**Before I begin, grab a beverage, coffee, tea, water, whatever...
this blog post is going to be a long one!**
As mentioned before I am a tedious scrapper. I think it comes from my frugalness. I hate the thought of wasting anything or making a mistake so I map everything out and I mean EVERYTHING. If I am making a book from scratch, like my baby book, I will pick out a measurement, cut it out from a piece of scrap paper and see how the size looks. Is it too big? Too small? Where will I put the bindings? What binding method will I use? How will that look? Only once I have answered these questions will I actually cut the paper. Oh and I go as far as to consider what paper collection I am using before I determine the size of book. If I want a specific paper, I will make sure the papers I like when cut will look good at the size I want the book to be. Make sense? Yes, great! No, doesn't much matter. After I know the book size, I cut my papers, put the book together and that's when the fun begins.
Using my baby book cover as an example, I will cut my chipboard to size. In this case I am using a 6 x 9 inch piece of heavy weight chipboard.
This type of chipboard cannot be found at Michaels; you will have to purchase it from a scrapbook specific store. A few places I shop at are Simon Says Stamp, Ellen Hutson, and The Scrap Yard.
I grab the piece of chipboard I am going to be using for my cover and put the second piece aside. I'm still not sure what color I want my cover to be. My book right now is mostly kraft (brown) color with blue-green accents and some white pages. Sooo, I don't know if I want a brown cover like my previous books or if I want a tealish cover to add some much needed color. How do I decide? Easy. I take a scrape piece of paper as close in color as possible to what I am using and I try a bunch of color combos.
What I have used here is two different glimmer mists. One is Tattered leather (dark brown) and one is Caribbean blue. On top of the glimmer mist I used Distressed crackle paint in three colors, Antique Linen, Broken China, and Vintage Photo (yes, the vintage photo co-ordinates with the ink I used to ink the edges of my signatures).
The Broken China crackle paint on Tattered Leather glimmer is too bright. I do, however, like the look of the Tattered Leather glimmer. That's the color I used on my book here.
I like the look of the Caribbean Blue glimmer mist. I don't like it with the Antique Linen crackle paint (which is what I used on the book I linked in the photo above). I don't mind the Vintage Photo crackle paint on the blue glimmer, but I think it is the reverse of the look I want.
I am honestly still not sure what color I want the cover to be, so I am moving on. If I can figure out what I am going to put on the cover of the book I should be able to figure out what color background to use. So far this is what I have got laid out.
The clock piece is just an extra I had cut out for another project...I will use a new one that's not painted bright blue. I'm going to use the mini draw knob by Tim Holtz for the closer I think. I'll use a metal chain or stretchy string (elastic) to wrap around it.
The chipboard embellishments (name plate and key hole) are recycled from another project. One side has wizard of oz theme and the other is plain chipboard. Since I am no longer using the "Wizard of Oz" collection from Graphic 45, I thought why not recycle it for something else using the reverse side? I had three knobs to choose from, but I think the white will look best due to the white pages on the inside.
I thought the cover looked kind of bare/plain so I figured I could add more dimension by using masks. I have a the Tim Holtz time one and also this numbers one. Originally I thought the numbers would look neat behind the clock piece I have. But I saw the clock masks with gears and thought that would look neat too. I could also combine the two.
I am sort of leaning towards the name plate being on the bottom and removing the key piece all together, but I might go back and try the masks in the background with the name plate on top and the key hole on the bottom but the top still looks bare. Normally I would add prima flowers, but since this is for a baby boy...flowers not so much.
And because I warned you that this would be long and I am tedious and map out everything...
My favorite is the nameplate at the top, with the keyhole and the numbers.
Alright, so I have finally decided what I am going to do. I'm going to go with Tattered Leather Glimmer Mist, Antique Linen Crackle Paint and the layout pictured in the very last photo of my blog. The name plate will have my babies full name on it, misted in caribbean blue. I'll use a black ink applied lightly over the numbers mask so that the numbers show up in the tattered leather color and look like the cover and the black will be the empty space. What's also neat about the numbers mask is anywhere I put crackle paint nothing will show up as the paint will resist ink from sticking to it. The chipboard clock will display the time my baby is born. I will cover it in the crackle paint and use a teal ink to fill in the cracks left in the paint. Will have a neat vintage/grunge look. I will also have a picture of my baby in the negative space in the clock, laying on top of the numbers. The keyhole will will be misted caribbean blue and left plain.
Sound complicated? It's really simple. I'll do another blog post doing a step by step peek into everything I just explained. The inks and mists I will be using have some really cool properties that are hard to explain but easy to show with a picture.
Until next time...
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