Still working on family cards for April. I am sure I have seen this "book on a shelf" technique on line somewhere but could find no instructions on how to put it together so I had to just do it. I created a large brown card to fit in an envelope from my stash. I added the strip of orange/floral decorative paper on the left hand side of my card to simulate wall paper. I added a layer of brown paper bag on the right hand side leaving a small border all the way around which would become the inside of my book shelf. I trimmed a piece of brown cardstock into 1/4" strips and watercoloured them. Once they were dry I added them as a frame on the right hand side of my card and then added two pieces in between to simulate shelves. I trimmed heavy weight paper scraps into "books" varying the height and width until I had what I needed for my three shelves. After arranging them, I took them one at a time and watercoloured their two front edges and all the sides with black watercolour to give them a bit of age and dimension. Once dry, I adhered them all in place on the shelves. I took a photo of my book shelf before I added my focal image. My focal element features a stack of books with a cup of tea from BBJ (Black Berry Jelly). It should have been coffee but I only realized that it was tea when I was colouring the tag!! I watercoloured the image, scored the pages with a bone folder to give them some texture and added a line of paper piercing on all the sides using my pattern tracing wheel. I stamped the little greeting (StampinUP) in brown and mounted it to my card front using 3D foam tape. I am very happy with how it turned out!! Therese
