Book to hold "In this House" Swap

Spent the morning clearing up my crafting area, which was piled up with all sorts of things. Came across the House pages I received in a swap last year with the Chunky Book Artist group, and realized I hadn't made a holder for them yet. I decided to create a book to hold the pages and went for a neighborhood feel. Cut out a double house shape for the back out of rigid cardboard, and two fence shapes out of grungeboard. Both sides of all of these were painted with a light, bright green acrylic paint. On the back piece, I used a tool to scrape off some of the paint and waited for it all to dry.
I used a variety of StazOn and Brilliance inks to stamp images on the the back cover.

I covered the front covers with a very thick layer of Distress crackle paint using a Popsicle stick to layer on the crackle paint and let it dry. The thicker the layer of crackle paint, the more the crackles will appear.

Found the grungeboard very hard to run through the Cuttlebug, especially with the thick layers of paint added. Ended up using the thick base and just the one C plate. Wasn't the deep embossing I usually get, but there was enough of a raised area to highlight with green Brilliance ink. Also used this ink to color the edges. Thankful I didn't break my machine.

Used the Zutter Bind-it-All to put the book together, with half the pages attached to the left side and half attached to the right side. I attached two gorgeous dominoes with shrink plastic images made by Sweetpea to the front "fence".

Book with front "fences" open. The pages in the front are the ones I made for the swap. "House of Blues" on the left and "Bird House" on the right.

Middle of the book, I like how this binding on both sides gives the look of a village when opened up. Here's a peek at some of the gorgeous house pages I received in the swap.

Book with all the pages opened:

Back of book. Down with the same color inks as on the reverse side, without the black and copper images.

Glad I finally made this project, and all the house pages are easy to see.