Bag Book Time!

What's this in my stash? A fancy paper shopping bag, with nice ribbon handles? Well, I did get a great pair of pants out of that transaction, but there's no point in letting the bag go to waste, is there? Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

If you're thinking "It's bag book making time!", then you'd be right!

I snipped and chopped at the shopping bag, getting all the good bits out. The star designs are printed in silver, so I didn't waste them. The paper made the cover of the book (covering some mat board), and the handle became the closure and bookmark. For the pages, I selected various colours of Stampin' Up cardstock.

See, I was getting around to mentioning Stampin' Up stuff.

It had to be SU cardstock, because I'm planning to write, paste, and stamp into the book, and I wanted pages I could rely on.

The ribbon closure has an old belt buckle added. Eyelets set courtesy of the Cropadile. From the line of eyelets on the closure, you can see the book is designed to get fat! Fabric scraps from Reverse Art Truck. That's a wooden toggle hanging off the bookmark. The word "details" came from the bottom of the bag - it was contact details!

The pages are black, Whisper White, Kraft, Very Vanilla, Only Orange and vellum. I cut A5 sheets of each colour (then realised I wanted the a teeny bit smaller, and trimmed them all), organised the pages into a nice order, then made the book.

Actually, before making the book, I decorated each and every page with punches. ONLY punches, and only with the colours of card that were already in use in the book. Some pages are so decorated there's precious little space to write, but hey. I've just shown ONE photo from inside, but there's lots more (mostly simple).

I used just about every punch I have. Ah, it was fun, and even though this was a "just for the sake of it" project, it has set off a few ideas for "real" projects. That's why we muck around with our art materials, folks!

What am I planning to do with this eccentric book? I thought I'd take it to the Stampin Up Convention in Sydney in May as my travelling art journal. There's always things to write, draw or stick in, and with all those stamps around, I should be able to pretty up a few pages too!

And here's a link to TS14+, the unknowing sponsors of this book, and makers of yummy, comfy clothes!