Ta-Da! It's finally finished!

My latest project, a Craftster.com challenge, is complete (as of Friday). It was pretty time consuming, cutting out all the paper. And it took me, I think, 7 tries to figure out how to sew the binding up (even with the diagram Theresa drew up for me). But, I completed it and I can now say that I am in love with bookbinding.

For my first book binding project I think it turned out not too bad. I had some issues with the glues so I'll have to ask around about that. But all in all not too bad. The best part is that I didn't have to spend a dime to make this. I used found objects from around my house and craft room for the materials.



The front cover of the book was made from old plastic bags that I melted into a sheet (see previous blog posts for pictures of the project in action). The plastic was mounted onto card stock and then I stitched around the edges with a decorative stitch using orange thread.


The inside cover was lined with a map of the United States, which I found in a travel brochure. The inside pages were made from brown paper lunch bags and an old scrapbook I was no longer using (and looking to get rid of). The pages alternate between paper bag and scrapbook page. Each paper bag page has a picture of a random place around the world (found from travel junk mail and magazines). The last paper bag page in each signature is for any other notes about your travels and has a saying cut from old magazines, ie: survival guide, It's a small world, dear diary and Walk On!.



There are 8 pages in each signature, 4 paper bag and 4 scrapbook, with a total of 32 pages.



The back cover is made from dark brown card stock. The book is sewn together using linen thread with the sewing technique Theresa taught me (we can't remember the name of it).

I like the way it turned out, for my first book. I'm already thinking of new books to make! Now if only we could travel so I could use it. I guess it could be my "reminiscing travel" book!

Melting Plastic Bags

I came across a crafting challenge yesterday on Craftster.com. The challenge, here, inspired me with a few ideas, one of which calls for using old plastic bags.

I've heard about melting plastic bags down into a solid sheet that you can use for....whatever...but I'd never tried it before.

So, my sister-in-law, Theresa, came over yesterday and we tried it out. After a couple of misfit sheets we figured out the trick that worked for us: iron setting at 3.5-4, vigorous rubbing of the iron onto the paper and pressing down for added weight. We also found that using the thicker plastic worked better even though other websites say the thinner stuff works better. The thin stuff bubbled and wrinkled a lot on us.

We had some cool bags to work with and some not so cool. Old Navy, Sprint, Gymboree, Catherine's and Disney yielded some neato designs. We also had a lot of Safeway and BiMart bags which weren't very "ooh, la, la" but they did the trick.

Here are some pics of our little adventure.




Some completed versions:



Dad was on baby duty so they came out to watch the show.


There wasn't much of a "show" so after some bundling up Ada became our little helper.


I'll be posting my finished project here on my blog so be sure to check back to see what I came up with!

Good Luck to all who join in the fun, too!