DT Project 1 by Astrid:featuring

Good morning all!

As most of you will know by now, this month we are featuring:

7 Dots Studio "Wonderland Collection"

Chocolate Baroque "The Art of Chess" stamp set

and the best of all, for you our faithful readers is that there is still a little time left to leave a comment and be in for a chance to win this fabulous stamp set!!

On to my first project this month:

I decided to make a mini journal.

The journal has an accordion fold spine and blank pages inside.

My journal has a slightly odd size, 8" by 4 1/2, but I wanted it to be small enough to fit into a bag, yet have enough space for plenty of journaling, stamping and general art fun.

To make a journal like this you need 2 pieces of chip board for the covers, a piece of strong card 12 " wide and the height of your finished journal which will have 10 pages, enough card or water colour paper cut to the size of your journal covers for the 10 pages inside, and of course papers to decorate your covers. I used "Quadrille" and "Follow the Rabbit" from the Wonderland Collection.

Here's a brief description of how to make it:

1. Once you have cut all your papers, card and chipboard, start by scoring your card for the spine every 1" and fold accordion style.

2. Cut your chosen papers 1" larger than your covers on all sides. Put your cover in the center of the paper, score around it and then cut  and glue down as shown.

3. Now cover the inside of the cover with a slightly smaller piece of the papers.

 4. Do the same with the back cover.
5. Now it is time to attach your covers and papers to the accordion folds. You can use either two sided tape or the adhesive of your choice.

6. Cut another piece of the paper to the height of your covers and wide enough to go right around the spine. You can give it a decorative edge if you want. This will hold your album together. You can see it in the pictures above and  below

7. Now comes the best part: embellishing your covers.

I created a separate piece using more of the papers, which I gessoed slightly, misted  and played around on with stencils and stitching. I then used some elements from the Wonderland stickers, some of the stamps and bits and pieces from my stash to decorate it further . Before gluing it down, I adhered some ribbon underneath in order to close the journal and did the same on the back cover, gluing the ribbon under an embellishment.

front

back

inside pages ready to journal and decorate.

Well that's it for now, I will be back later in the week to show you another project.