GM5 Elements in a Niche

I am both tickled and honored to be a guest designer, along with Helen for this week's Grungy Monday Challenge. And the odd thing was, when Linda asked me to do this particular technique, I had already been planning on trying this for a unique way to display an atc swap. I guess we were on the same wave length. It all started when my friend Diana linked me up with this cute little book you can make from one sheet of 12x12 double sided paper. I thought, what a great way to hold all the atc's from a particular swap......and then I thought, how about putting 2 together and getting it to fan out and then mount on something so you could display it on the wall. I immediately thought of foam core and a niche and then I got Linda's email and I was off and running or crafting as the case may be. The 2 books I made are with some very old (10 years old, I think) text weight scrapbook paper and then glued (my first choice when gluing paper is Best Test Paper Cement--when they say it won't curl or shrink they mean it!) together in the middle. And, of course, I didn't measure that paper first and wouldn't you know one side was only 11.75 inches long so I ended up with 3 pages that were a little short on the outside edge. These are the edges I punched holes in and laced some fuzzy fibers through. After I got my niche made as per Tim's instructions, I covered all with Ideology paper and glued my book in. Now, it was time for the bling.

I edged the whole frame with some denim edging from Trims & Trinkets, not even glued, just pinned in with white headed straight pins directly into the foam core. The butterfly is from K&Company and the sparkly butterfly trail is pieced together from Recollections bling.

And finally, I used the letters from Club Scrap's Refresh collection to spell the word breathe in between the alphabet beads that spell out Elements (the title of the atc swap). These were all strung on a very thin bamboo stick taken from a placemat. All of the atcs loaded into the little book have an Elemental theme--Fire, Water, Air or Earth.

I hope you all are enjoying the Grungy Monday Challenges and don't forget to visit Helen my co-guest designer and the folks at All Things Tim. As always, I love it when you share your thoughts with me here.