Annie's Little Square Book

Now that she has it in her hands, I can show the little book that I made for Annie/Wipso and posted off last weekend.  Jo of Jozart has no idea what she has started... our Annie, creator of all sorts of lovely sewing projects, got a tag book from Jo to put her WOYWW ATC's in... and Annie had a go at making one and has now joined us on the dark side making mini books!

Whilst chatting on facebook I offered to show her how to make a few of my favourite minis and Annie decided that she would like to try this version... so I made this one up and sent her the destructions.

It is an easy mini and opens up as a display book but if anyone had been a fly on the wall the other night when Annie was trying to put hers together... let's say Tenna pads were an additional requirement I hadn't thought about at gone midnight and a continent away for this particular one on one class!  Annie was making frogs and pyramids... I know, I was impressed too, but what she was trying for was the fold that makes the little pocket on each corner page!

Each of the four pages are attached together with the little pocket for tags 

and for a little mini you have quite a lot of real estate for putting photos and journaling.

If you fancy trying one for yourself you can find the instructions here.

Cybercrop Class with extra mini

The Secret Diary of a Well-Travelled Lady

UKScrappers are having a cybercrop and I was asked to do a tutorial so surprise, surprise, I chose to make a minibook.... and I had a couple of those matchboxes sitting there so made this.  Now don't laugh, but I actually shipped those matchboxes from Canada to Scotland and if you had seen the look on the face of the guy that was packing the scraproom when he pointed out that I wouldn't be allowed to pack matches... when I promptly emptied the contents into the bin and told him I only wanted the actual matchboxes anyway!!

Inside one of the matchboxes is a smaller mini and the instructions for making it are:

You will need:

2 chipboard covers 4" x 2 1/4"

8 pages 3 3/4" x 4 1/4" of single sided patterned paper

Offcuts for the tags

Ribbon, buttons, flowers etc for decorating.

Cover the fronts and backs of your chipboard covers.  Sand the edges and then ink them.

Fold the cut pages in half and put double sided tape at the top and bottom on each back. 

The centres need to free of tape so that you can put tags into the pockets that are formed when you attach the pages to each other.

Attach each of the pages to the next one so that you end up with double thickness pages except for the first and the last... these will be attached to the inside of the front cover and back cover.

Make small tags and decorate them.

I used my circle punch and cut little semi circles on the pages to make inserting the tags easier.

Decorate your pages and front cover with ribbons etc.

Insert your little mini into the matchbox of your larger version.

Your done!! 

WOYWW and Yellow Pages Fairy Tutorial

This could be regarded as a bonus feature or whatever the opposite is to a bonus feature... but it is Wednesday which means that it's that time to reveal desks in all their gory detail to be perused by like minded souls and you can find all the details at the desk of our leader, Julia.

So on my work desk is an empty cup of tea.... where's a good tea making fairy when you need one?? Also there is the pile of freshly cut golden dress forms ready to be turned into Yellow Pages fairies!! Looking at my green mat I think a new one could be top of my Christmas list... it is looking decidedly grim with ink and cut marks!

So Neet asked if there was a tutorial for making the Yellow Page dress forms and as I have 9 of them to make I thought I might as well document it so if anyone wants to have a play, they can!!

Yellow Pages Fairy Dress Form

You will need:

 to 'borrow' a copy of the Yellow Pages from somewhere.

 a Tim Holtz Sewing Room Die

a butterfly die

a Cuttlebug

a glue stick

Glimmer Mist

Inks or metallic felt tip pen

Grab your Yellow Pages and cut strips about 3” wide from your chosen pages.  Do not feel bad about the Yellow Pages, this is a form of recycling... you Google everything you want to know anyways!!

If you are making one fairy you will need about 25-30 Yellow Page forms and one chipboard base form. I found that about 10 forms of the Yellow Pages can be cut at once without any problem at all.

Cover chipboard base with your chosen paper... I used a piece of the Yellow Pages for my original one because you really aren’t going to see very much of it. If you use a glue stick and stick the paper to the chipboard and then put it through the Cuttlebug you get a perfect cut out already papered... you can choose to cut both individually and faff about getting it on their perfectly if you wish but I have 9 of these to make...

Cut the stand and the little nob at the top off of your paper dress forms leaving yourself with a torso. oooh, that sounds all CSI and grim...

Take a slurp of your Capuccino Mocha and tell yourself that a few hundred of these dress forms will be a piece of cake (go get yourself a piece of cake if it helps and whilst you are in the kitchen get me a piece too)!

I tried inking the edges and it was a bit hit or miss.... the paper is very thin so I opted to using a copper marker and drawing around the edge of the forms.... all of them... (then take a painkiller because your tendonitis is really giving you jip at this point)...

Once you have your lovely little pile of outlined forms you can start!!

Fold each one in half longways...

Get your glue stick and take the first YP form... run glue stick along the straight edge... not too wide or your pages will glue together and that is not the look we are going for...

Put next form on top and then glue stick that along the straight edge... and keep going until you have done all  of them... you will find that you have excess glue stickiness along the border and this is good... it helps to hold it all in place.

Place your pile of body forms on the centre line of your chipboard form, it will sort of stay in place because of the excess glue ;)

Fold out the bottom right hand half of your pile and glue onto the chipboard form.  Do the same for the left hand side and now your pile will splay out evenly. Voila!!

I used a butterfly die cut in half for wings and glittered them up a little and attached them to the back of the fairy.

You can now decorate it as you wish... a little Glimmer Mist sprayed over it adds sparkle.

You now have your Yellow Pages Fairy... and I have 8 more to make...