Minibook number two

Hello all and thanks for dropping by. Today I am sharing the first part of a second little mini I am making as a little gift for another crafty friend I am going to meet in a few weeks time. Today I will show you the cover and first double page:

This is the front cover using very similar techniques to the ones I shared about a week ago. If you missed it you can catch it here

I used Pion design papers and altered them using inks sprays texture paste and embossing.
The letters were cut with the Tim Holtz Wordplay die, using canvas paper.

Along the spine I added an extra strip of paper, for strength and to hold it all properly together. Along the side I added an embellishment cluster, using some Calico Craftparts, a few flowers and a little metal time piece.

The faux stitching is a stamp from 49and Market designed by my Shimmerz teamy Gabrielle Pollaco. The little dove was part of a TCW stencil, stencilled with Grungepaste.

The first two pages inside, using the same techniques again and papers by Pion Design. Making these little books is such a good way to use up all those bits of paper I have been hoarding...

Here is the left page. The flowers are scraps of the top layer of a paper napkin, blended into the background as much as possible.

The word explore was stenciled again, this time using a stencil by Gabriele Pollaco.

And here the other side. Again a piece of Pion Design Paper with additional elements added.

Some paper flowers chosen to blend with the background flowers.

The butterfly is from the top layer of a paper napkin again.

I embossed two corners of the paper with a strip embossing folder and highlighted the raised areas.

And here finally the back cover. I fixed some dyed seam binding underneath the cover papers, always an easy way to close a little mini book like this. And that is pretty much it for today.

Thank you for your visit and I hope that the weather where you are is a little better than it is here in Scotland at the moment. We have not had much of a summer so far.

xxxxx

Guest Design Spot for C'est Magnifique

Hello all and thanks for dropping in.
Today is the day when I can finally share some of the projects I have created using my collection of Victorian Christmas papers that I designed for C'est Magnifique.

You can get a look at all the projects I made by clicking here.
I will share some of them in more detail here on my own blog in the days to come.

Here is some detail on one of them:

It's a little mini book, made out of one piece of 12 x 12 card that  was then decorated  with my papers and embellishments found in the other C'est Magnifique December kits.

This is how I made the book:
I used some strong dark green 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.
I decided to close my book with a ribbon, so before adhering the front paper I added that as shown below:

After that the rest was fun and simple, just cut your chosen papers to size and decorate as you please. Below are some pictures of how I decorated mine:

Here is the first double page, I made sure that pages next to each other matched in colour and design more or less.

Here is a closer look at the left side, most of the elements were fussy cut from the different papers. I designed them so that they could easily be used as embellishments for cards, little books or indeed scrapbook pages.

One of the papers in the collection has lots of tags and little labels like the one above. The snow flake strip is part of the main December kit, but not on one of my papers, it belongs to a Kaiser Kraft paper that is part of the main kit.

The roses on this page are also not on my papers but are part of the kit, (you can find out the full content of all the different kits by click here)

These to pages are all from my papers again. I added some stamping with a little set of stamps that came as a freebee with a magazine.
Here finally is the back page, kept pretty simple, just some stamping added to a bit of one of the papers.

And lastly, a couple of little tags that fit inside the pockets of the little book:

Well, that's it for today, - like I said, you can see some of my other projects by going to the C'est Magnifique blog and I will post more details of those projects here in the days to come.

Thanks for your visit today, I hope you like my papers and that you are having fun creating your own festive projects!