Notebook Cover

Today is my first post of March for the International Design Team at IndigoBlu.

This month we were asked to create spring-themed projects and I was happy to do that since it snowed again last week.  Mind you we were luckier that many and the snow stayed mostly out over Lake Ontario.  Today is the day the calendar says it is spring so I hope the weather co-operated where you are.

I wondered if I could stretch a little and use poppies as a spring flower but since the ones I have seen are always deep red or orange I was going to abandon that idea until I Googled poppies and discovered Icelandic Poppies.  Who knew that poppies come in lots of other colours and mostly light spring colours - pretty peach, ivory, coral, etc.?  So that was all I needed to use the IndigoBlu Poppycock stamp with confidence.

I decided to make a notepad cover and started by making the cover.  These make great little gifts and can be decorated in any number of ways.  The notepads come from the dollar store, usually in packs of four and sometimes come in other sizes.  This time I used pads that are 5" x 8" and my cover is designed to have two pockets inside, one to hold the cardboard backing on the notepad (so you can easily replace it when you want) and one to hold "stuff".

Start with an 8 1/2" x 11" piece of card stock (kraft card stock from Recollections for this project) and trim 1/4" off the long edge.  Put the long edge in your scoring tool and score at 5 1/4" and at 5 3/4".  This will give you a half inch gusset, which is a tad loose since the pad is only 1/4" thick but allows for the dimension of the pockets and for you to add a fair bit of "stuff to the left pocket.  Fold each of your score lines and burnish them with a bone folder.

Now to make the pockets, cut two pieces 3 3/4" x 5 1/8".  Score at 1/2" on the long edge, fold and burnish.  Clip a little mitre out of the folded piece on each side as shown and add double sided tape to the outside.  Then cut four pieces 3 1/8" x 1" and fold in half lengthwise (these will form a gusset for your pockets. making it easier to insert "stuff").  

Add double sided tape to each side of the gusset pieces and adhere to the inside of the main part of the pocket on the short side - the fold should be facing the edge and the bottom of the gusset should be butting up against your fold line.  Remove the tape backing from your gussets and fold the pocket bottom up over them.

Remove the tape backing from the bottom and adhere the pocket to the inside bottom of the cover about 1/16" above the edge, making sure it is centred from side to side.  Sorry, this photo was taken after I decorated the left pocket - oops!

If you are using smaller pads, simply adjust the measurements accordingly but it isn't difficult.  The tricks are to add a little bit of give everywhere.  I would also recommend that you don't use white card stock unless you don't mind it getting dirty or plan to cover it with patterned paper.

Next I created my flowers by stamping the large poppy with Versamark onto different scraps of card stock and heat embossing them with Copper Embossing Powder from Recollections.  You could use Flitter Glue and Gilding Flakes, such as Copper Kettle but I didn't have any flakes that were the right colour so this time I went with the embossing powder.  I did the same with some of the leaves from the Poppycock set.  Everything was fussy cut.   Sorry the lighting was not great to get a good photo.

I also painted the centres of the poppies with Lemon Meringue Acrylic Paint.

I created a panel for the front and the inside left pocket by cutting pieces from the yellow 12" x 12" Damaged Damask paper and stamping the border from the Live, Laugh, Love stamp set in the same manner as I did the poppies.

To assemble the cover, I distressed the two panels with my scissors and mounted them and then added the poppies and the leaves to the front.  I recommend that you keep your front profile fairly flat so that when you want to write on your notepad the cover will open completely.

This is a shared post so pop on over to IndigoBlu and see what Giovanna and Ksenija have created.