Scrapwest

#79 Kate's Accordian Book

For this Accordion book you need:
4 Sheets of Contrasting Cardstock (I used 4 different colours but it works well with 2 of each colour too)
2 Sheets of Patterned Paper
Small Amount of Chipboard
1 Large Brad or Button
Chipboard Letters
Elastic Cord (you could use a hair bobbin) or Ribbon
Ink
1 Eyelet
DS Tape and/or glue

First thing to do is cut your cardstock.

From two sheets of Cardstock cut:
Four 5 ½ x 8in pieces
Two 1 x 12in pieces
Four 5 12 x 4in pieces

From the other two Contrasting Sheets cut:
Two 8 x 12in pieces
One 4 x 12in piece
One 5 ½ x 4in piece

Ok now cut your chipboard pieces. You need to cut Two strips 8 x 1in.
Stick them down in the middle of the 1 x 12in pieces and lap over the pieces at each side. Put these to one side until later on.

Now take your five pieces of 5 ½ x 4 in pieces and cut them in half lengthways so you now have ten pieces.

 

Score each piece down the middle and ½ an in either side of the centre.

Then fold them like an accordion.

Put tape/glue on two of your accordion folded pieces (making sure that the accordion part has two folds facing outwards!) and then take a piece of 5 ½ x 8 in card and place it on top.
 

Keep doing this for all four pieces of card, using two accordions each time
And finally finish off with two accordions at the back (the back cover will be attached to these later).

The top and bottom covers are made in exactly the same way.
Using the 8 x 12in piece of card, score a line 5 ½ ins down from the short side and again at 6 ½ ins, in the gap you have just made stick one of your pieces of card covered chipboard. This is now the base of your file attach this to your accordion folded paper piece.

Attach your cover to your file folder.

Make another piece exactly the same; this will be the front of your folder. Trim aout ½ in of the bottom of the front part so that it won’t cover all of the front.
Decorate with Patterned paper, I also inked the edges of mine.

Make a small hole and attach an eyelet to the back of this piece and thread through your elastic.

 

Then attach your cover to the back of the folder using DS tape for strength.

Put a brad/button at the front of your folder to attach your elastic to and decorate as you wish.

You can use it for Photo storage (as I have done) or as a mini album.

Hope you like the class and I can’t wait to see your version of this.

#78 Eva's Simple Tags & Cards

Following on from Annamarie's  theme of wrapping paper we are going to look at tags and matching cards.  These are great for a little hand-crafted feel which take only a few minutes to do. All you need is plain cards stock, punch's or templates of shapes, a few buttons, white and black pen.

As you can see above the tags are very simple. What makes them a little different is the flower shape goes over the edge of the tag, the flower shape is highlighted with a red marker and the title is on foam pads. Use the white gel pen to highlight the button. And thats it!

Use the sample principles of the tag to make the card. Keep it as simple as possible!!!

If you don't have time to hand-craft a gift, use these tags for a yummy bottle of you favourite bottle :)

Above is another tag, for someone a little more special :) The same principles apply.

The ideas are endless, use up scraps of card stock, make a number of them and keep for those last minute gifts. Enjoy! 

 

#77 Annamarie's DIY Wrapping Paper

"Brown paper packages, tied up with string ....", there's even a song about it and I have to admit that I love Kraft paper either in layouts or used as wrapping.

Last Christmas, all of my pressies were wrapped in Kraft paper stamped with some gorgeous shimmering images and tied with string.

If, like me, you have loads of rubber, foam and acrylic stamps and inks gathering dust, then this is a great way to get some use from them.  It's also cheaper than buying wrapping paper, plus you can get the kids involved especially when the present is for one of their school friends.

1.  The first thing is to decide if you want to stamp the whole sheet of wrapping or do you just want to stamp the front of the parcel.  In this case, because the parcel was a square box I thought it would be nice just to stamp the front panel with a couple of stamps just overlapping the sides.

2.  Next I cut a sheet of brown paper to fit my parcel and wrapped the parcel without sticking down any of the seams. 

3.  By wrapping the parcel and then unwrapping it you can easily see where the stamps should go.

4.  Start stamping your images.

5.  Build up your images using as many colours as you like.  The good thing about kraft paper is that you can use any colour ink with it.

6.  Rewrap your parcel and stick down the seams.

7.  Tie it up with a length of string and you're finished.

8.  If you're a rub-on addict (like me!) you could also add some rubons to the paper for a really professional look. 

* As an addition you could even buy a pack of kraft luggage tags (available in most stationery stores) and stamp them to match your wrapping paper!