Project: “Travel” Board Book

I am SUPER proud of my latest project.

This “Travel” Board Book:

In this Project Post I will cover:

- Tips for Covering Chipboard

- Clever Embellishments

-  Scared of Board Books? Not any more!

Tips for Covering Chipboard:

 

On tv they make it look so easy.  “Just use a piece of sandpaper.  It’s so EASY!”  Right.  Two letters in (only the front sides) and my arm was killing me and my sandpaper was just…paper. So, instead of sanding an eighth of an inch off every letter this is what I did:

1: Trace around letter on pattern paper.

2: Cut out paper letter with a VERY sharp pair of scissors or a craft knife. :)

3: Apply adhesive and attach to chipboard.

4: (This is the important step) turn the chipboard over and use a craft knife to trim off some of the overhanging paper.

5: Use sandpaper sparingly to smooth edges and give a finished look  

I found that trimming with the craft knife again really made covering the chipboard faster and easier.  Not rocket science, but it might help someone! (maybe I’ll do a video on this…)

Clever Embellishments:

Problem: You want to use a brad or an eyelet but you don’t want to punch a whole in your paper.

Do what I did: mount the embellishment on something (like this flower) and stick it with a couple of mini glue dots. :)

 

Problem: You need a fix for a functional element but you don’t want it to be obvious.

I needed a closure for this little folder element so I backed this little dolphin sticker with some cardstock and put adhesive on the bottom so that it would hold the top flap of the folder down. 

Here is how it looks open:

And closed:

 

Scared of Board Books?  Not Anymore!

I used to be a 12x12 scrapbooker ONLY.  Then, I did a 6x6 for the women in my family and once I started branching out…I was hooked (though I still can’t bring myself to do a really TINY book – I think they are a little ridiculous but to each her own!)

So, if you have yet to experiment with a board book (no page protectors, made of chipboard shapes) here are some rules you can go by that may help make you a first-time-board-book-scrapping success!

1: Get ROUGH with it.  You don’t have to be gentle with your chipboard pages.  Sand them, paint them, ink them within and inch of their life – whatever you feel like doing to add texture and dimension is a-ok.

2: Invest in a few BIG embellishments.  I am always apprehensive about buying premade embellishments for a single project – I don’t know why (probably money – I am VERY cheap).  But, as I was preparing to do this project I came upon a soft spoken/Jolee’s sale at Michael’s (40% off!) and decided to take the plunge.  Best thing I ever did.  On a board book the dimensional embellishment really helped me decide what I wanted to do with each page and made it look impressive with little work on my part.

See?

This was my fave embellishment I think:

 

3: Get a stack of themed paper/cardstock that goes with the theme of your book.  I didn’t have to match single sheets of paper from different company’s lines for hours to get the look I wanted.  Also, the images on the cardstock that I used really helped me choose my embellishments and helped shape my pages.

Like this one:

All I did was add a picture, a sticker and some torn paper that looked like sand – the rest of the beach scene was already on my background paper.

4: Even with a little book you CAN use lots of pictures.  Resize pictures, right-click and save the thumbnail from a facebook album, or crop an image that has excess “white” space.  My picture printing program has a great little library of photo collages and templates that let me decide how big I want to print an image.  Explore in your computer and see if there is a hidden photo editing program that gives you options on the size that the photos will print.

That’s FIFTEEN pictures I put on this tiny little spread!

Lastly:

5: Journal on the butt.  I’m not trying to be sexy.  I call the back cover of an album the “butt”.  Unless you are a very passionate about devoting an entire journaling block for every picture – do what I did.  I put no pictures on the back of the album, just a few impressive (and flat) embellishments and a big journaling block where I put a general thought about this trip I had taken.

Like so:

 

Hopefully (if anyone ever reads this) you will go into your next (or first!) board book project with excitement and confidence.  If you do a board book project go ahead and upload the images and post a link in your comment – I’d LOVE to see them!

Sorry this post was SUPER long.  Windows Live Writer (where I do my offline prep for a post) does not support a “hide” feature for blogger…grrrr.

Oh, and feel free to scraplift – goodness knows I do. ;)

Remember – It’s good to be queen!