Yearly Jottings and Musings Mini Book

Happy New Year Everyone! 

May I wish you all a peaceful, healthy and crafty 2019.

And what better way to kick off the New Year than to share my inspiration for the Mini Album Makers Challenge with a jottings book for 2019 - all those little things the grandchildren say, quotes found, tips and tricks ....... I always mean to make one every year!

As always we are starting of the new year and a new month with a new challenge at Mini Album Makers. Do hop on over as my teamies have some amazing inspirational books to share with you all.

Here are a few close up details of my year book before I share the story of how it came about ....

And so to the story: Back in September last year Shetland Scrapbookers had a Layout and Colour Challenge.

I decided to use the layout to make a 6" x 6" cover for a book rather than a 12 x 12 layout (using some much loved Graphic 45 papers) but when I came to make the book I was a bit stumped as to what to do with it.

The embellishments and layers of paper were  too close to the edges of the board to use the Bind It All and I was struggling to get the covers to fit with the idea of Coptic Stitched Signatures.  And then ...... bingo ...... I suddenly realised that Eileen Hull had the answer.

I love how her little Passport Die has a separate spine with holes to attach the signatures. The Passport Die was too small to use on these covers, but I used the same idea and made a binder of my own.

You can see that it works well, but ..... the board cracked as I had to fold it myself rather than have a neatly marked fold line courtesy of the die.

Undeterred I carried on and got my signatures sewn into the binder.

 My signatures were made from these large sheets of Acrylic Papers with a linen finish (my husband is a fabulous pencil artist and bought these papers by mistake). The individual pages are huge and I was able to cut three folded pieces from one sheet. And they will be lovely to write on too.

I stuck my covers onto the spine with a good wide sticky tape but still didn't know what to do about those horrible cracks.

Then husband to the rescue again !!! with this lovely malleable fabric like paper (he bought it for covering the base of wooden articles but it was too slippery). It is really difficult to describe it but it cuts without fraying or leaving a white edge and folds around the spine beautifully. I wish I could buy some more!

 It wasn't quite the right colour but I can live with that!

I punched some holes in the board covers to make an elastic closure ...... book finished all ready for writing in.

I am very pleased that I kept going with this project as it has turned out really well and for once I have a book ready made for the year's jottings and findings.

As always thank you all for joining me and I hope you are all enjoying the 

first day of the New Year.

Jennie x