a Country Craft Creations design team project
Fall is such a beautiful time of year. While the leaves are still rustling around on the branches and the clear days are crisp and clean waiting for those first winter snows. Frank Garcia's Amber Moon collection for Prima sure has a lot of those gorgeous fall feelings in each and every page. I loved working with it. Thank you Tammy Merrill from Country Craft Creations for allowing me to play with this beautiful collection.
This mini is much larger than my norm, it measures 10"x10"x3". I really enjoyed having so much room to play with because of the larger scale. I did adjust my hinges to a 3/8" gusset between each page so I could cram six pages into the book. The cover is Bo Bunny's Vintage Double Dot, which plays so nice with this Prima collection. The spine is Kraft-Tex which I've had forever (I bought it at Amazon) but had yet to try. I must say I was pleased with the way it glued and punched. It's called a paper fabric and I do believe is almost indestructible.
To adorn the front I used a laser cut chipboard swirled heart I'd won from Creative Embellishments. I tell you viewers over and over, enter to win, you can't win these fantastic prizes companies offer if you don't win. I covered the heart completely with TCW Gold Gesso, I love this Gesso. It's super creamy, goes on without any problems and creates a luscious gold glimmer. In the middle of the heart I placed one of the Amber Moon collections chipboard pieces and surrounded it with these Prima flowers called Amber Moon-Raven. I had used the polka dot sheer ribbon for a bow and used the remainder snipped pieces tucked here and there amongst the flowers. The closure is a clock key that's been moved here and there in my crafty stash for eons. I used a Tim Holtz elastic closure pulled from the back and looped around the clock key to secure the book closed. See if you hold onto things long enough they finally have a purpose.
The pages measure 9 1/2" wide by 9" tall that allowed me head space to add top tags. Each page has an insert opening on the backside for a huge tag. I used my Cricut to cut a decorative mat and then recut it again smaller with the solid cardstock, placing it front and back to give the tags more stability and a great home for an extra large photo.
I didn't do a tutorial on this because it's simply a matter of building pockets, flaps and belly bands and then adding lots and lots of tags and foldable spots for photos. I used a lot of the chipboard and puffy stickers from the Amber Moon collection throughout the book. I only used one punch, an older EK Success, called Deco Scallop punch, to add some movement to some of the page edges and tags.
I also added a spring clamp on each page tied with the three colors of seam binding I was using in this mini. This allows either a folded page to stay shut or an extra tag or photo to be hung. These clamps were a gift from my friend Paula, and again have been resting quietly in the back recesses of a crafty drawer. They actually come with red rubber feet on the prongs but red just didn't cut it so that part was easily removed.
I did pull out some very old Kaisercraft paper that I'd been hoarding. Oh I'd pull it out drool over it and stick it back. Not this time this time it was the perfect compliment to the Prima collection. You can see I used it on the belly band here and backing the word circle. Again you can see how nicely the Bo Bunny Vintage Double Dot paper played with the collection as well. There are no rules when you are creating. If you, as most of us, have stuff stuck back here and there pull it out and see if the colors and designs play nice with one another. If so it gives you lots of additional options in your creation.
Just this week I had a YouTube viewer leave me a comment and remarked that I'm always so willing to share my oops and oh no moments. I just think if new crafters realize at the onset that we all have those moments and it's ok, most everything you do is fixable. Sometimes the end result of fixing up an error results in a page better than the beginning. Here you can see I added some butterflies to the brown background paper. That was an oops moment where I stuck a gluey finger onto the brown and left a mark. There will probably be a large photo placed here but in the meantime every time i came to this page I'd see that mark, simple solution, butterflies. And just as I said, I like the brown so much better with the addition of the butterflies. So never fear mistakes are only mistakes until you make them into creativeness!
OK a couple of things I want to bring your attention to here. I had this odd shaped piece laying on my crafty desk. Of course this page with the sheet music was instantly one of my favs in this set of papers. The more I looked at the scrap the more I saw a house so with a little trimming and the matting of the brown I think it looks like a church steeple, ok so I have an imagination, lol. Point of story is those odd shaped scraps can often lead to very interesting pockets. I added a chipboard bird and a Bo Bunny brad and then had a great pocket for tags and photos.
The other thing I wanted to draw your attention to is the mat with the funky pull. That's actually two sheets of paper from the A4 paper pad leaving the top potion (the part that's bound into the paper pad) intact. I glued two papers together to create this mat and great pull at the top.
I think I'll stop with the page reviews with this one, as always there is a complete walk through on the video as well as lots of other photos. I just wanted you to see here how nicely the cut aparts made into a deep bottom pocket. I kind of wished I'd lined them with a deep brown across the top to give them even more of a punch but still like the look of the pocket as is.
I hope you'll join me on the video. Links to store products, Country Craft Creations social media sites and my own sites will be directly below the video. Thank you my crafty friends for spending time with me.
Supplies from the Country Craft Creations Store
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