Julie's Acrylic Album Class #8

For the front cover, I chose the largest numbers I could find. I wish I knew the vendor for these numbers. I found them in a box in a cupboard at the store. I used the same paint on the numbers and T, that I had mixed for the background of my four square layout. I painted one side of the chipboard and all the edges. I left them on wax paper to dry and then painted their back sides.

For the numbers, I chose my favorite papers from my project stash to cover them. I like to apply paper to chipboard using spray adhesive. First, I go outside (spray adhesive has a strong odor and the sticky overspray is almost impossible to remove from things like the table, floor or your clothes). Then I hold the chipboard at an angle, so I can see where I’m applying the adhesive, I spray the adhesive onto the chipboard from about 12 inches away so that it is applied in a fine mist all over the project. If you hold the spray adhesive too close to your project, it gets too thick and can run or ooze out the sides of your paper. After the chipboard is coated with a fine mist of adhesive, I take it back into the house and lay the paper down over the adhesive. I smooth the paper down on my chipboard to make sure there are no bubbles and let it dry (about 30 minutes).

After the paper was attached, I used a foam brush to edge the numbers again, making sure the paint covered the edges of my paper. Next, I took a long piece of ivory twine and wrapped it around the bottom of the 0, tying a knot in the twine on the front of the 0 once I thought I had enough. I wanted it to resemble rope tied around the number. I did the same thing with the red twine diagonally across from the ivory twine. This time, after wrapping the twine several times, I put the ends of the twine through two of my Creative Café buttons (first a medium sized light blue button and then a smaller brown button with a carved edge) and tied a knot on top of the buttons. For both the ivory & red twine, I left about an 1 ½” ends after tying the knots.

After everything was dry and I was satisfied with my twine wrapping, I mounted the numbers on the cover of my album using a foam brush to apply diamond glaze to the back sides of each number. I pressed the numbers onto the cover and left them to dry overnight. The next day, I applied a birthday theme rubon on the back of the cover directly on top of the number 0, to give the back of the cover a little attention.