Christmas Tip-In for Altered Books

After posting photos in the album of a tip-in swap on the Inkyrangers Yahoogroup web site, someone said I needed to do a tutorial on how I did it.  So I told them I would just blog about it.  Here are the photos of the front and back of the tip-in page.  The theme of the person's book is "Christmas," and who doesn't love to do Christmas projects?

 FRONT:  The house is mounted on a folded piece of material that is used to cover books, so it is pretty flexible and tough.  Besides, it was a good blue for a winter sky!  I used a piece of pale gray cardstock to make the house.  A stone texture template from Fiskars run through the Sizzix Tim Holtz Inspired Vagabond with the appropriate "sandwich" was used to fabricate the "stone," and then, using several neutrals and browns of Ranger Distress inks and applicators, the various shades were rubbed lightly over the raised stone areas to give it the look of real stone.

The gable is dark gray cardstock, scored every half inch on one side, and then turned over and scored an eighth of an inch away to give it a look of boards.  The same thing is done to the light grey fascia board beneath the gable.  The lights are Jolee's.  The window was the fun part.  My favorite dies are the ones from Poppystamps--the doors and windows and accessories are fantastic!  This project uses Poppystamps' Grand Madison window and shutters and a piece of acetate cut from packaging for the window pane.  Real lace is sandwiched between the window pane and the view into the room beyond.  I stamped a fantastic decorated Christmas tree from an old retired Stampin' Up! set with Ranger Archival ink in Library Green on Ranger's Specialty Stamping Paper. It was colored with Distress Markers and some Copic Spica glitter pens and cut out.  The walls in the room are Distress inks rubbed into this wonderful paper.  I love how smoothly it goes onto the Specialty Stamping Paper.  The "snow" is cut from white cardstock with a Sizzix Decorative Strip die (now retired) that yields wavy pieces, and glued them onto the paper to make a snowy scene.  Memory Box's Country Landscape die was perfect for the little trees here on the front and the trees and houses seen through the window from inside the house, which is on the backside of this page.  I also used Distress Stickles in Picket Fence to add a little snow-like quality to the snow and the edge of the roof.  Glossy accents were perfect to make some icicles at the corner of the house.  Some of the new dry Stickles glitter in clear rock candy was also used on top of some of the glossy accents.  For a vintage look, all edges of both pages and the woodwork areas were lightly distressed on the edges with Tea Dye Distress Ink.

BACK:  The back side of the tip-in page is naturally the scene from inside the house.  The same Grand Madison window die cut is used with another piece of acetate for the pane.  The same lace is anchored with XPressIt tape and Making Memories decorative brads.  Be sure to put your brads in place BEFORE gluing the folded background sheet together!  Extra strong mounting tape is best to adhere the folded tip-in page together.  Glue would have caused the page to dry warped unless it was dried under weight, and with the 3-D elements, that wouldn't have been very successful.  Provocraft's Terrifically Tacky Tape in the 1 1/16" size was used along all edges and in the middle.  The inside wall is another piece of the Ranger Specialty Stamping Paper, and Distress inks.  I stamped and colored another Christmas tree like the one showing through the window, and used pop dots to elevate it from the page for dimension.  The "rug" is a scrap of Christmas paper punched with a large round punch and trimmed.  The "woodwork" is light gray cardstock cut and layered to look like decorative trim.  The floor and wallpaper above and below the windowed wall were papers from my scrap drawer.  The antique brass plaque above the window is from Making Memories. The scene through the window uses the same technique as the one on the front of the tip-in.  Tip-in swaps are a wonderful way to do an altered book!  The book is less abused when it stays home and the pages come to it instead!  I will do more of these.

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