Cousin Swap

No - it's not like Wife Swap :)

I have a good online buddy in the not so united states of America called Paula who I met via the Green Pepper Press crusades. We have a ton in common, even down to grand-daddies from the same little bit of British coastline, so we decided a while ago that we are obviously long lost cousins :)

When I launched the UK Art Raffle at the beginning of August, my cousin there was a bit fed up that she was ruled out from joining in on the grounds of, well, not being anywhere near the UK basically - so we decided to do a 1 on 1 special cousin swap.

Fast forward to today, and Paula has now received her surprise parcel, so I can finally blog what I made for her :)



I had a lot of fun making this book - Paula's just like me, a teenage goth/punk/metal girl who has cruelly been trapped inside the body of a not-quite-so-teenage-any-more mum of many :) So I basically made something that I would like, and figured cousin-o-mine would therefore like it too. And my logic worked a treat.

The book was made from scratch using my Bind It All machine. I made the covers from plain chipboard - hand cut into a gothic arch shape. They were covered in black tissue paper, crumpled then roughly flattened back out and stuck down with PVA glue. Once the glue was totally dry I sponged interference paints in red and purple over the top to accentuate the texture of the wrinkled issue paper.



The end papers inside the covers were made with glimmer mists in reds and purples to complement the interference paints used on the outside of the book. They are nice and sparkly.

The gargoyle embellishments on the front and back of the book were made using Stampbord squares. This stuff is possibly the best stamping surface ever. I coloured the squares first using distress inks and glimmer mists, and then stamped the gargoyles (Third Coast) using black permanent ink. The great thing about Stampbord is how you can etch back into the clay surface - so that's what I did next, adding white highlights and some cross hatching around the gargoyles.


The pages inside the book alternate in direction, and are all cut from different papers, some handmade, some glittery, some textured - I wanted it to be really interesting, even empty.



The final touches were the words "cuz to cuz" embossed on purple metallic tape on the inside back cover, black shrink plastic embellishments stuck to the back cover (made using a sun punch), and a corset style fastening for the front of the book made by threading a purple satin ribbon through black eyelets.

I'm glad that Paula likes the book as much as I did :)