{Mixed Media Tutorial} Monika Makes A CUTplorations Die Storage Book

Hello Crafty Friends! As you well know, I love making my own books and folders for storage. Today I am sharing another one of my makes. This one is inspired by the way Shery packages the CUTplorations Dies, on this wonderful piece of strong card with strong magnetic tape. I just had to create a book with pockets to take them.

As always, the book is made from scratch. The detailed steps should even enable a novice to give it a go. I converted my centimeter measurements as best as I could into inches, you should have seen me with two rulers, smoke rising from my brain lol The inch measurements are however slightly different, but should work fine.

Anyway, have fun seeing how it all came together.

You need:
- for the cover

• 2 pieces of chipboard 15.5 x 14.5cm (6 1/8x5 3/4 inches)
• 1 piece of chip board 4x14.5cm (1 5/8x5 3/4 inches)
• 1 piece of sketch paper 35.5x14.5cm (14x5 3/4 inches) scored at 15.5cm (6 1/8 inches) and 20cm (7 7/8 inches) (G)
• 1 piece of sketch paper 37.5x16.5cm (15x6 3/4) scored at 16.5cm (6 5/8inches) and 21cm (8 3/8inches) along the longer side (H)
• 2 pieces of white card 15.5x14.5cm (6 1/8x5 3/4 inches) (E)
• 1 piece of white card 7.5x14.5cm (3 1/8x5 3/4 inches)scored at 1.5cm (5/8 inches) and 6cm (2 1/2inches) along the short end for the spine (F)
• 1 ring binder mechanism, recycled mine from an old binder
• 2 eyelets for attaching the mechanism

- for the pockets

• 12 pieces of white card 29x10,5cm (11 5/8x4 1/8 inches) scored at 14cm (5 5/8 inches) and 28cm (11 1/4 inches) along the long edge and 0.5cm (1/4inch) along the shorter edge (A)
• 6 pieces of card 5x14cm (2x5 5/8 inches) scored at 2.5cm (1 inch) along the short edge (B)
• 2 pieces of white card 16.5x16.5cm (6 1/2x 6 1/2 inches) scored at 1cm (3/8 inch) on 3 sides (C)
• 2 pieces of white card 16.5x16.5cm (6 1.2x6 1/2) (D)

inks of your choice, blending mat and tools, brayer, crop-a-dile, envelope punch board or circle punch, hole punch, stamping tool (MISTI or similar), die cutting machine, acrylic blocks, gel pen, sequins, lots of glue and the following stamps, dies and stencils:

- For The Birds stamps and For The Birds CUTplorations Dies

- Floral Bliss for the Zinnia stamp, Scribbly Splattery Grunge for the musical and alphabet stamps, Mixed Media Grunge for the deicate dotty texture stamp, Artsy Border Makers, ARTplorations Stencils Foiled Again and Dots All Over and Lacy Edges And Borders CUTplorations Dies

Edge the 6 strips of white card for the pockets (B) and the spine piece (F) using one of the Lacy Edges And Border Dies

Add a notch to the two pieces (C), which will be the pockets for the inside front and back cover

Add notches to the 12 pieces (A) aligning with 7cm (2 13/16 inches) first the edge and then the scored line as shown below.

This should give you two notches aligning with each other once the card is folded.

Lay down some light base colour on all the pieces apart from the larger piece of sketch paper (H). I used Coastal Cabana.

Blend the edges with a matching darker ink, I used Bermuda Bay.

Glue the chipboard to the larger piece of sketch paper (H), fold over the edges and glue down. Here I was a little tight, using the measurements provided, your edges will be wider than mine.

Blend in the edges with the darker ink.

Attach the smaller piece of sketch paper (G) to the other side and add stamping to the spine. I did some of my stamping with the colours I used for blending plus some bright pink (Melon Mambo) and black Versafine.

Blend some of the lighter ink through the Foiled Again stencil on pieces (E) and (F) which will be for the outer cover.

Using a wet baby wipe and the Dots All over stencil add some bleached dots.

Add stamping using the die cut birds and large sentiment as guidance for the layout of the front cover piece.

Stamp the large sentiment and glue the cover and spine pieces in place. Fold the cover and set aside to dry.

Using the narrow margin score line as marker, add a line of glue and start gluing the pockets as shown. The book has 6 pages and each page is made up of 2 pockets forming a 3rd inner pocket. As you can see I didn't add much colour to the parts I knew were going to be on the inside.

Tip!: For a better finish fold the narrow tab over last and glue down.

Apply glue as shown and fold one of the pockets over onto the other one to give you a 3rd inner pocket and hide the folded over tabs.

Your almost finished page should look the same from each side.

Again using the score line as a guide apply a line of glue, add some to the inside of one of the edging strips (B) and attach it narrowly covering the scored line.

Press firmly and repeat to assemble all 6 pages. Once dried the thinner edge should fit into a normal office hole punch.

Add some stamping. I kept it relatively simple as I am planning to add die cut shapes to further decorate the pages and to show which dies are hidden inside the pocket. similar to what I did with my word die storage booklet here.

At this point, I added some more texture stamping around the edges of my cover and glued the birds in place.

I then marked the two holes for the ring binder mechanism and using my crop-a-dile punched the holes and attached the mechanism with two large eyelets.

It did work despite the funny curve.

It is sometimes worth keeping old ring binder mechanisms and re-use them in one of your projects.

You are now ready to punch the holes and add your pages to the inside.

Using a stamping tool add matching stamping to one cover pocket (C) and a piece of card (D). Repeat for the other pocket (C) and piece (D). These pockets will be great for storing Nesting Dies. The matching piece of card can be used to cut the nesting dies in frames and a sort of inlay them on top of the pocket. I shall add a photo once I received some more nesting dies. Shery just added a lot of nice ones to the shop. They are already on my wish list!

Add the pockets to the inside of the covers.

Decorate the pages with die cuts. Cut the storage card down to 13.5cm (5 1/4 inches) in height, round the corners and add to the corresponding pocket.

The middle pocket can take already cut die cuts.

I am sure these pages won't have to wait for very much longer to be filled. To finish, I simply added a bit of stamped border, some white doodles and sequins.

Of course you could also use this to make a mini scrapbook. I leave you to enjoy some more photos.

That's it from me for today. I hope you feel inspired to create a little book.

Have a lovely week!
hugs
Monika xxx

Here is what I used:
ARTplorations Stencils: Foiled Again and Dots All Over


STAMPlortaions Stamps: For The Birds, Floral Bliss, Scribbly Splattery Grunge,


Mixed Media Grunge, Artsy Border Makers


CUTplorations Dies: For The Birds Dies, Lacy Edges And Borders