiments on our projects and for the challenge I shared this large canvas. (You can see the post here.)

Today I am sharing the same process but on a much smaller scale - this time to decorate 2 mini books - each 6 x 6 cm. These pre cut greyboard books are available from Tando Creative Ltd (here).

The greyboard base consists of two 6cm square pieces of greyboard and one 6 x 1.5cm for the spine. 

Here I have them laid out and painted:

To create my cover, which also joins the spine to the 2 outer covers I cut some kraft card - adding 8mm for the spaces between the spine and the covers. So my card is 6+6+1.5+0.8 = 14.3cm by 6 cm and I score at 6cm from each end. 

Now the fun bit! This is the same process I used on the canvas - just on a larger scale. Firstly randomly adhere scraps of paper / thin card before adding a little more texture through a stencil with texture paste.

Once dry I reached for my paints - selecting Dina Wakley Media Fluid Acrylics for their vibrancy. I did each book slightly difference to give a subtly different end result.

For one I began with white paint and covered quite a bit of it - but not all and for the other - black paint.

I then built up colours - working in patches of colour - drying in between. Mostly I used my finger, but used a brush to ensure I reached the crevices of the texture paste.

A bit of pink!

Blue and turquoise....

Green....

You can see how I left patches of the black showing. With the black base the pink is less vibrant but the green pops a little more.

Once dry, I dry brushed over the entire surface with white chalk paint...

On this small project I added this fairly evenly all over - but on the canvas I highlighted the textured areas more with my dry brushing.

Finally I adhered these covers to the pre painted greyboard - sorry forgot the photos at this point. I lightly sand the edges so that the covers sort of merge with the greyboard base and then added gold paint around the edge with my finger.

For each book I selected some Dina Wakley Collage words and adhered with matt medium. On the canvas I stamped (in archival) my words on tissue paper before adding them.

A few close ups to finish!

Thanks for getting this far! Don't forget our Get Sentimental challenge runs until the 2nd August and we would love to see you designs.

Nikki

xxx