little blue book charms

A while back I posted a picture of some booklets I was working on. Yesterday I finally finished them. Somehow I kept bumping into a wall while making these. So I'm really glad it all came together in the end. 

Two of them are already spoken for. I don't know what to do with the last one yet, but I'm sure it will find a good home as well.

I did make some progress shots while making them so I can show you how I made them.

I started out with some tea dyed papers and tore them all to size. As I was being lazy and didn't want to calculate how big they needed to be, I just folded the tea dyed printer A4 papers in halves lengthwise and then in fours. Did the same in the other direction after which I had a piece of paper with 16 rectangles. 

I then butted my ruler up against the folds and tore the pieces along the edge of the ruler. Leaving me with pieces approximately 7.4-5.2 cm (2 15/16 "-2 1/16"). I folded those in halves again to form the folios in the signatures.

I put the signatures together with 4 folios each and kept 6 of them together with clothes pins in a book block.

I measured and marked the middle of each set and about a cm from the sides and marked the entire book block with a pencil.

I pricked holes in each signature and sewed them together, keeping in mind to keep them always in the same direction and order as they were marked.

I glued the spines twice with PVA and then glued the endpapers to the book blocks. After which I glued some muslin to the spine for extra reinforcement.

The wooden butterflies were painted blue and then embossed with blue embossing powder. I also painted some test papers blue and stamped on them to find out which color I liked best for the covers.

As you can see, I went with the sepia archival ink.

I forgot to make pictures from making the covers, but they are basically a front and back piece, slightly larger than the book block. The width of the spine is the width of the book block spine.

These were then covered with the painted papers and then stamped. I rounded the spine somewhat and glued some white fabric strips to the back cover on the inside.

I Attached the endpapers to the covers and the butterflies to the front. Painted a little key with the same blue and sewed it to the fabric.

  

As a last step I pierced the spine and attached the hanger thingy to it using two jump rings.

I do like how they turned out, even though, for some reason, I kept postponing finishing them 

On a side note, I did notice I am reaching a milestone for my blog with nearly a hundred followers now. I find it very encouraging that so many of you enjoy my blogposts and work enough to follow me. Being fairly new at crafting, I keep getting amazed and surprised by the kindness and warmth of this crafting community. You are all such wonderful, talented and inspiring people and I'm happy to be a part of this.

Thank you all so much for watching and I wish you a wonderful week.

Linking this to:

• Simon Says Stamp and Show Challenge: a little stamping (as I used a tiny bit of a big stamp to make my covers)
• Creative Every Day Check-In: Juli 8 - 14