Journal cover (with the Eileen Hull Scoreboards die)

I had just convinced myself that I didn't really need the Eileen Hull Journal Scoreboards die, when I spotted in on offer at That's Crafty and snapped it up without even thinking about it. The offer was pretty irresistible at more than a third of the price off. Sadly, I think it's now back to its original price.

I managed to cut the die without the extended plates, but it was a bit tricky. I had to shift the plates down a bit for a second run and it was a tiny bit out of sync with the first cut, but it's hardly noticeable. I'll have to buy some new plates at some point, anyway, so I'll just get the longer ones. Theoretically, you could cut a similar cover by hand from thinner materials, but I've never been good at measuring and cutting straight lines and I wouldn't be able to cut thick card or chipboard quite as neatly with scissors.

I cut my cover from recycled mailing envelopes, stuck the two parts together, gessoed it and then added my embellishment pieces. The original design looked a bit different - I had to rip off the flowers as I couldn't cover them with paint properly. This is what it looked like originally.

When I removed the flowers, it looked like it might be a gonner, but I was able to cover up the rips with some metal elements, so you don't see the mess underneath! I added an additional layer of black gesso and then painted everything with a mixture of Greenish Blue (557) acrylics from Amsterdam (I love that colour!) and Irridescent Green Yellow (359) from Pebeo. These two colours work wonderfully together! I found some polymer clay tiles in my stash from an earlier project which fitted perfectly within the frame - with a little help from some spacer beads. I also stuck a small gem stone in the middle of  each metal shape for a little oomph. I accented the edges and the raised parts of the texture with some Bronze gilding wax. And that's all there is to it! Here's the redesigned version of the cover rescued from the bin:

I threaded the journal following Eileen's instructions online with an elastic string to hold the inserts - there's more than one way of doing this. I cut some tea dyed sheets of paper to fit the journal and prepared three separate signatures, which simply slot into the cover, like so:

I made a little dangly thing through the spine with metal beads and some paper beads from years ago  - I finally got to use them! This is what the completed journal looks like from various angles (the colours look different depending how the light catches them):

Thanks for joining me today for this show&tell/tutorial. 

Wishing everyone a happy weekend!