How I Made my cover

This is how i made my cover for my mixed media art journal.  I really love how it came out.  I kept touching it..

I do need to be better at sewing the papers together (aligning wise) it was a tad off but still off enough to bother me.. LOL

I used distressed the grungepaper with TH distress ink Frayed Burlap.  

I used the TH tool at first but it was taking too long and just started using the ink pad directly onto the grungepaper then used the spongey thing to swipe the ink.. worked so much better (for me)

After the ink dried (used heat tool to help it along) i used some Tattered Angel glimmer mist (Suede)

After I had glimmer mist and inked it and i wanted a lil bit more of an orange'ish color I added another color of distressed ink to it.  I used TH's Rusty Hinge to it.  It worked for the feel i was looking for.  

In this step i used the following products to acheive the look i wanted.   More suede glimmer mist, the mustard'ish color of Gelato, the goldish color of perfect pearls which i mixed with water and used it in the mini mister.

Here's how that turned out.. I used the colors as i wanted.. I love it.

These are the stamps and other products i've used.. 

I used the clear gesso on the cover because i wanted to seal in my techniques.

Here's the cover before i sewed it together.

I had problems with my sewing machine and had to get help from my local friend to adjust my sewing machine.. 

Here's the sewing machine i used.  It's an old one.. I really like it though. It's simple. LOL

Once I sewed my two pages together I put glossy accents on the inside/outside of the book.  Being it's going to be used alot i didn't want the thread to come undone.  If you notice there's two different types of stitching it's because I couldn't figure out which one I wanted to use.

It took me a while to figure out how I wanted to do the closure.  I wanted to use the zutter closures.. But then i really loved how the texture of the grunge paper came out and didn't want to cut anymore off then I already had.  So, i just folded the excess over and made added a buttong and string type to it for closure.  I really love it.  I stamped the excess that was going to be folded over and I'm totally in love with it.

Here's the buttong i used for it.