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.