I found a wonderful tutorial from an amazing artist, that showed how to make a cute, little mini album, posted by Paula at http://www.2gypsygirls.com/! It is made using sticky back canvas! I absolutely fell in love with it and decided to try my hand at it with a few modifications!
First of all, though I love her blue colors, I will be making this album for me, to document my 50th year of life starting on Sunday November 25th, and so I HAD to make it using my favorite color: ORANGE!!!
Modification #2: I do not (yet) own the Sizzix Tim Holtz Alterations pocket die, so I had to use another one that I do own, and that one makes library cards, so I decided that I would use them as folders.
Modification #3: I wanted to make enough folders for all 12 months of my new year of life! I love pockets and I wanted a place to put all my ephemera until I could write about it or collage it! Paula used 5 inserts and sewed them into her canvas covers.
With the 12 pockets I intended to make for my book, I quickly discovered that Paula's mini was too mini for me. So I decided to make mine totally different!!! I made my covers 4 1/4 by 5 1/2 inches so I could cut my 8 1/2 by 11 sticky back right down the middle on the 11 inch side. I now had two 4 1/4 X 11 inch pieces and I cut those in half ending up with a total of four 4 1/4 by 5 1/2 pieces of canvas.
Modification #4: I took out my stains, of which I only have four, and not in the colors that Paula used, and my Dylusions inks and proceeded to squirt my craft mat, following Paula's instructions. Well that left a lot of white on my canvas, maybe because I didn't squirt enough stain or ink. I decided to just spray the canvas directly and found that my bright orange/yellows/ and reds were perfect for me, and forget the blue!
I made a cute little bookplate and added some teal ribbon and some eyelets for my cover and look how cute it turned out:
The bookplate is a Teresa Collins one that I inked with blue alcohol ink and gold patina acrylic paint, and it turned out the perfect shade of teal! The inside reads "Everyday Moments" and is a piece of cardboard packaging that I cut off of the buttons enclosed in my newest Teresa Collins Everyday Moments kit. I sewed around the canvas as Paula instructs in her tutorial. I loved, loved, loved how it turned out!!!!!
Until the following morning!!!
That was when I inserted my papers and calendars and discovered that the front and back covers were too floppy! The canvas is too thin to support all that I planned to put inside, and since I made my binding with holes for the binding rings, instead of sewing the pages into the book like Paula did, it just was not going to work for me at all!!!! I did not want to sew my book because it would severely limit me if I'd ever want to add more pages throughout the year! And I plan to live a full life, so I am SURE there will be a lot of pages added throughout the year. My pages combined so far are already one half in thick!!! I haven't even started writing on them yet, or adding my photos or other embellishments!!!!
Therefore, for a whole day after completing the book, I had Crafters Regret!!!!
I hate that!!!! I knew I could not live with it!!!!
On the second day, I awoke with a brainstorm!!!!
Why not start the covers over again, this time, with book boards that would give my book some more sturdiness. It would take a lot of work to re-do the covers, plus use more ink and sticky back canvas (which I can't find in Newark--I got mine pack of 5 sheets on my last trip to The Queen's Ink in Savage, MD in October).
But I decided it had to be done!!!
This is the end result of my new cover, which I officially finished this morning at 1 am!!!!
I am thrilled with it!!!
I took me about 8 hours to complete, but I love it it so much more!
Step-by-step guide of how I totally revamped my original piece and created my new Everyday Moments Journal:
1) I started by finding two book boards, which were very sturdy. These are thicker than regular cardstock. Don't know where I got these. I think they came as packaging with something I ordered a long time ago. Thank God I am a hoarder!!! And I knew just where I had these, just waiting for the perfect project. They measure 4 1/2 X 6 1/2, so they are actually a little bigger than my original covers. I like this size much better because now I will be able to use tons of pages from my 6X6 pads of patterned papers, and just cut them down to 4 1/2 X 6. If I wanted to put a standard pic on the page, I now can easily since most standard prints are 4X6.
3) I before I finished the wrapping, I remembered to round the corners using the 1/4 side of my Corner Chomper. That tool cut through my heavy-duty card board like butter!!! So did the Crop-A-Dile I used to punch out my binder ring holes! I wanted the hole punched out before adhering the cover in case the canvas was going to be hard to get through with the Crop-A-Dile. It worked fine that way! Here is what the book covers look like before making the hole for the rings:
Here is what the covers look like after the holes were made:
4) Now comes the fun part: I wanted to ink my canvas with the same vibrant colors as on the first project, with the addition of teal. I knew that if I used the blue, it would blend just right with the oranges and yellows. I also wanted a bright fushia, but that ended up blending also and it just made another shade of orange. That ultimately was fine with me, because orange is the happiest color on earth!!!!5) At this point in the evening, it was about 10:30 pm, and I frankly got so messy with paint on my hands, that I didn't want to touch my camera. My sink is upstairs so I decided to apply all my paints before heading up to wash my palettes, brushes, stencils and hands.
Here are two pics of the front and back covers of my new journal.
6) I used a variety of acrylic paints on top of my Crafters Workshop stencils (chicken wire and bird cage). The brick stencil is a Wendi Vecchi one that I just love. The stars stencil is from Dyan Reavely. I put the paint on very thick with some coarse texture multi medium, so that it would give the cover not only texture, but also a more 3-D effect. It worked perfectly. After everything was dry, I went back and outlined the cover with my Scarlet Lime black pen from Christy Tomlinson. I will do the back too, but by the time I finished, I was very sleepy! It was almost 1 am!
7) Here is a view of some of my pages. I worked on cutting these and assembling them while the covers dried (every time I inked or used a stencil with paint, the covers had to dry before I could continue with the next layer of stenciling or painting).
This page has an opening at the top and the tab that has the flower and the word DREAM, is only adhered on the right and bottom edge, so it also serves as a pocket. I have already journaled about my big Creating Keepsakes University Teaching Assistant job earlier this month, but I wanted to keep that journaling private, so I will print out the two page document and fold it and insert it into this orange DREAM pocket. I will attach the ephemera from my trip, to the front of the page.
The page below is really cute, from the My Mind's Eye Miss Caroline collection. There is a saying at the bottom that reads, "start each day with a smile." The lady in green is cut from a Crate Paper paper of various tags.
Here are some more pages I completed using paper lines from those listed above as well as Basic Grey, Websters pages, and Teresa Collins Everyday Moments.
Here is one of the blank calendar pages from Heidi Swapp--I bought a kit from her for yet another project ( a memory display stand) and she had the calendar pages as a free download. They are gorgeous. Here's the link to her blog: http://www.heidiswapp.com/weekend-recap-and-a-calendar-freebie/. I used a Stampendous Calendar set to stamp the months on all 12 sheets. And, obviously, I have yet to complete this page with the days of the weeks and my details!
I have greatly enjoyed sharing this guide with you and hope that you get inspired to Shine Your Light in your own projects and then come share them with me!
I am off to Shine my Light through a new project for our family's Thanksgiving feast in 2 days. I hope to share that soon!
Till then, blessings galore to you and your family! May God's abundance flow to you and may you always remember to give thanks to the Giver of good things!!!
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