Learn Something New: The book

Woot. It's officially September first. Time to go back to school!

I stayed up way past my bedtime last night working on my "homework" aka getting my book all put together.

Here's the cover. It's definitely one of my favorites, ever.

I was super inspired by Shimelle's book from last year, but couldn't bring myself to actually bust up a vintage book (baby steps) so I used the next best thing, a 7 Gypsies Elizabeth book cover. It's somewhere around 5x7, maybe a little bigger, so I thought it would the perfect size for either 4x6 or 5x7 prints.

I took some text patterned paper, gave it a paint wash and then added some machine stitching.

The title is made from the new Basic Grey Basics cardstock stickers, which are, officially, my NEW FAVORITE THING EVER. Ahem.

To make the embellishment cluster near the base, I pretended I was Christine Middlecamp (just kidding). Seriously though, to start, I layered a strip of doily punched patterned paper, a few other strips of patterned paper, some Tim Holtz Tissue tape and a punched star. On top of that, I put a Tim Holtz Ornate frame, inside of which I had stamped a Danielle Johnson Number stamp in Grey ink on white cardstock. On top of that, I layered this adorable tiny typewriter stamp that I recently scored for one dollar at Michaels.

The grommets were big ones (from the fabric section of the craft store) that I "distressed" using brown and black Stazon.

I've put about 50 pages (mixed cardstock and Hambly Transparencies) in here already. That way I can add more (or take away) pages as I need to.

You know me and minibooks though. This thing will probably not be getting any smaller.

The size and weight feels good in my hand, and I love the mix of colors.

This is gong to end up being one fat chunky book. I want to really focus on journaling as well. It's definitely something I want to work on improving.

And this month there will be SO many stories to tell. September is my favorite month. Already in my calendar I have outings with friends, a trip to the county fair, a romantic getaway and big anniversary on the books. Can't wait to document everything.

To that end, I put a set of my second largest book rings (my largest ones are actually just ridiculously big) on the book and am hoping for the best. If all else fails, there is always ribbon or twine, or something else I can use.

I'll be working on this every day (hopefully) but probably only sharing updates on the weekends.. to give myself time to get photos printed and get the pages all photographed prettily.

This month is off to a great start already. :)