Project: Small Ideas Book

On Friday, I took another wonderful class from Carol Wingert at Scrapbooks, Etc. Her project is called Little Things and involved using aluminum tape, embossing, and lots of Glimmer Mist with masks. It was a fun class, as always.

I finished creating the book today in the studio. I am going to give this book as a Christmas present for a young woman in my life. I'm going to call it Small Ideas and fill it with inspirational quotes that I believe she will appreciate. My goal today was to finish assembling the major embellishments of the book and have it ready for quotes. After I insert the quotes, I'm going to use glass glitter and a few other embellishments to gussie it up even more. I'll post pictures when it reaches that stage.

For now, here is the book almost as Carol imagined it, awaiting my quote insertions:


The book is based on a cascading accordion book. Because Carol loves things with depth and texture, the pages include things like ribbons and jeweled brads, things that force the pages open. You can see the depth from this shot.


The bird was fun to make. We started with a die cut bird and glued on a sheet of cut cardstock that looks almost like a doily. Next, we applied a strip of aluminum tape over the cut cardstock and gently embossed the metal into the cardstock design. The results are amazing. It looks like a serious piece of embossed metal. It sits on a library pocked adorned with scrap of the cut cardstock.


Inside the first spread, the right page is an envelope holding a custom made insert with a ribbon pull. I added the bracket to the left page to emphasize the butterfly in the paper.


The right page has cardstock vines in blue and brown, with the brown placed underneath to look like a shadow. We bent the blue vine a bit, and applied the butterfly brad.


The center design comes from using a mask on the open book spread and applying a couple different shades of brown Glimmer Mist. The tree and bird are die cuts from cardstock.


Here is another page done with masks and Glimmer Mist. The reflection hides the image on the right page. It's a glorious effect, though.


The right page includes another piece of aluminum tape. This time, we embossed the tape using some of the Ten Seconds metal embossing plates and the Revolution die cutting machine. It sits on top of a brown lunch page, a chipboard die cut, that is tied together with a piece of vintage seam binding. Carol had this in her stash and included it for the class kit. She is very generous and gives us so much in each kit beyond the basics of the project, often items from her personal stash.


Inside the back cover. From this angle, you can't see the accordion stacked up on the left side. On the right, we have constructed a sort of Victorian posy starting with a metal rimmed tag embellished with paper and fabric flowers, metal leaves, and ribbon.

I'm going to give two of these Small Ideas books for Christmas. I purchased the blank cascading accordion blank to start the second one. I am sure I have enough paper in my stash to make the second one using a different color scheme, perhaps in orange and red. Next, the fun of selecting the quotes and deciding how to insert the writing into the books. I plan to hand write many of them, but may also use some vellum or heat transfer for others. Can't wait to get them both to that stage.