Passport to Paris with Astrid

Hello lovely Shimmerz friends, thanks for being here!
One of my favourite things to do is make little books, I love the way they look, they are easy to do and are so useful for so many things.

I have shown one of these little books before, - today's version is soft and feminine. I created mine with the Eileen Hull Passport die, but you could easily make one from scratch.

For the cover and spine I used matboard (mount board in the UK) and for the inside pages I used scraps of Prima paper, some tea dyed paper some digi downloads and finally some pages I designed myself.  You can download these from my blog HERE. They are sized to fit this particular die, but can be printed in different sizes too..
 I have a few photos of how I put it together:

I stencilled with some texture paste, covered it with gesso and then added the soft shimmering colour with just 3 colours on Shimmerz paints:

Inklingz in Angel's Kiss and Tarnished Treasure

Creameez Black Cherry Soda

Then I made a new discovery that I was really happy about. By mixing the colours on your non stick craft mat, you can dip a Tim Holtz mini blending tool into it and achieve a wonderful effect by using stencils. I used this technique for both the covers and the inside pages. For embellishments I used just a couple of stickers from my stash for the front

And some lace for the back, plus some more stencilling as you can see.

Here you can see the inside of the cover, all done with the same technique. The elastic is there to slip the inside pages under, super easy and effective.

Below I quick run down of some of the inside pages:

A little pocket and tag and more paint and stencilling work with my chosen colours.

One of the pages I designed myself, after printing I used the same colours and stencils to make it blend in with the rest of the project.

This page was white and enhanced with the paints, stencils pockets and tags plus some washi tape.

More of the same but more blank space for journaling.

And finally, a couple more pages with my own design papers, I forgot to photograph these before sewing my book together:

Well, that's it for today, below I will show you the spine still and I hope that I have inspired you to have a go at your own little books using Shimmerz paints for colouring and stencil work.

Thank you for your visit like always and see you next time.

A little book made from a 12 x 12 sheet of paper with Shimmerz!

So here is a 'quick pic tutorial' on how I made a sweet little book for my baby boy a little while ago.

I just used sturdy double sided paper and cut a 12 x 12 sheet into strips and folded the strips into pages. (my strips were 4 inches wide, the height can be what ever you choose, mine are 3 inches, so my pages when folded are 3 x 4)

Glue the strips together forming 1 long strip.

Now glue the folds together where they will create pages

Dont glue right to the spines edge when you do this so it has room to expand when you embellish your book.

I cut an extra piece of paper to wrap around the whole book front, spine and back- gluing only the front and back, leaving the spine loose to allow for expansion when the book was decorated.  

This makes it look like a real little book and hides the spine folds you can see below.

Paint some Shimmerz Paint onto some bubble wrap and stamp some texture onto the background of your pages.  There will be paint colours for any colour scheme you can dream up!!!!

Embellish away!

 Such a fun project.  Nice small pages to create on, means the task happens quickly.  Select some embellishments to repeat throughout the book and you can plough through your little project in an afternoon!

Thanks for stopping in.