Faux Book Tutorial

To write a tutorial including every instruction, every material,  every tool used and tips for achieving best results would take me forever. Especially as there are two versions of this book.
 So I have decided not to include instructions for decorating. 
Which gives you free reign on how to decorate your faux box card.

For the Economy version of this book.....

You will need 
Materials

Three A4 sheets of cream card 
I find photocopy card is best as it is thinner.

Two  A4 sheets of  sturdy card
One sheet of acetate
 Glue.

For the full Version of this book
You will need 
5 sheets of cream  card
3 sheets of sturdy card, unless you do the top frame the same colour as the pages.

Further instructions for
the full version are in the tips at the bottom of this post.

 Decorations.

charms,  feathers, lace and sticky back crystals.and a large flower or something to                                                                      act as the focal point.






Tools
Stamps and of your choice.
A score board with 1/2" markings
A Bone folder.













Cut two squares 7 x 7  inches. Using a score board score lines down both squares every 1/2 inch to the end of the card.

Cut two rectangles size 5 X 7 inches  place the these pieces of card on the score board  so the short 5" side is flush with the top of the score board.Score every 1/2 inch to the end of the card.

Begin folding the card in a concertina  fashion. Use a bone folder to crease in the folds you need folds and they should all stack up neatly. This is  an important step... if you don't have a bone folder a small rule will do the same job.

All four pieces need to be folded in  this way. 

                Take your time over this step as any mistakes will show big time.

Lay the two shorter  pieces at top and bottom of your work space and bring in the two  longer side piece as in photo. 

Make sure that you have the concertina'd pieces all the same way up.

 By that I mean the last strip on the inside of each piece should be pointing up. 

This won't work out properly if they are all pointing in different directions. 

                       

 On the last section of the bottom panel, add a small amount of glue to the corners.

Bring in the side panels and overlap the corners of the sides and end piece making sure this joint is completely square.

 Repeat this on all four corners,  keeping the corners square.

 Begin interlocking the corners, by folding one fold of the top down then fold in one fold on the right side , then the one fold in from the bottom and finally one fold in from the left. Repeat this pattern until you have folded in all the folds.

 DO NOT apply glue to these folds.

 When you reach the top  apply a small dot of glue to secure the top folds  just as you did at the start to stop it coming apart.

OH Dear!!!  My corners could have been better here .

At this point I strongly recommend you measure the overall size of the frame as you now need to cut a sheet of card exactly the same size and shape as the frame. If your frame is slightly out you'll need to compensate for that.

To make this stand out better I chose to make the surround frame a different colour, so you can see it better.

On my original card it was the same colour as the pages with some additional inking.

 Cut a panel to go in the back of the frame and decorate anyway you want.
Just be sure to leave half an inch clearance on all the edges as you will be applying glue to these edges to mount the frame onto.

When you are happy with the back panel mount the page from onto your panel Checking  it's squarely mounted

Preparing  the cover.

 This may seem like a cock-eyed way of measuring up for the  book cover,
but it works for me and I don't waste half as much card getting it wrong now.

  A4  card stock in  colour of your choice put it on the score board in landscape position. Then score at   5  1/2 inches. 

Turn the card around 90 degrees and score again at  5  1/2 inches.  

This will create  a narrow  panel  in the centre of the card just over an inch wide that will act as the spine of the book.

 Cut a sheet of good quality acetate,  slightly smaller (about 1/4 ") than the outside edge of the page/ frame.

Apply double sided tape to the edges of the acetate and position very carefully over the page/ frame. 

Do take care to get this straight and square FIRST time.

 Once the acetate is on  it will look pretty untidy so this is where the top frame come in. Add double sided tape to the back of the top frame and very carefully position over the  page frame.

Decorate the cover  to compliment the inside and s don't forget the spine.

TIPS

For a fuller, deeper book cut the two side panels to 7 inches by the length of the A4 Paper and the top and bottom panels to 5 inches by the length of the 
A4 paper. you will need to do a lot more scoring and folding and  you will need 5 sheets of  cream card  and you will need  two sheets of card for the cover which will need to be joined together at the spine of the book. 

You'll need to  measure the size of your  page frame add 1/2 inch  to both measures. then add another 1 1/2 inches for the spine. Then cut your card to this final measurement. Repeat this for the back cover of the book. 

You will have two spine panels, apply adhesive to one of the spines then overlap the spines pressing them together firmly . 

The join s will be almost invisible  and this double spine will be much stronger than the economy version.

 I have to say  the results are worth it.


To make it look more vintage sponge small amounts of  ink on the edges and folds of the pages.

To make  the flower I cut 6 flowers from quite a thick lining fabric  4 large flowers and 2 smaller ones. and held them over a burning candle until the edges of the fabric started to melt and shrivel  up  at little. then I stacked them up in a pile and stitched through all the layers and added a sparkly 
button to the centre .

The background
I did lots of over stamping, sponging and heat embossing for a vintage feel background.

A video would have been quicker but unfortunately I am having big problems up loading videos on to my blog. I spent all day yesterday trying to get one video on there. So I am stuck with doing tutorials this way until I can get help with uploading.

C.A.S.E by all means... but 

 Credit the Creator!!!  

R.I.P. YOGI

A friend of our sadly had to have his beloved dog Yogi put to sleep a fortnight ago. I have known Yogi since he was a 100 mile an hour puppy along with his brother Buster ( who is still with us and bares more than a passing resemblance to Stars Wars Chewbacca).

Buster and Yogi would tear around in circles on the field and woe betide anyone that got in the way.

It's been a few years  now since they tore round the place like exorset missiles.

Now they are very  laid back and very Gentlemanly .

Around the age of two they actually sat still long enough for me to take a couple of photos of them so last week I decided to give them to Ron  in a Memory Book. Here are a few pages from the book.

 I left a few spaces for Ron to add a few of his own favourite photos too .

I included quotes and poems about dogs

and lots of spaces for Ron to write up his favourite memories about Yogi in the  little books.

All the papers used in the making of this book were from Stampin' up the neutrals DSP collection

 On this page I cut chipboard tags and covered them with card and decorated them.

Rather than sticking them  onto the page or making a pocket for them, I just put them onto the hinged ring as a small page on their own

Below I made a huge pocket to house the larger of the two books I made.

The Friends Embellishment is a crushed bottle top.

 I stamped friends onto some scrap card with Brown stazon ink,  then using the 1" circle punch, I punched out the word  keeping it as central as possible. daubed it with green ink.

When the ink was dry I dabbed it all over with versamark ink and heat embossed it with clear embossing powder then stuck it into the bottle top with crystal effects. when it had stuck fast, I filled the bottle topup to rim with crystal effect and left it over night to dry on a level surface.

It is important to  heat emboss before you fill the top with crystal effects. If you don't in the morning you will find the ink has run or blurred....even with stazon although it is no where near as bad.

The Book was just one sheet of cream card.  I  stamped the sheet of card  and cut it  in half,   then folded in half and stapled in the fold. I printed off some journaling pages  mounted them onto copper card and stuck them in  the book.

Here I made a corner pocket to hold the smaller of the two books.

There is an awful lot of hot foiling in this book either in copper or gold.

Infact I hot foiled all the text in this memory book.

To make it easier for Ron to cut his photos to the right size for the matts I wrote the measurements for the photos on the matts. I also gave him a few spare  journalling pages  to to practise on. There is nothing worse than writing something and finding you don 't have enough room to get in  everything you need to say.

And  by the way that little corner of paper you see curling up on one page..... I did stick it down properly before I gave  the book to Ron.

wedding wheels card

This one was a cased card but not sure where from. I have changed it a little. but not much.

Using the baroque motif stamp and crumb cake ink I stamped the background and mounted it onto my crumb cake card stock. I stamped the wedding wheels stamp in crumb cake too onto a small piece of whisper white card.

I used some of the new seam binding ribbon from S.U and pulled a few central thread from each end to gather it into a ruffle to give the impression of a garter and added a few tiny sparkles along the gathers.

Luminaries

This Luminary was created from a strip of black card 8 1/2" x 3 1/2" it was scored at 2" 4" 6" and 8"
The top edge was punched using Stampin' Ups lace edge punch the windows were punched using the largest circle punch stampin' up sell .
I cut vellum squares to fit in the windows and stamped them with black stazon ink using the baroque motif stamp set from SU.
When the ink was dry I stuck the vellum into the windows and completed the project by joining the two ends together.
Placed my Tea light inside and photographed it.
I recommend the use of the battery operated tea lights for indoor use, my tea light was only lit for a few minutes but I still managed to get hot wax on my work surfaces , the table cloth and me.

Here is a little about the history of luminaries I thought you may find interesting .

Christmas luminaries are traditionally used to light homes, sidewalks, pavements during Christmas. The tradition of lighting candles in paper bag is part of American Southwest. These luminaries are in number of hundreds and thousands, which are lit on Christmas Eve. One can trace roots of traditional luminaries in form of candles placed in a mini, sand-filled, brown paper bags in sixteenth century. This tradition of luminaries came into existence through Spain, where bonfires were lit on roadside and churchyard so that people find way to reach midnight mass held during winter festival of Las Posadas.
Through Spain, this tradition reached Mexico and parts of America. People even light luminaries in respect of Mary and Joseph, who are searching lodging to give birth to Christ during night. The same tradition is followed even today in modern times. People decorate homes, fences, roofs, sidewalks, etc. with help of luminaries, which help the tourists to get to their destinations safely during Christmas nights. The other word for luminaries is farolitos, which means little lanterns in Spanish. Chinese lanterns were used in nineteenth century to decorate entrance of home in some parts of America. Many people opted for paper bag as they were affordable in comparison of Chinese lanterns.

Razzleberry and Old Olive Card

You have probably guessed by now that I love
the Old Olive and the Rich Razzleberry so I to put them together.
I used so the swirly wheel stamp and versamark ink for the background and Baroque Motif stamp set for the focal point of my card.

Congratulations card

Used only a small part of the baroque motif stamp for the central panel embossed it with siver embossing powder, framed it with silver mirri card and added blue ribbon.

Congratulations card

Using Baroque Motif Stamp silver embossing powder, pink silver and white card and pink ribbon.

Simple Wedding Invitation and rsvp

My step daughter Holly
announced
this weekend she is getting
married in July to her long term partner Stuart.
After the congratulations bit,I volunteered to make the
invitations.
This is a simple wedding invitation
using Stampin' Up s baroque motif stamp and silver embossing powder.
I am just waiting for approval before I go into production on these.