A is for.... Acrylic (book covers and inks)

This 3 x 3" book has acrylic pieces for the book covers. The back cover is exactly like the front and the book is filled with some blank white card stock that the recipient will be able to do with as she wishes. The acrylic pieces came with 3 small holes punched in them, but I needed to make the holes a bit larger to fit the black rings. I used my Crop-A-Dile to punch in the existing holes and was disappointed when the acrylic cracked a little around the holes. I was almost ready to give up and try something else, but luckily I kept going with the project. Once the backing is on the covers the cracks in the acrylic are not as visible.
I stamped the image (Stamp Zia) with black stazon ink onto the inside of each cover and then zapped with a heat gun to make sure they were dry. I wasn't happy that the acrylic pieces warped slightly from the heat! Then I painted the image with various colors of acrylic paints, again on the inside of the covers. I let the acrylic paint dry overnight; I didn't want to use more heat on these covers and ruin them completely. The next step was to apply embossing ink to the entire inside of each cover, sprinkle with embossing powder (I used kaleidoscope, a transparent powder), and heat. I was careful with the heat gun, but needed to make sure that all the powder melted. After that cooled I cut 2 pieces of shimmery blue card stock to fit the covers and adhered them with diamond glaze.
I cut pieces of white card stock for the pages and punched holes to match those on the covers. The black rings you see are made of rubber; I found them at the local Home Depot store. They are located by the paint swatches and are to be used for gathering all your paint swatches together. They pop open and closed easily so it will be easy for the recipient of this book to take it apart when she wants to decorate the inner pages of the book.