Little book of inspiration

A while back I saw a video from a very inspirational lady in wich she challenged us to create a small key chain booklet, filled with inspirational words for someone. Now I wasn't going to enter the challenge, as I have never posted a video on YouTube before, let alone a video response. She did however allow the entrance to be sent in by email. It's the 1500 subbie and birthday challenge by CreaBoetiek.

The idea has been roaming in the back of my mind ever since. I love making books and booklets and the thought of making an inspirational booklet for someone was very appealing. So, yeah, I did, I made a little keychain booklet. In fact I made two, just in case the first one would go wrong.

In the above picture the keychain part hasn't been attached yet. I did remember to take pictures while making the booklet, so I'll post those first, in the end there will be some more pictures of the finished booklets.

The challenge was to make a small keychain booklet, no bigger than 8.5-4 cm or 1.6-3.4 inch. It had to contain lots of words of love and respect (or whatever you want to say to someone) and it could contain as many pages as you liked. It has to be sent in before the 28th of april.

A few days ago I started to make the booklets, but I had no clue yet as to what I was going to say. I figured it would come to me as I went along and it did. In the form of a print by Marla Rae, "The way to be".

Obivously I wasn't going to be able to use it as is, I had to adapt it to the booklet. I typed the whole ABC, edited it and distressed it, so it would fit in the booklet.

For the booklet I used some coffee dyed paper I had and cut it all to size. Folded my signatures and sewed them together. The booklets contain 7 signatures, each with 4 folio's. The hight is 2" and the width is 1.5".

This size is achieved by tearing an A4 size paper in half. This half is then torn in half lengthwise again. The remaining strips are then torn into 4 equal parts. These are the folio's and they are folded in half. If that makes any sense at all.

I cut and embossed the covers.

Painted them black and added some gold embossing to the edges.

I glimmer misted the covers. Worked a little Perfect pearls onto the them, mint and heirloom gold, by rubbing my embossing inkpad over the covers and brushing the perfect pearls onto them. I then set them by spraying them with a little water mist. After this I layed out the things I wanted to use for the covers.

Some distressed muslin and tulle, a piece from an old dictionary, some corners, a tiny picture and a small compass embellishment.

The spine is made from embossed leather, treated with perfect pearls in the same colours as the covers. Added some black archival ink and stamped the word BE in gold. I did have to touch that up with a gold pen though, because the stamping didn't go all to well on the embossed leather.

I made the endpapers with pieces from the old dictionary and treated those with matt varnish, just to make them more sturdy.

After I assembled the booklets and added the ABC, I added the chain and keyring with some trinkets to the booklets.

Some inside shots.

So here they are, my little booklets filled with an inspirational alphabet. Now I will go and sent some happy mail to my friend and enter this to the challenge over at CreaBoetiek.

I leave you all to be Adorable, Brilliant, Creative and just be whoever you want to be.
Have a nice day.