Sunday 21 April 2013

Altered CD Case






I enjoyed making the altered notebook which is posted here so much that it gave me the desire to alter a CD case that I keep in my kitchen.



I'll show you how after the cut.


I started with this:

 Yuck.

I love dragonflies so I found an image I liked and transferred it onto cotton fabric which I cut about two inches larger than the case when it was opened flat.

I wanted a shabby look so I dyed the fabric in a tea bath.

I used five teaspoons of loose tea and about four cups of boiled water and let it sit about fifteen minutes.  I let it air dry on the clothesline.


 Then I stitched the veins of the wings with metallic thread to give it a bit of a lifelike look.

I left the cloth balled up to wrinkle even more, then splattered it with various wood stains, and even sat a drippy coffee mug down in a few places to get coffee stain rings on the fabric.

I sprayed adhesive glue all over the cover of the case and then carefully pressed the fabric onto it, making sure that it was lined up well.

I sewed the fabric onto the case with heavy duty thread, and I needed pliers to feed the needle through.  Using the point of a toothpick and black acrylic paint, I added dotty looking splatter.

I collected embellishments, stitched a design on the lower right corner, made some twine flowers, and glued them all down.  I typed out my all time favourite song lyric from Blue Rodeo and glued that down, then added coins with the year my son and I were born.


 And that's it.

Or that was it until I decided that the hinges I had been aging in a sea salt/cider vinegar process would be a nice addition, so I jumped in and stuck them on too.  I cut the heads off of rusty nails and glued them over the holes where the screws normally go.

Also, I added the Chinese character for 'love' just below one of the hinges. 



6 comments:

  1. Linda,
    You sure have a knack for turning sometime blah into beautiful! Love the new cover for the CD case.

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  2. What a unique and beautiful piece!

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  3. This is truly beautiful. Thanks for sharing!

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  4. This is also fantastic! I really love the detailed step by step. I enjoy things like this, but I can never figure out how to do them, myself, from just looking at an end results picture!

    Natashalh

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  5. This is absolutely gorgeous! You have such a creative mind. Thank you for posting how you did this project.

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