My beach bag book

Made from brown paper bags - but you'd never know it! The cover is a true collage of beach stuff....take a moment to look around!



Notice the diecut palm tree in the back? Crafty Secrets stickers over Design Original paper.



I love putting things in bottles. Like little seashells here, but the 2 shells to the right of the bottle are polymer clay covered with perfect pearls. The sandals - coated with alcohol ink to alter the color. See the glass bead fish to the right of them? And the bead below the botttle to the left, petrified reed from Sugar Creek in Indiana.



Drop swarovsky flat-backed crystals along the rim of a flattened bottlecap and cover the whole thing with glossy accents. Such a fun embellishment!



These were brown sandals on the end of a keychain I bought in Ensenada, Mexico. Used rainbow inks to color them.



Did you see that instead of a cork stopper, I used a seashell for the stopper in the bottle?



And then under all of this, note the big (giant) jute fish net?



The windows on the right open up. Seashore paper behind an acrylic window, all raised with mounted foam tape to make a shaker box filled with real sand and tiny seashells:



At the seashore we listen to the waves
stick our toes in the sand....as a starfish misbehaves!

The photo frame in the top left is spellbinders tag die folded in half and cut. The feet at the bottom is one mystery die, using the mirror embossing technique.



at the seashore- sand dollars in our hand
buckets and shovels, too, We'll build castles in the sand.

A real sand dollar chalked (great technique!), and more spellbinders dies. Love this Design Originals paper with Crafty Secrets stickers.



At the sea shore, we write down what we do.
We sit and rest and chat...and take photos of us, too.

More diecuts, ready for you to add a photo. There's a pocket and in it is an accordian "photo album" ready for you to embellish.




Most people just do flat pages in a paper bag book, but depending on how you cut and fold the bag, you can get fold out pages and more. This is folded shut.....



And here it is open. I even put a shaker box filled with sand, shells and trinkets inside this page:

At the seashore, it's so much fun to play...
Time is of no essence, we are only here today!



I cut out little kids and they are looking at the treasures -



And there is even a secret pocket on this page!




And then there are fold-down pages! The page on the right folds down. But yes, that is a real seahorse over on the left!



And here it is folded open.



A huge piece of mica covering travel stickers. Room to write, put photos or souveniers:



I like to cut the starfish die, bend the "legs" and put a pop dot under the center. Makes them look more real! I also put burlap pages in my beach bag books. Why? Because when you stitch this between paper, it makes it stronger and less likely the paper will tear.



Another great tip - use safety pens to attach charms to Amaco's mesh wire. Just for fun!



And while you have pockets between the pages, I decided to put pockets "in" the pages!



And finally, a lot of tags stuck down in the pockets in the bag:



I really tried to get this on published in a magazine or book, but I think it was just too "over-the-top" so I'm just going to self-publish it in my blog for you to enjoy! I know - not everyone would do a brown paper bag like this, but it sure was fun!!! Hmmm....I might just put this one up for sale on ebay one of these days!