An Altered Jigsaw Book

Hello! :O))

I have really been busy with all this altering this weekend. Here is a little book I put together using a kiddies jigsaw puzzle. My Mum-in-Law bought this for me on a Car Boot Sale and it is brilliant for altering as it is really thick and the pieces are big. I didn't try to do the puzzle before I altered it though...I still would have been there trying to finish it ;O}}



Firstly, I took five pieces of the puzzle that were similar in size. I spent a good half hour ripping the coloured layer of card off the pieces so I had a good surface to work onto. The side that I tore the card off was the side that I covered with the fancy papers though as the removal of the card left it a bit rough! Whoops, learnt my lesson there then!





I used the new Infuse Collection of papers by Basic Grey. I recently added a couple of the designs to my stash and have been champing at the bit to have a play with them...the colours are gorgeous reds, greens and creams, so I combined the papers with Fired Brick and Peeled Paint Distress Inks.

For the paper sides of the pieces, I tried to keep the imagery simple so I didn't cover up too much of the beautiful papers, but as usual, I got carried away and really went to town with the stamping and the embellishing LOL




I used stamps by Catslife Press, Crafty Individuals, Cherry Pie Art Stamps and the Tim Holtz Collection. My new "fave" stamp is the "melting clock" image from Cherry Art which is a copy of a Salvador Dali image... I hand wrote the little sentiment next to it, as it does seem that time is slipping away far to quickly at the moment!! I added a few little charms to the pages using jump rings and finished off by punching holes into the pieces (using the trusty Crop-A-Dile) and threaded ribbons through them. To make some of the stamped images stand out more, I covered them with Glossy Accents, for example, the word "dream" has all of the letters covered in GA to make it look a bit more finished.



To make the whole book look more defined, I used a piece of Cut & Dry foam to smudge Fired Brick ink all around the edges of both sides of the pieces...this blended the pieces together more I think. I also tried to make a little domino using a piece of mountboard and three gold brads....then I stamped the Catslife Press "Art" stamp onto it....not exactly how I imagined it to be...but it is "art" after all ...LOL

Thanks for looking and I would love your comments as I am still not 100% about the overall effect and I think my old tendancy to make things "fussy" has come back...

Cheers, Hels x