Not Another Mini Book?

Well hello again, it's Horace here with you in my natty new top. Do you like it?





That's not really why I decided to blog though. Remember my previous post about recycling paper bags? I thought I'd give you lovely people a tutorial on how I made it. But first, in true Blue Peter Style, here's one I made earlier





We're lucky enough to have a book binding machine, so for this paper bag book I used that and bound each page seperately, as you can see, there is no real cover as such and you can see each addition at the side of the book.





Inside I decorated some of the bag, but left other interesting features exposed. Here I added a pocket for tags or photos by cutting back the original bag.





Depending on how you fold your bags, you can make side or top pockets, or just glue all the openings down and have a conventional style book. The beauty of a paper bag book lies in its versatility.





For my next book, I decided to use one size of bags, and thanks to Tesco delivering their fruit and veg in paper bags, I had a plentiful supply. I cut the handles from each bag.





Then used a bone folder to produce a neat crease down the middle of the bags.





In my paper bag stash, I had a Build a Bear bag, with these fabulous handles on.





I decided to use these in my project, so mercilessly chopped them off.





I used double sided sticky tape...





Which was rather more sticky than I realised, it took me five minutes to unstick my poor paw from the tape!





Once I released myself, I placed the handles in the folds of the bag and stuck them down.





Voila, the covers of the book.





Luckily I remembered to ensure the handles were placed evenly. Wonky handles are so last season!





The red handles, coupled with the fact that it's twelve weeks until Christmas, inspired me to make a Christmas memories book. So out came lasts year's leftover Christmas papers. Wow, we bought a lot last year!





I began by decorating the covers of my book...





Adding stickers from the paper collection for interest....





I toiled into the small hours by candlelight ( okay I'm exaggerating a little, it was lamplight, but it was still toil!)





I decorated the insides of the book, leaving areas of bag showing, I think this adds to the recycled element of the project.





By folding the bottom of the bag up into the book, I was able to create small pockets, that can hold ATCs, tags or photos. All I needed to do was add a small strip of double sided tape to the edges of the fold, to keep any memorabilia from falling out.





Once I was happy with the placement of my pages,





I sewed them all together, by piercing small holes into the centre of the pages, and using wax thread to secure.





I think my book looks very pretty, and now I just need to wait until December to add my special memories





After all that hard work, I need a rest, so I'm off to catch up with some of my favourite blogs.

Ttfn,

With love from the bears.

WOYWW - bags!

Helloooooo, long time no WOYWW (click the link if you're curious to know what the acronym stands for). Anyway. It's Horace here today making something for nothing again. We do like our free or using up stash makes here at The House of Bears.

So, you can see a paper bag, more bags to the right, scissors, a bone folder, the back of my head......



I might just be making a paper bag book. We've been collecting the paper bags given out with various shopping, and Tesco now bring our home delivery fruit and veg in large paper bags too. Wilbear insists we have our five a day so the Tesco bags are in plentiful supply here. ( other supermarkets are available but may not supply paper bags! )


Anyway, so far all I have to show for my morning's efforts are a pile of what looks like it needs to go in the recycling, so I'd better get crafting before Wilbear does just that. I'll post the results when I'm done.

Ttfn

With love from the bears.

In The Background

Hello friends. Horace here today to apologise for being so remiss in keeping the blog up to date. A comment from the lovely Ali H inspired me to get crafting and write a catch up for our friends. First I had to get dressed in warm clothes as the temperature has really dropped the last couple of days. Of course, as soon as I dressed up, the sun decided to make an appearance!



I'd previously ripped some project ideas from Craft Stamper magazine


I decided to make some corrugated stamp backgrounds. I have to use up this never ending roll of card I bought over a year ago somehow.


Despite gifting half the roll to the cub, then using lots of the roll for textured pages in the art journals, then making two of these dos a dos books......











I still have enough left to paper a small house. On with the stamping technique: hang on, has anyone seen my scissors? How can I cut the card without them?


Oh! What are they doing in the paintbrush pot?


Never mind, carry on crafting. I cut a long strip of card



And then cut this into smaller pieces


I reread my instructions..... Which suggested gluing the corrugated card onto a thicker, more sturdy piece of card.



I didn't have any thicker card, so impawvised.


I pawrused the ink box...



I was feeling in a purple and red mood.


I swiped the distress ink over the card


And stamped it immediately onto my page, to avoid the ink drying out too much. As you see, I used the bears' own inimitable style of stamping.


I had a previously started page in the journal, so that's where I decided my stamping would go; as that's where the book flopped open.


The stamping came out quite faintly


So I restamped, this time sitting on the stamp a little longer.


I stamped randomly over the page, in red and purple. I like this style of stamping as you never know quite what you'll produce. The results depend on how firmly you press, and whether the card yields under pressure.


I decided to add some green to my page


And simply swirled it over the page


To create this effect.



Voila, one easy, freebie background. Created from existing supplies.



This technique could be used for card making, tags, postcards or ATC backgrounds. Why don't you try it?

With love from the bears