Helllllooooo!!! my super awesome crafty friends welcome back to another fun blog post for a DIY notebook. Now, this form of making a notebook is a little different, but not that much. This notebook is different in the sense that I used some chipboard I had found while cleaning out my crafty stash instead of regular white cardstock. If your anything like me you save pretty much any backing of an old notebook that has already been used such as the back of an old watercolor pad that you already used up. With this project you could also make whichever size of notebook you need; it also makes a great personalized gift for a special friend. Now let's get into the craftiness and as per usual I will link the materials I used at the bottom of the page; also I will try to put a link at the bottom of the page for some chipboard just in case you don't save up the old notebook backings.
So, to begin this project I took a sheet of paper of the size I wanted the inside pages of the notebook to be and measured about half an inch outside of the paper onto my chipboard. My cover and backing of the notebook ended up being about 24cm which is about 9.4 inches in height and about 19.5cm which is about 7.6inches in width. To make the cover and the backing I took two pieces of the chipboard I had saved up and cut it down to size with a metal ruler and an x-acto knife. Once I finished cutting the two pieces of chipboard I then took the same paper I used to measure out the cover and traced the holes where my discs would go; since the chipboard is way thicker than a piece of paper I will have to use a hole punch to make the holes and then with the x-acto knife cut little nooks for the discs to slide into and stay in place.
Once the tedious part is finished its time to start on the fun part...The decorating!!!! To decorate my notebook I wanted to do something simple, pretty and easy, though tedious on its own. I decided to stamp out an image and color it in with colored pencils; since chipboard is similar to kraft cardstock I wanted to try coloring in an image and see how it turns out. I have seen many examples by other great card makers that have used kraft cardstock that look astonishing. So, what better way to try it out than for a notebook. For the notebook I used the "Winter Anemone" stamp set from Honeybee Stamps which has a wonderful large cluster of florals that is great for stamping out on the corners of my chipboard covers. To stamp out the image I used the "Fadeout no line coloring detail ink" by Inkon3. I then mounted the image onto my MISTI and stamped out the image twice in the fadeout ink since the chipboard soaks up the ink. (Note: the chipboard will hang out of your MISTI use it at your own risk since it will put a strain on the hinges of your MISTI.) Please don't do it if you don't feel comfortable putting a strain on the hinges of your MISITI; use a clear block to stamp out your image just load it up with tons of ink. I stamped out the image on the bottom left-hand corner first and then rotated it and stamped the image out again directly on the opposite side. The images should be one on the bottom left-hand corner and the other on the upper right-hand corner; of course, you could decorate your notebook however you like.
Once I stamped out the image on the opposite sides of each other I took a piece of scrap chipboard that I had leftover after cutting out my main pieces and started coloring little swatches to see which color combination I liked better with the color of the chipboard. After coloring out various combinations I decided to use a teal color combination; again I will be coloring my image in with colored pencils. As usual, I will be using my Prismacolor colored pencils; the colors I used are Light Aqua (PC 992), Parrot Green (PC 1006), and Aquamarine (PC 905). I used the colored pencils in that order which is from lightest to darkest. For the leaves I used Spring Green (PC 913), Apple Green (PC 912), and Grass Green (PC 909); again I used the colors in that order since it's from lightest to darkest. Lastly for the middle of the flower and the little circle thingys popping up, I used Lemon Yellow (PC 915). To color my image I began with one petal and then moved on to the next one that way I didn't get confused about where my petals were since I used the no-line ink.
I continued to color my image until I finished it off in the order I had mentioned and that was all for making my notebook.
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