Did you hear the news?

Woohoo!!!  I made the Spellbinders Design Team for 2011!!!

The annoucement was made earlier today on the Spellbinders blog!   I'm so excited to be on the team a second year!  What an adventure this past year has been!  Lots of challenges, a few stressful months, lots of projects and wonderful memories!  Three of the new DT were with me this year, AJ, Latisha, and Kimberly.  I'll meet the rest of the team at a retreat in Arizona in April.    

Now that the news is out I can share my first round project with you.  I had the option to create a card, scrapbook layout or something altered.  I chose "altered".  My thoughts were that "cards are easy for me, a layout the hardest so I'd do altered first".  I expected we would be asked to do a layout in the final round anyway.......that is if I made it that far.  That's history!

I created this journal.....

I started with chipboard for the covers.  I applied adhesive with my Xyron and then laid crinkled tissue paper over the adhesive.  It was pink!  Lots of layers of Glimmer Mist changed the color.  The vine was cut with a Spellbinders die template.  I kept the die template in place for some of the misting to get the two tone color on the leaves.   The butterflies are cut from actual copper craft foil that has been adhered to card stock.  The paper backing really strengthens the copper. 

Real copper will change colors when super heated.  I used my heat gun (takes quite awhile to get hot enough!) to heat them until I liked the color change.  You can see it best on the biggest butterfly. 

I used Glimmer Mist on the inside cover, too, only copper color.  I added a verse from Artistic Outpost's Happiness set......so appropriate with my butterflies!  The edges of the inside pages are distressed and then sprayed with Tattered Leather Glimmer Mist.  You can see it in the next photo.    I added seam binding to use as a marker, again sprayed and rolled in Glimmer Mist.  I keep a whole roll of white and beige seam binding to color as I need. 

The butterfly dangles are 2 die cut copper butterflies that have been embossed over Spellbinders 12-1006 Floral and Stone Impressabilities.  Each dangle is 2 butterflies fastened over an eye pin and held together with red line tape and glue.  I added a bead to the end of the eye pin and curled it shut.  There's another eye pin at the top with a bead and loops to fasten to the seam binding.  These dangles are my favorite part of this journal! 

I used my Zutter Bind-It-All to make the holes and add the coil binding.  I even used a copper metallic marker to add touches of copper to the binding.....it needed to match the journal!  I sprayed the whole journal  with clear finish to protect the color. 

Thanks for stopping!  I had a bit of break from posting the past few weeks.  I hope to get back to posting more often now.  I'm planning to share some great Spellbinders projects throughout the year!!!

-judy