'Summer Travel Playing Cards' Wooden Book by Leigh Snaith-Brunton (The Sharpie Domino Queen)
Design Team Leader

Supplies:
Hinged wooden book box with magnetic closure - Tall Mouse Arts & Crafts
Woodcut Sun Rubber Stamp by All Night Media - www.allnightmedia.com
Playing Cards Rubber Stamps - unknown
White craft glue
Aleene's acrylic paint: black, burgundy, beige and gold
Gold ultra thick embossing powder - http://www.schmoozewithsuze.com
Small scoop/spoon
Heat It Gun by Ranger (embossing heat tool) - www.poshimpressions.com
No 8 soft bristle paint brush for general painting
No 0 soft bristle paint brush for fine detail
No 6 hard bristle paint brush
Kitchen towel
Pencil
Ruler
Silver wire tie
Tin snips/strong scissors
Scissors
Lunch Tin container from a super-sized domino game
Silver adhesive backed tape from Home Depot
Standard set of playing cards
Xyron with laminate-magnet cartridge
Scanner and photo manipulation software

DIRECTIONS:
Start this project by base coating the entire hinged wooden book box with black acrylic paint. Use a large soft bristle brush to ensure you get into all the corners and imperfections in the box. To give the covers of the book a faux leather look randomly dribble white craft glue all over the covers of the book and let it dry. Using a large hard bristle brush and burgundy acrylic paint, dry brush the whole of the outside of the book. Dry brushing is a ceramic decorating technique. Basically it means you dab the hard bristle brush into paint and then remove most of the paint off the brush by rubbing it in a circular motion on a piece of kitchen towel. Then brush the burgundy paint onto the surface of the book with a gentle stroke so that the paint picks up the relief of the wood and dried glue areas leaving the black paint showing in the lower sections and grooves. Apply as many coats as you wish to achieve the colour that you like. Once dry do the same thing again with beige paint. But this time only apply the beige as a highlight on certain areas of the book. Once dry, dry brush the book pages with gold acrylic paint using the same technique.

Add detail to the covers and the spine of the book with gold acrylic paint and a fine detail paint brush. Add lines to give the look of an old leather bound book and also add a title and author to the spine. Then paint the interior of the book with gold acrylic paint.

Add gold embossed detailing to the covers of the book with gold ultra thick embossing power. Start with the corners and do one at a time. Spoon the powder onto the corner and heat with a Heat It embossing tool that looks like a hair dryer. This tool has a lower blowing strength to it and will help prevent blowing the embossing powder all over the place before it has time to start melting. Once the powder is molten press a sun rubber stamp into it and leave until the molten liquid has cooled and hardened. Carefully remove the stamp and do the same to the remaining 3 corners. Then sprinkle embossing powder onto the middle of the front cover and impress an image of playing cards into the melted embossing powder. Put the book box aside.

Cut up a lunch tin container that super-sized dominoes come in. Cut 4 panels that are slightly smaller than the interior opening of the book box to make a metal playing surface. Assemble 3 of them together by coating the front and the back with silver adhesive tape. Accordion fold the assembled panels. To keep the panels folded wrap a silver wire tie around it. Glue the 4th panel to the inside of the front cover as a place to store some of the playing cards when playing.

To make the playing cards:
Lay out a standard playing card set onto a scanner. Reduce the size of the playing cards and do test prints to make sure you've got them as small as you need them. I scanned mine at 300 dpi to ensure that the detail remained sharp when reduced. Print all the playing cards out and run them through a Xyron to add laminate on the front and magnet sheeting on the back. Then cut them out. To store the playing cards when not in use make 3 bundles and wrap them with narrow bands of the same silver adhesive backed tape.

Put the folded playing surface and the playing card bundles inside the book box and you're ready to play solitaire on your travels!