Train Lover vs. Bookworm

My best friend, Carol, is a bookworm... can that woman read!!!... vs....
Her husband, Tom.... he loves trains!!

My dilemma .... what to do for an anniversary gift and card? I had to give this some thought, especially since for the last several years, no, for all of them (LOL!) I've made mostly "girly" cards. So I had to finally take Tom into consideration as well (sigh!) After all, it is his anniversary, too!

What to do, what to do?.... I had already decided that I wanted to give Carol a gift card to Barnes & Noble (she likes to go in there and just smell the new books before shopping... sniff, sniff!... I guess sort of how my hubby likes to go into Wilson's and just smell the leather! LOL!). And if our area had a train museum or something, I would have gotten Tom a gift card to go there, but, alas, nothing of the sort in the area :(

.... the closest thing to anything transportation here is Cadillac Ranch, and that's FREE! Although, we do have trains running through town. I hear their whistles all the time. But I couldn't just send Tom out to the tracks to watch trains, even with good advice 'not to play on the tracks', could I?
So what's a girl to do?

THIS:

I decided to cover a paper mache "BOOK" box for Carol

and do the matching card with Tom in mind.

I've had this CTMH Sweet Home paper for some time now (it's retired). When I saw the paper mache book, I knew I had to cover it in this paper, because for some reason, the striped B&T patterned paper reminded me of story books my Grandmother had when we were growing up. Each book had 3 or 4 stories in them, and those stripes just brought back good memories for me :)

I attached the paper to the box with Mod Podge for Paper, letting each section dry thoroughly before moving on. It was pretty time-consuming to get all the pieces just right, because I had to line up the front cover's side binding with the back side (I'm OCD that way!!) and I went up and over all the edges with the papers. It probably would have been a whole lot easier

to just put the paper to the edges, and color the edges with matching markers!!!

When the paper was done, I covered the entire outside of the box, in stages, with a layer of the Paper Mod Podge... I like it better than the regular, because it's a lot less tacky when dry.

I thought the card turned out well. I got the idea for it on SCS... you can see it here. I found the train image online and printed it out with the sentiment,

in Indian Corn Blue (using RGB codes), above it. I inked all the edges of the pieces before glueing them together. I even inked, lightly over the sentiment, my own "steam" coming from the train stack, which helped give the illusion the train was in motion.

I made Carol a matching bookmark, and put everyting inside the book box, including the card, for them to open.  I added a "Discover" gift card for Tom, so he could use it for anything his heart desired, as long as the entity accepted Discover!

Here's some more photos of the project:

The spine I did with the striped paper. I cut all those pieces separate

because the "leather strips" were bumped up on the box.

All I did to make the 'leather' was color the bumps with several layers of the

CTMH Barn Red marker (old style), right on the paper mache.

It worked perfectly!

Carol loved this yellow B&T in this set, so I decided to do the inside with it.

If you look closely at the bookmark (or click to see bigger image),

you can see how I lined up the skinny blue strips with the yellow pattern.

That blue print was on the backside of the yellow in the kit.

The angle of this photo is off just a little, or you'd be able to see how the

striped 'binding" lines up from the front cover with the back cover... LOL!

And of course, I used I AM ROSES for all the flowers and leaves.

A few small ones I painted with the Lindy's Stamp Gang Magical Micas,

but most are the color they came!

Also, none of the photos show it, but it sure was a challenge to cover the curved inside binding edge at the top and bottom of the spine (you know how hard-covered books have the binding slightly curved out from the actual pages of a book.... well in going up and over those edges, the cut of the paper had to be arched... a straight cut line just didn't cut the mustard!

Whew! I'm glad it's done! But all in all, it was worth the time (and trouble)!

Hope ya'll like it, too. :)