Thursday 2 September 2010

1st Mini-Book!

I made my first mini-book! Well, I made an anniversary book for my parents back in March - but that was more of a photograph album with a few added extras. I altered a notebook for my daughter to use as a special diary... but this book I made from scratch, and I'm quite pleased with it so far (not quite finished yet).
The book is based on a tutorial by Laura at Follow The Paper Trail, though she uses envelopes to make pages, and I cut and folded 12x12 pages for everything. I chose the Urban Couture collection from Basic Grey, as I liked the earthy tones and the distressed appearance of the pages. The actual outer of the book is made from a cereal box (cut up and doubled up) as I didn't have thin chipboard handy :) Each page has a flap added to it, which I decided to use as double thickness so that it was sturdier and I was also able to use the off-cuts left over from the construction of the pages.

Each page also has a little file made from scrapping paper and decorated with a tab made from the leftover cuts of Basic Grey papers. Each flap and file was inked with Walnut Stain Distress Ink. The construction from beginning to as it is now took all day - without special dies and handy envelopes to cut up, it was a little fiddly... but thoroughly enjoyable - except for the broken nail I suffered :( So please excuse the state of my short nails showing in any photograph - I'm thoroughly embarrassed about my nails *lol* I'll be adding journalling slips and flowers, ribbon, and swirly inking on the files too... all ready for a few photographs (have no idea which ones yet though!). The ribbons and charms (and even tassels) used to decorate the binding outer edge are all from my stash drawer... I've been waiting to use the little key charms for so long now - I used to have them dangling from my mobile phone (cheaper than phone charms!), and there's also a mini-mini metal tag that reads: "My Heart". Awww... sweet! *lol*

2 comments:

misteejay said...

Beautiful book - you will have such fun filling it.

Toni :o)

Anonymous said...

Gorgeous book Sheleen, I love your choice of papers.