Monday, March 29, 2010

Mini Notebooks

I have been fortunate to have had time lately to be creative and make many things. Unfortunately, I haven't made the time to post any of them. Here is a recent creation:



It looks like a deck of cards, but it is really a mini notebook.



I modified a technique I learned from Tascha here. Instead of wrapping the outside pieces of illustration board (mine is just leftover cardboard) I pasted the playing card directly to the board. The board was the same height as the playing card but was about a 1/4 inch (about 0.6 cm) wider and painted with cream acrylic paint. The playing card, obviously, will not cover the entire cardboard - leave this space to the left of the front cover and to the right on the back cover. The spine paper should be cut wide enough to cover this space (my spine paper was 5.5 inches x 1.25 inches). The inside cover paper was exactly the same size as both pieces of cardboard plus a little extra for length (you can cut off any extra later with a craft knife). The inside papers were slightly smaller than the dimensions of the book cover - just center these papers when attaching to the inside cover sheet. If you are not sure of what I am saying, watch Tascha's video and then come back and read again - I think it will be much clearer.

Even if you are not sure of what to do after watching the video and reading my ramblings - go ahead and try it. Here was my first attempt at the modified mini notebook:



Not exactly what I wanted but I was trying to learn and it helped me modify the second one even better. I actually don't like the color of the spine paper on either notebook so I plan to make a few more with some other colors. I think it's a pretty neat little notebook.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

ATC Swaps

Why I am doing this at midnight when I should be asleep? I have no real good answer for that.
Anyway, I recently stumbled across a blog in cyberspace that offered an international ATC (artist trading card) for anyone who wanted to join. Well, international really appealed to me and I love creating this with paper (if you hadn't guessed already). I'm just going to add the photos now and come back to edit and add more later. Here are the ATC's I received. Aren't they great?!




Here is some of the ATC's I sent: