Treasures from the Heart

A SPOOKY TALE



A Soft Place to Land

Here is a cute project and some tips on staining paper:

OK here is the project.
A "Spooky Tales" book.

A 'just sit it around' fun book with
4 pages you can actually write in if you want.


Now, if you are interesting in the staining, here it is,
or you skip to the bottom and just
see the vignette with the Spooky Tales book. =0))

I like to experiment with all kinds of paper.
I buy little rolls of whatever at g. sales.
I've tried paper towels, and any other paper i think might work.
They all have their own unique qualities about them.

I use instant tea for my staining,
as i do not like the smell of coffee. (weird huh?)

There are two ways i stain.
One, I wet the paper in the tea, then wad it up tightly.
It is pretty wet with tea.

The other, I wad slightly, then dip it in,
then wad it slightly again.
It does not get as wet.

It produces two different looks.

This top pic is the one wet more, then wadded up tightly.

See how it has lots of tiny wrinkles in it?

This one was wadded up fairly dry.
It has less wrinkles, and not every inch is stained.

I do the same with my music paper.
Then I use it in the copy machine (smooth it out first)
to copy whatever words i want on it.
(more instructions on this if you'd like)

For the spooky book, I used 4 pages of stained plain paper.

You can see i added a surprise in the middle of the book. boo!!


music paper for the back cover,
(you can see the binding material better here)
(If you do not have black, just paint it with acrylic paint.)

For the cover I used a black mat,
and sanded it up to look old.
Beating up the corners is fun too. =0))

Gluing it together (no pics)
i cut all the pages kind of bigger than cover and back,
so they are not perfect.
I lined up all the 'binding' edge of the book to be even.
I ran a bead of glue down the cover (fabric glue worked great)
and glued a piece of tight woven fabric down as the binding.
(Just like you'd see a real book).
Then of course i sanded the edges of it too.)

The book opens pretty good, but i am working on a better method.

Here is a little vignette.

Hope you have enjoyed this project. blessings

barbara jean

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