My Faux Dori

Good morning all, something a little bit different from me today. I have been ogling faux Dori notebooks on Pinterest, Instagram and Etsy for a while now, but they are quite expensive. So I decided to have a go and make one myself. 

If you are familiar with the Midori Traveller's Notebook, then this is the same sort of thing but obviously made with much cheaper materials. 

I had some dark grey vinyl left over from re-covering kitchen chairs a few years ago, and never knew what to do with it. But it has come in handy for this. I took my measurements from some of the videos on Youtube showing how to make these. 

I cut the vinyl with a craft knife and then added a piece of fabric paper to the back of it and cut to size. The fabric paper was self adhesive so I didn't have to worry about what adhesive to use. 

Then I used my Big Bite Cropadile to make the holes in the spine, and set red eyelets in to them. I played around for a while with what elastic to use to hold the inserts in, but eventually decided to use jewellery elastic. As this is quite fine but very strong, and it's also clear so isn't obtrusive on the inside. 

I put together 3 notebooks for the inside, just using card and 3 different sorts of paper. I used plain white paper, plain cream paper and then bleedproof paper for the last booklet. 

I stapled these together with a long reach stapler, but next time I think I will stitch them as it will probably look better. Then I slipped them inside the elastic that I had threaded through the holes in the spine to hold them in place. 

I wanted to make a bookmark/page finder, so I used a piece of cotton cord and some jewellery findings. Then I added a little charm to the end of it. I tied the cord through the top two holes on the spine to secure it. 

I am going to make some more of these as gifts for people, and next time I will add more page markers. 

I used a large rubber band for the main closure strap as it's what I had, but next time I will get some elastic cord instead. 

Then I added a camera charm and my name in beads to the strap to decorate the front. 

I love how it turned out and I'm using it already. Hope you like it too.

Take care and I'll see you soon.

xxx

Wear With Style

Morning crafty friends, it's Monday again.  They soon come around don't they?

Over the weekend I was browsing some crafty blogs and found an image I really liked which had been bought from an Etsy shop.  Of course I had to go take a look and ended up purchasing the same set!  It is called Wear With Style and was purchased from All Dressed Up.  Do you like what I did with her?

The image was coloured with different shades of brown promarkers then cut out.  I knew I wanted to use her as a figure on her own and not on a matt so this is what I came up with.

I cut a dark brown adorning square matt to use behind my girl.  The paper is from an Amy Tangerine paper pad by American Crafts.  I loved the colour combinations.

The motif in the corner would have been covered by the matt so I carefully cut around the image with my craft knife and slid the square behind it.

The sentiment is my current favourite stamp.  It is really versatile and I have used it alot recently.  This was matted on to another piece of the orange paper and added to the matt.

The ribbon, button and twine are from our stash and were adhered with silicone glue.

I am very fond of this image and can see me using more of this style.  The card turned out better than I envisioned and will be used for my niece Staci's birthday next week.

Thats all from me today.  TTFN Jude xx