Crafty Individuals' Quadruple Slide Mailer

I was in the mood to make something textural and I thought I would use a quadruple slide mailer. I used an image from one of the Crafty Individuals' miniatures books, People and Places, and poured UTEE from the melt pot onto it, into a cookie cutter, and removed the backing by dropping it in water and rubbing the paper away with my finger. I then glued it to the centre of the mailer and melted it again, letting some of the UTEE drip, then dropping in seed beads. I rubbed Inka Gold, from Happy Daze, onto the raised areas of the texture paste, which I also rubbed over the pink seed beads as I thought they were a bit brighter than I wanted.

For the inside of the mailer I used loads of stamps from Crafty Individuals, CI 171, 188, 182, 203, and 258, layering them up in different shades of ink. The little girl collage stamp was a present from Petra and I love her; thank you Petra! For the book text I did an experiment, which I was really pleased with. I covered some book pages with clear packaging tape and obviously it had text on both sides. I wanted something more transparent that would blend in so I popped it in a bowl of water and rubbed off the backing, so it just had one layer of text. I have done this with images before, which was a brilliant tutorial by Ali on Gingersnaps,  but not with book pages. I then applied it in little pieces using gel matte medium, which also had the effect of mattifying the shiny tape so it blended in further.

The microscope slide images are also from the People and Places book. I don't have many images of this size though - does anyone know where I can source some please? I was really pleased with my experiment here. I used the same method to rub the backing off the images so that they would look like transparencies and then adhered them to book paper using gel matte medium, so that the text showed through, but you still have the lovely colours that are part of the Crafty Individuals' design. On the second one from the left, unfortunately I let the tape touch the image before I had stretched it flat (I don't have a tape dispenser and I get in a real tangle). I was going to do another image to replace it but I quite like how it adds to the worn look! If you open up the photo I hope you can see the book text.

To finish off, I added glossy accents to the top and bottom of the slide apertures and sprinkled in some seed beads. I have a new crafty friend, Susie, who took a fancy to this whilst I was making it, so I have gifted it to her today. She said her husband hadn't understood why he had been asked to look out for microscope slides for us, so now he will know why!

Here's a photo of the slide mailer standing. As the beads are very blingy, I am entering this fot the Stamp Man challenge which is Bling it On.