GD: Liz Borer Project #2 Leather Covered Book

"Hello all, Liz here. I have in my stash of crafty goodies some pieces of leather and I decided to cover a book with some leather. This whole idea was inspired by seeing some handbags that had been hand painted and I wondered if it would be possible to stamp and paint on leather. Only one way to find out"!

Using WW6 (which is a rectangular stamp with a face in it) practice stamping the face onto paper. The idea is to just stamp the face without the accompanying background. I found the easiest way to do this was to apply black ink to the design and then rub the ink away from the edges so ink only remained where I wanted it. I had several practices on paper before I stamped the face onto my leather. 

Stamp the face onto the leather and then stamp the flowers from HP1009 to form a partial frame around the face. When I wanted to add extra flowers I masked the original stamped images before stamping again. 

I then randomly stamped the text stamp from ESN11 using Tree Branch Ranger Archival Ink onto the leather. Finally, I stamped some flourishes from HP1005 and HP1007 using Cornflower Blue Ranger Archival Ink. 

I then added some colour to the face and the flowers using Brown Shed paint mixed with MatteGlaze to make it more transparent. 

I tried various different mediums to colour the leather before realizing that I should be using paint! This coloured the leather beautifully and didn’t rub off. The centre of the flowers were painted with Pumpkin Soup and Eggplant. This shows the back cover of the book which was stamped and painted in a similar way.

Using a small piece of the same colour leather, I stamped some text over the leather using Cornflower Blue Ranger Archival Ink. I then stamped the small and large flowers from SIFF5 over the script stamp and cut them out. 

The flowers were coloured in the same way as the cover of the book using Brown Shed paint mixed with Matte Glaze.

The centres of the flowers were made using some darker leather cut into a strip about 1cm wide and cut into the fringe along the long edge of the strip. The strip of leather was then rolled into a spiral and stuck down.

To assemble the flowers, cut a hole in the centre of the smaller flower and glue the leather spiral into the hole. Then glue the spiral into a similar hole in larger flower.

Brush Treasure Gold on to the centre spiral of the flowers. 

Stamp the text from ESN11 on to some dark red leather and emboss with gold embossing powder (yes, you can emboss on leather!). 

Cut the leather out and fringe the ends before sticking on to some card to make it rigid.

To finish the cover, I stuck some lovely lace along the bottom and side edges of the cover before attaching the leather flowers and the text tag and a little crown for the lady!

 Close up of face.

Back of book. 

I hope you have enjoyed this book and, if you ever make it, you will find that it not only looks pretty but it feels lovely too because of the leather. I hope you are inspired to give this project a go, would love to see your interpretations.

~Liz~

A huge thanks from all the PA team Liz for this gorgeous project, the stamped images against the leather grain looks fab, love the masking effect surrounding the face image and again a truly beautiful colour combo.

We would love you to join in with our monthly challenge. If you are inspired by any of this month's guests who have blogged between Nov 1st 2014 and Nov 30^th 2014 then join in and link up your creativity HERE. You will go in the draw to win a £50 voucher to spend on products of your choice from the PaperArtsy online store. You need to add your link by 19:00 (London time) Nov 30th 2014.