Spring is in the air, a short tutorial with another freebie

 Hello friends, hope you are keeping well!

Here in Edinburgh Scotland, where I live, it is slowly turning warmer and there is a first feeling of spring in the air. This inspired me to create another paper collection, which I have called "Spring is in the Air", and like usual I have created a project tutorial and a freebie for you to enjoy. Let's start with the projects:

This is a little folder with two pockets and space to hold a little notebook or journal inside. They are good fun to do, in fact I enjoyed it so much I made two, just a little different from one another. They would make a great little gift for someone, just a bit more elaborate than a card, and who would not want to receive a special little gift made by you?

Here is the second one, just a little bit different from the outside, but made in exactly the same way. Below you can see what they look like from the inside. The elastics in the middle are there so you can slide the notebook underneath.

This is the one, it has a little tuck spot that can hold a bookmark or something in the flap.

This is the other one with the flap on the other side. Below are some instructions on how to put it together:

Project instructions:

This is what you need: I made mine out of a piece of mat board that was 12 by 12 inches, but you could make it equally well out of a piece of A4 strong card, or by slightly adjusting the sizes out of 81/2 by 11 card.

The bit that will make the cover is cut to 11 3/4" by 6 1/2" and scored at 4 1/2, 4 5/8 and 4 3/4; - so 3 score lines with 1/8 between them, this is to provide a slight curve when folded with space to hold the things inside. Then you score again at 9 1/8, 9 1/4 and 9 3/8  the space that is left is for the flap. I rounded the corners, but that is not needed, I just like the look of it. For the pockets you need 2 pieces of 3 1/4 by 4 1/2 . Cut at an angle by measuring 2 1/2 along the short side, making a mark and then cutting a straight diagonal edge to the bottom corner. For the closure you need to cut 4 larger (I used a 1" circle punch) and 6 smaller circles. Glue 2 larger and 3 smaller ones on top of one another like a little tower. The smaller ones will "lift" the larger ones from the backing, to provide the space for your ribbon or twine closures. Once everything is covered with paper they are then fitted to the cover with the help of eyelets. There are many tutorials on YouTube on how to do this, here is a link to one. I decided to round the corners of my pockets, as they are cut at an angle, you can't do that with a corner rounder punch, so I just used one of the circles to draw around.

 
After your basic construction is done, all you need to do is cover it all with papers of your choice. As I said at the start I used the Spring is in the Air collection that matches the freebie, but obviously you can use any papers you like.

The little book that fits inside is made from papers that are approx. 5 3/4 by 5 3/4  folded in half and then stitched together with a simple 3 hole pamphlet stitch. I always like to zig-zag around my projects, but of course that is totally optional. There are about 4 or 5 double pages, some design and some coffee stained as you can see below.

Below just a few close ups still, I decorated with a mix of embellishments of the freebie and the collection and some laces and cheese cloth.

                            And here are some of the tags still that I made to fit in the pockets. They are just made with left over bits of the paper and then decorated in a similar way as the pockets of the folders.

And now for the freebie, like usual, if you want the full resolution for printing please email me as the file is too large to add to a blog. All you need to do is CLICK HERE

Well, that's it for today. Thanks for your visit and happy crafting!

xxxxx