Floral Mini-Album Pt 11 Page 5 Completing the Pop-Up Cover

Recently I made a new mini-album, about my mum who died in December. I was unable to publish anything about this until now because it is a present for her best friend, who sometimes visits my blog, and I wanted it to be a surprise for her. I wrote a series of blog posts as I did each stage of the project, so I didn’t forget what I did, and they will be published in sequence now the project is finished and has been given to our friend.

If you want to see the finished project, please click here.

Returning to page 5, I needed to complete the cover of the piano keyboard pop-up. I needed to decide how to keep it closed; the bottom edge is very close to the bottom of the page, not leaving much room for any sort of fastening, so in the end I decided on a magnet. Because I had not yet attached a mat to the cover, it was a simple matter to attach the magnet to the outside, but fitting the other magnet inside the page was more difficult because it was hard to get at, but with a bit of fiddling, I succeeded in the end.

Before this I had been working on the mat for the pop-up cover. In the next picture, you can see the two mat pieces (one for each album) lying on top of the original card (another sheet I really don’t like!) – to begin altering the mat pieces, I smooshed them with Mermaid Lagoon Distress Ink. I wanted to match the colour scheme of the rest of the page, but with a different texture. I used the same technique that I used for the striped paper with the letters and numbers on the flower pop-up page – covering the letters but retaining the stripes which add interest.

The next colour I added was Peacock Feathers, smooshing as before. Again, I’ve laid the pieces on top of the original, so that you can see how the alteration progresses.

Next came Chipped Sapphire, which is quite a bit darker, and less turquoise and more blue – verging towards purple.

After this I introduced a single colour in Distressed Oxides – Wilted Violet, which was beginning to give me the finished result that I wanted.

The wooden skewer is very useful for holding the pieces down when drying with my powerful heat gun, which otherwise tends to blow the pieces all over the place!

To darken the pieces still further, I distressed the whole surface with Walnut Stain Distress Ink, using an Inkylicious Ink Duster.

Perfect.

To finish off the pieces, it was just a question of a bit of double distressing, using first Chipped Sapphire and then Black Soot.

Here is the finished result, with the pop-up cover mat in place. The cover is held down very nicely with the magnet.

Here’s another picture of the keyboard pop-up, open, and showing no evidence of any fastening.

Time to move on and consolidate another unfinished page – this time, inside the front cover.