Nostalgic Victorian Christmas

Hello all and thanks for taking the time to drop in here at this busy time of year!!
As you may know the theme this month at the Countryview Crafts Challenge blog is Nostalgic Christmas and today is the time to show you my second design team piece, - a little mini book.

Regulars will know that I love making mini books, and this time I thought I would share in more detail one of my favourite ways to make these little books, just out of one piece of 12 x 12" card stock. I used Kraft card, but any card can be used, though it's best if it is two sided card stock.

Here is how to do it:
1. Take a piece of 12 x 12 and score horizontally at 6".
2. Turn the card 90 degrees and score at 4" and 8".
3. Turn the card back to its original position and cut along the line between 1 & 4 and 3 & 6 up to the middle score line as shown on the diagram above.
4. Start folding like this: Fold panel 1 up to panel 2, then fold both behind panel 3, then fold them down to 4, then behind panel 5 and finally up to panel 6.
5. Turn it sideways so the spine is on the left, - panel 1 is single and will form part of the cover; 2 and 3 are together and can be glued at the top to make a little pocket, or glued together completely for a thicker page; panel 5 and 4 are together and can be glued at the bottom, to form another pocket, or be glued down complete again, finally panel 6 is single again and will form the back cover. If you want you can do exactly the same again to make a fatter book, but I left mine just with one piece of card and made two pockets for tags as described.

This may all sound very complicated, but really when you do it its very easy

Now to the cover:

The outside cover was made separately out of 3 bits of card:
2 bits cut to 4.25 by 6.25 for the front and the back, and a piece for the spine. The spine needs to be the same height as the book, so 4.25, and needs to be scored with about a quarter of an inch gullet to fit comfortable around the booklet, the outer ends can be as wide as you want and you can even give them a decorative edge. As this whole little book was quite ornate, I decided to keep the spine simple, it was cut to 4.25 by 2.25 and scored 1" from each side along the 2.25 side to leave a quarter " channel.

Right, that's the basic construction done you'll be glad to hear. I'll show now you pictures of how I decorated my inside pages, using bits of paper from my stash, vintage images (for the nostalgic feel) and lots of stenciling and background stamping.

Most of the stamps I used were from Tim Holtz and are all available at Countryview Crafts.
Here is the back cover still:

The little book is a gift for a friend who requested one and will soon be on its way to her.
Here are a couple of little tags still to fit inside the pockets:

The booklet closes with a ribbon that I glued down before adhering the covers to the end panels (1 and 6). I embossed the actual spine with a snow flake  embossing folder and then highlighted the raised bits with Treasure Gold.

Hope you'll pop over to Countryview Challenges and play along with us, and of course make sure you check out the fantastic projects from my team mates too!!
Have a good rest of the week and don't get too stressed, Christmas is meant to be a time of peace and joy!

xxx