 Well, hi there. My name is Sandy Olnach. Welcome to my YouTube channel where today I'm gonna do a mixed media project I don't do this very much, but I wanted to do this faux leather texture It's a tissue paper technique that you can apply to any kind of a hard surface like a book or chipboard or something And I found a video by Laura Carson I'll link you at the end of this to a couple of her videos if you want to see those I've done some major adaptations to it because of my project and the supplies I had and I'll tell you what Those are as we go. I did it on this Bible I bought the Bible used and I wanted one that had the lines in on the inside and that was NRSB version But this one was out of print so it was very expensive even for a used one But fortunately the only used part is the spine the spines busted in a couple places and rather than return it because I wasn't sure what use meant when I bought it and It arrived and I thought you know I could fix this if I could find some way to cover the book with something amazing since it's going to be a Journaling Bible anyway, and I'm gonna be doing a lot of art in it. Why not do something artsy on the cover? So I started out with some gaffer's tape You could also use probably some duct tape here and there might be official book tapes So if you're trying to do something that's preserved and beautiful forever There could be other things, but I just used what I had I Also wanted to do one of the things that I saw Laura do and one of the books that I just got hooked on her videos I'm watching these beautiful books She makes but I wanted to cut a hole in the front And I know that would freak a lot of people out when it comes to your Bible But that's okay. Just deep deep breaths, and I took a little Olfa knife and just started cutting And it's going we're gonna cover the inside and the outside of this front cover So I'm even just kind of letting my lines be longer than they needed to be haven't marked out in pencil And I just kept cutting and cutting and cutting and going over those lines until they finally went all the way through And I used some really heavy cardstock underneath Big piece of cardboard so that I didn't go through my work surface on my table And it ended up getting a nice hole eventually cut in the front of the book And I was able to pop that out So now we're ready to start doing some some of the process to the book itself A few things you'll need is going to be tissue paper for one The tissue paper is all torn into little pieces lots and lots of it And if you're going to cover the front and the back and everything you'll just keep keep cutting keep keep tearing it I have some paper on the inside you could use wax paper I didn't have any wax paper in the house So I use some parchment paper because you want to protect the pages on the inside and only get your adhesive and your paint on the outside of the book So we're going to take all of these little pieces and we're going to glue them on here with ppa This is a glue that I asked a lot of my mixed media friends about and I said, okay, so what do I use to do this? and You know a few of them said the mod podge and that's what laura uses But everybody else told me this is way better and for the the amount you spend on it It's a way better deal. So that's what I got Because I wanted I wanted to do it right. I wanted to make sure it didn't yellow This is archival safe and all kinds of other wonderful qualities that it has But you just apply a whole bunch of it To the surface of the book now if you're using a really slick surface with this one, it's a shiny coated surface and I was considering the idea of Sanding it down lightly first, but I didn't find that that was an issue at all It everything seems to have held in place just perfectly And then I'm just randomly placing all these pieces of tissue paper on there The more texture and more kind of wrinkles you get in it the more texture you're going to have so If you want it to be really lumpy then let let them be little balls of Of stuff on there. It's going to flatten out as we go So you'll see as we add different layers to it. It's going to get flatter and smoother But I'm just piling it on And letting edges of it hang out over so anywhere where it's going to go around the edge of the outside of the book Or into that hole on the inside I wanted to let some extra pieces kind of stick out so that I could wrap them around That's going to make it look like the texture goes all the way to the inside of the book Even though it's just going to go around the edge And we'll line that inside page so nobody nobody knows that it doesn't go all the way in But I thought that would be a nice way to make it look like the whole book was a continuous thing This is messy If you are one of those people that can't handle messy This is probably not the project for you And I'm not usually one of those that likes messy So it was kind of interesting to get to the point where I I really did enjoy this What I'm applying this with is you could use a foam brush or a regular brush But I just I'm using makeup sponges because that's what I had I didn't feel like going to the store for more foam brushes But I I also found that this gave me a lot more control to push the glue into all these crevices And to kind of I'm swiping it back and forth When there are areas that are too poofy for me. I can just kind of almost wipe left and right or up and down Whatever direction that little piece of paper is and get it glued down a little bit flatter So depending on how much texture you want on it If you want it really smooth or not as smooth you can add more now you have to wait a little bit before applying On to the wet surface So what I did was apply one coat of all of this and let it dry for oh 10 minutes or so not a whole lot Because otherwise your sponge that has the glue on it is going to pick up all of that Tissue paper and you don't want to pick up the tissue paper after you just got it all down But you want to put another coat of the ppa over it and that's going to start holding everything down And then you can see where your blank spots are where there's a whole lot of that blue color I knew that I had to add extras And here's where I'm taking those pieces and just put using the ppa glue And wrapping all of those little tiny edges that I left around the inside of the book And remember we're going to cover all that so don't worry about it being messy It's just going to make an edge around that That window that's going to match the rest of the book. It won't look like it suddenly stops And doesn't have a texture or color to it And I've done that all the way around the edges of the book and I've done the front the back and the spines Of the whole thing but I had to kind of let it dry in between so I could lay it on one side while I was working on the other So this is one of those long drawn out processes That you just get involved in I guess when you do some uh mix media stuff So next after you've got all the texture that you want You're going to start applying paint And I'm just going to use some uh white acrylic paint and you could probably use any kind I'm using this uh ranger stuff that I I really like And it's going to smooth it out even further But you can also see that it's filling in all the gaps where it's still blue I have some texture there, but I didn't want to just keep piling it on In order to cover that because I'm covering it with white paint And you may need two coats of white paint depending on what kind of thing you're going to do in the next step But you can see I'm just getting it really good and covered and it is flattening out And it's starting to even out but you can't see any of that blue stuff underneath It's all covering well And if you're going to Use paints on this then you don't have to do another coat But if you're going to use some kind of stains or watercolor like i'm doing you may need a second coat But you might want to also get another book and try a small section just to see What your paints are going to do and what you're Whatever you're going to color it with is going to look like And I'll show you in a little bit the test book that I had used To try out the technique before I did it on the finished book But I'm just using another one of these makeup sponges to push all that paint into those crevices And you want to turn it different directions because when you look at it from one angle You'll see a hole that didn't get filled in And if you have little blue spots or little green spots sticking out and you have a brown covered book You'll be able to notice those right away But you know if you get get it all covered really well Make sure you get down in the crevices on that spine Because there's those little places where it indents and you want to make sure you you shove that way down on the inside of it And really smush all that stuff down I'm going to show you just a portion of my testing I took a book that I didn't want it was like a dog book Dog dog dog care or something so you can take any old book to practice on And on the left you can see I have some yellow paint underneath and on the right I don't have that yellow paint underneath because I wanted to see what the difference is between Putting the inka gold on top And the inka silver on top the gold and silver is what was used on the video that I watched But I had tried the yellow paint just because I wanted to see if I you know Would I like a book with yellow in it? And I actually did like that more But you'll see in just a second the shininess that you'll get if you use that inka stuff So there's a lot of different looks a lot of different products you can try out So get yourself either a book or some cardboard to try it on before you try it on your finished book So I've got my my Paper inside again to protect the book and I'm just going to use some distress paint This is the mustard distress paint and what I had tested on that other book was putting the yellow underneath And it means that the yellow is going to be in the cracks and go go heavier than what I'm doing Make sure you get all the way in the cracks because I did have some white spots That ended up appearing on mine because I was trying to put the darker colors on top And then I had to go back in with the yellow and fill in some of those So if you want one color that's going to show through as the cracks the deep parts Then do that first If you want to use some paints to do this Then remember that any watercolor type stuff if you use a dark paint first It's not going to really show because it's not going to it's not going to brighten up your dark paint underneath so you could Just use stains on this like Laura does and not use a color underneath But I really love the idea of the yellow showing through because I'm a yellow person That's my favorite color and the idea of having some of that Showed through on the book was was really what I like the idea of But make it more solid like that than that if you're going to do it All right So next I'm taking a couple of hydrous watercolors. Believe it or not. I wanted to make it more of like Some distressed ink colors like like the vintage Brown color And stuff, but I didn't have any of the distressed stains in those kind of colors I had inks But all of a sudden I went wait a minute. Those are water soluble and so are my hydrous So let me try out the hydrous and that's what I had tested on that that book So I knew it would work and I've got the Like it's a red oxide color. I'll list all the actual colors in the description down below And I just started pushing the color Into different areas and trying to decide how much of the yellow I wanted to show through And it was a little more red than I wanted so I started adding some browns to it And I just kept layering colors on And when I discovered that I had some white spots You can almost see them there that didn't have any yellow in them I did have to squish some more yellow in there and go back over again With the hydrous paints, but I was very surprised that the ph martins actually worked And having that test book really made a difference So if you have a surface that you can practice it on And just see what kinds of colors you want on the finished book that you do That's really helpful to test out all the different types of materials that you might try If you're going to try something that That is going to be on a book like this one is going to be used I'm going to be art journaling in it. So Don't use anything that's going to remain sticky or at least cover over the surface When when you're done and seal it in that sort of thing If it's just going to be an art book that's an art piece You don't really have to do any that but Look at how gorgeous that color came out. I mean, I was so impressed with myself I don't do much mixed media and to be able to have it come out this beautifully was great So I sealed it in with more of the ppa. So I just put a nice heavy coat of that It dries matte and it dries non sticky non tacky non glossy Which was great. And then I thought wait a minute Let me try some of the distressed glaze Because I wanted to make sure I wasn't you know, not having tested too much of the ppa I was like, I don't know. Maybe I should put the ppa or put the distressed glaze on because this will make it waterproof And so I put it all over it and what I found was that I had this weird like I don't know like a weird texture. It felt like Vaseline all over it So I ended up adding another layer of the ppa over top of it But I think it's probably really seriously waterproof now So layer as much or as little as you decide to depending on the use of your book I printed out a verse that I wanted to put on the front cover That's going to peek through that window and I'm distressing it with some colors that will give it that yellow feel And just pushing those colors on with a Blender and then I'm putting the distressed glaze over top of that So on something like this the distressed distressed glaze works perfect because it'll be a little on that kind of weird Vaseline type of shiny surface But it's going to be fine on this because I'm not going to be touching that part all the time And then I just took a little tissue and buffed it just slightly so that it wouldn't be quite as Weirdly gooey I had a piece of tape that was on the top of it so that I could line this up Exactly as I want it press that down and then I flapped it up so that I could put the adhesive under it I'm using some B creative tape because that will hold this stuff securely that B creative tape will hold pretty much anything to anything It's crazy crazy sticky stuff So you peel off the backing and then I could pop it down And double check that it all worked Looks just great exactly as I wanted it and then I put B creative tape all over the back of a piece of Pattern paper that I wanted to put on the inside And I put a couple strips down and then I went with one last strip across that very top section Because I wanted to make sure absolutely every edge of this is glued down really securely so Make sure you get all the way out to the edges or else you're going to have parts peeling up and that'll all be weird So I did the same thing on the inside of the back cover as well. So now I've got a nice inside front cover To go with my whole book Now I'll quickly show you something that I learned here because I know a lot of people will ask what the paper is And what you color on with it This is a page that I did with hydrous watercolors in here and it doesn't go through the back I did find that distressed inks and other watercolors did start going through but as soon as I tested my hydrous I found out that they didn't so just put that out there. I don't know a whole lot about bible journaling and that sort of thing So Go research do lots of video watching and you'll find lots of people with great information But I just wanted to share with you my book because I think the cover of this came out so incredibly cool I'm really going to be enjoying Learning how to do some faith journaling and some bible journaling in this book and I'm really excited to get started So I hope you enjoyed this I'm going to leave you some links here in the next screen with a couple of Videos that are part of my faith book series So I've been once a month sharing something faith related if you want to watch any of those And otherwise you can subscribe if you want to get more videos from me on all kinds of card making and crafty and artsy topics See more on the blog by clicking there. You could find me on just about any social as sandy all knock And I guess that's about it. I will put some links to laura's Videos in the description down below so you can check them out and I'll see you guys next time. Thanks. Bye