The finished boot book

I finally got around to taking and editing the photos of the collaborative boot book project my local art group did. Here is the cover that Cathy designed. The bare chipboard was covered with Mod Podge and tissue paper, then painted and distressed with black ink. We also used black gel pen for the "stitching" details and silver Stickles for the "rhinestones." The diamond inserts are covered with black stamped and embossed paper and the little tab at the top is a scrap of leathery/vinyl fabric with a wooden star and brad. The heel is Ten Seconds Studio black art metal embossed with a Cuttlebug folder and sanded.

The page on the left is our "sign-in" page. We die cut stars and everyone made up a western-style name to go with our name and signed the stars accordingly. The page on the left is from Karen and she used actual photographs of her husband's relatives. The patchwork diamonds were all handcut and glued back together.

Debbie's page is on the left and Christine's on the right. Debbie used the paisley Cuttlebug folder to emboss the paisley printed paper which doesn't show up in this photo. She also used embossed metal on the heel and embellished the edge of the paisley paper with tiny white pearls. The middle part of Christine's boot is a paisley stamp heat-embossed on the brown cardstock. The top and bottom of the boot are done with flocking.

Julie's boot on the left sports a woven vinyl fabric band and heel, a metal concho with twine and a wanted poster in which she adhered a photo of each recipient. Mette's boot is on the right with a cork sole and heel. She also added vintage lace.

Lynn used the yellow rose of Texas theme for her page on the left. She hand tooled the art metal for the roses and painted them yellow. The Texas shape was die cut from jean material. Laura's boot on the right has stamped flourishes, twine, a leather strip and a neat star button embellishment.

My boot (which I shared in the last post) is on the left; Bess did the boot on the right. She used a pretty patterned paper along with embossed metal diamond, a pink leather strip, a feather and a silver deputy's badge.

And, last but not least, is Trisha's boot on the left on which she used a cute vintage image and did lots of cutting for the letters. Her background is awesome paper that looks like embossed leather. And Cathy's boot on the right which has a background of 50's western paper, a scrap of "Home on the Range" music, a cowgirl image, fringe, bandana strip and a tiny lasso made with twine and a star brad. The image twists to reveal a cute photo of Cathy and her sister dressed as cowgirls for Halloween when they were younger.

As you can see, although we all started with the same theme and basic shape, every boot was very unique and totally different. That's the part I love the most about swaps and collaborative projects!

Boot Book Swap

Again, apologies for not being here for almost a week! I've been busy making eleven of these babies. My local art group did a collaborative "boot" book swap. The chipboard books were purchased at the Great American Scrapbook Convention last summer (sorry, the package with the name of the company that makes these is long gone, but if anyone knows the name I will edit this post to add it). Everyone designed their page and then duplicated it for all eleven members. Last week was the reveal and swap.

This was my page. I used a kraft cardstock as the base and misted with walnut ink over a large Tim Holtz mask. Cowgirls (Hampton Art, Cowboy's Ransom Alphabet) was stamped and embossed with Ranger Rust embossing powder for a rustic look, as well as the oval cowgirl stamp (Deadbeat Designs). I did this on black cardstock because they didn't show up on the background otherwise. The star stamp (Deadbeat Designs) was embossed in black. The cowgirls stamp (The Queen's Dresser Drawers - can you read it, it says " cowgirls just want to have fun") was stamped on the same kraft cardstock with black and then layered on burlap and torn fabric and sewn to the page. The "Happy Trails" is twill ribbon. Final embellishments were two bronze star brads and a rusty star.


Here's the finished set (oops, just noticed one didn't make it into the photo) all ready to swap.

Tomorrow I will try to photograph and post the other pages I received.