I also used old dictionary pages, with words relating to each quote. I like the contrast of the formal Japanese design on the outside, that goes all grungy on the inside pages. It was really fun to create this book and super simple in terms of bookbinding techniques. I personally scored all my pages to create a gutter area for the binding. This way they are easy to flip already. This kind of binding takes up a chunk of the page on the left side, but it does make it all nice and neat. I’m realizing how easy this kind of binding is and how much more secure it is than rings, for example, for minibooks!

I love how challenges can help inspire you to create…yay! Thanks for stopping by.

My idea was to mix a grungy and loose style with the classic, rustic feel of a Tuscan lifestyle. It’s when things look sort of casual, but still so put together and detailed at the same time…European chic perhaps? So I started my page with a piece of cardstock inked up with yellow, green and brown colors – drawing from the warm colors of the photo of me and my husband. The colors gives the background a bit of texture as well as creating a horizon line, anchoring the whole page. I added a piece of white veil material for more texture then layered journaling tag shapes, corrugated cardboard and my photo together as the focal point. Then there’s the big white flower embellishment, with little bits around it to form the grouping. I included my favorite pasta shape – cellentani - to mimic the swirls of the flower along with a piece of cork and twine embellishment. These are everyday items from our Italian home – both evoking the memory of good food and drink we enjoy so much here in Italy. In the upper right hand corner you can actually see a bit of my reflection in the tag while taking the photo! It’s a golden tag recycled from a clothing purchase – I even use the original ribbon, adding a heart brad to finish it off. The last item I stuck on was the title “italia.” It’s handcut from a piece of brown cardstock, with white acrylic paint on the edges and then heat embossed with sparkly clear powder. You can see more close-ups of various spots of the page below.

Throughout the entire process I used a lot of principles I learned from Paperclipping videos. Episode 144-How to Mix Styles and episode 142-Scrapbooking With Everyday Items both come to mind, just to name a few. More than anything, I really enjoyed the process of creating with freedom, letting myself go and having fun while reminiscing a great memory. The photo was taken during a day trip to San Gimignano and we do these day trips quite often actually. It’s something I love so much about living here in Italy. There’s always something to explore, something new to see and so much story and history in everything around us. I soon realized that Italy just changed my perspective on life. I’m sure it was a combination of many life changes, but now I see all the visual delights around me and have learned to indulge in the senses…really enjoying your life to the fullest. When I look at this page that is what I will remember…the magic of this land we call “italia” that changed my life and our life together.

I used some inspiration from many of the fabulous bookmakers out there and added some leather strips to my cardboard book covers, sewing up the book quickly and roughly. You can tell it’s a bit roughly done – I didn’t measure anything because I was just entranced in making what was in my mind – a real thing.

I’m really surprised how nicely it came together with little planning and have realized that over time I am liking the grungy look more and more. I suppose it comes a bit naturally if you start to use more recycled materials. For example, I never buy chipboard or bookboard…I just use cardboard, food boxes, backing of notepads, etc. My task now is to embellishment this eclectic book in a fashion that contrasts with the rough and tough look it currently has. Pretty bright flowers perhaps? White lace? One thing I noticed was the ripping of the cardboard to expose the inner textured part results in a lot of linting…I’m not sure if I did something wrong or if I have to spray fixative on it. If anyone has tips, please let me know!

First of all…mini albums are just uber cool. I’m not worried about archival issues and I want it to be touchable and explorable for kids and adults alike. The size makes it a less challenging project as well. I used papers from an Ikea stationery set and just printed out photos at home.

This mini album is just select fun times when we were in the USA. Disneyland was a big component of our fun times. Partly because I worked for Disney and we went there for free all the time

The little tags come out from the inside of the flattened tubes. It was a bit tricky because I had flattened them out so well and glued paper over that it was hard to stick tags in! I actually used my bone folder to “stretch” out the openings a bit.

The book “pages” are just tied into the binding. Pretty simple way to bind the book which I like more because I’m not a fan of loose rings. Besides the fact that I like bookbinding anyway, I like to have the solid structure where pages stay together nicely.

The size of the mini is perfect as well. Not only for adults, but I think it would be attractive for kids to flip through…I cannot gush enough about my discovery of tissue paper roll minis. Where have I been, right?!

The binding just has scrap cloth tied around. It’s nice decoration, but also strengthens the binding and keeps each of the pages separated a bit too. Overall, it was a fun process with a pretty result. Time to share with peeps… Hope you enjoyed seeing a bit of my mini. I will definitely be making more with the tissue paper rolls I’ve been saving! Check out my post about crazy for mini’s competition as well…

I combined a bunch of the stamp in the set to create my card and the coolest part I think is using the star-like tiny stamp to create the grass pattern at the bottom. There was some extra space in the upper left hand corner, so I added a sun from my other stamps as well – Aladine stamp. Then I colored with colored pencils and added the stitching border with a copic marker. Pretty simple, pretty cute, right? Thanks for visiting!

So I created the various pages that will be bound together somehow, haven’t decided what type of binding yet.  The cover is using some traditional Florentine paper I bought in town – I have rolls and rolls I really should use so it seemed like a great opportunity. I just put some text together for the title and printed that out. The year “2010″ is printed out and embossed with sparkly powder twice. There’s also the strip of photos of me being silly…If you haven’t already seen LaPhotoCabine – check that website out to take photos of yourself in the old photobooth fashion. I added a piece of cork and ribbon embellishments. Not sure what else I’ll add…I don’t think it’s done yet!

The inside pages have the bottom wrapped with a text-designed kraft paper – something I designed and offered for download in an old post…one of my favorites! I’m planning for it to be a pocket to store ephemera or it can just be part of the background if I have nothing to stick into it. The tabs at the bottom are for labeling the days, cute from an old Italian book of lucky numbers from dreams – bizarre!

For journaling, I made little journaling rectangles, even though it doesn’t provide much space I realized afterwards. My photos will be digital photo collages that I can do on the computer and print out to add…maybe journaling can be incorporated in that. Everything is very earthy, brown kraft paper style. I plan to use some simple stamping and if I can slice more cork thinly enough to make them into button embellishments. I don’t want it to become too thick though, I like books to be storable as books and not bulging madly. We’ll see how it goes! Are you participating and making preparations, as well? I wonder how folks plan to tackle this project!?

For this first card, I printed out the background image as is in black. I decided to brush some watercolor on the edges to accent the rectangle as a frame and also to hide a bit of my crooked cutting! The sentiment I created myself because it’s super easy to create your own using any word processing program and all the font variations, sizes and placements to come up with something that works for you. My owl image was colored with copics and I quickly put this together for a simple sweet card to send home.

In this next card, I used the same background image but gave it a light blue color before printing out. It’s easy to change the color of an item by adding the overlay color effect in Photoshop. After printing and trimming to size, I inked the edges with a matching blue color, again to hide the crooked cutting I often do and also to accent the edge to frame my digital stamp. My owly stamp here was blown up pretty big for a dramatic focal point to my card and again I made my own sentiment – as you might have noticed I went for “owl-ish” sentiments.

In this next example, I printed out a colored version of the background image, but this time used it with the text on it’s side. It’s okay to use lettered backgrounds in this way, because you don’t really need folks to read it – the design is a decorative element. I put some eyelets in the corners to create my framed background and wrapped ribbon around to go along with my text as decorative lines up and down. My owly is copic colored and the sentiment was created in Photoshop and printed out, same as all other cards. The hearts I punched out from red patterned paper, super easy and cute!

Finally, I created this collage card using the same digital background but printed lighter…transparency is another element of a design you can vary to change up the same graphic. I put the image at 50% transparency before printing it out. The other elements of this card were simply collage pieces of scrap paper freehand cut to create the scene and I distressed the edges of paper or add stitching lines with a white gel pen to give it a finished look. These border techniques help to hide any crooked cutting and eliminate that raw look or cut paper. I used copic coloring again for the cut-out owly digital stamp and wrote up that sentiment in my “owlish” manner to match! I hope you have seen the variations possible using the same background image and I’m sure you can imagine the combinations possible if you mixed sizing, color, transparency, inking and all those variations combined.  Thanks for stopping by and have fun using and reusing your digital elements.