"A Ladies' Diary" box & tiny journals

My mom has a fantastic papercrafting store that she hangs out at a lot, Scraps of Love. Since it's over 2000 miles away from where I live, she generously sends me wonderful papers & embellishments that she finds there (thank you, USPS flat-rate shipping!).

One thing in particular that she can purchase there that I can't find here are Graphic 45 papers. Scraps of Love has insanely talented instructors who do things with these papers that would make you cry, and Mom takes many of their classes and sends me the trimmings and any extra papers.

I decided to use the papers from their A Ladies' Diary Collection to make this box containing small journals, as I also wanted to practice my book-making. One fun thing about Graphic 45 papers is that each double-sided design comes in 3 sizes: 12x12, 6x6, and 8x8, so having different sizes gives you lots of options. The box is roughly 2 x 3.25 inches, based on the size of this cute fashion-card paper from the 8x8 pack.

click photos to enlarge

I couldn't help but use the Stampin' Up! Beautiful Wings Embosslit die to add some 3D embellishment. I used Glossy Accents to adhere the butterflies.

The box contains a tier of tiny boxes; I used the tutorial (well, sorta) by Bastel-Oase.

Here's the back of the box, without the lid:

Each 2x2 box contains a small book.

Three of the books are designed around the different sized "vintage stamps" from the paper collection. For the blank books, I used regular printer paper. Everything is inked with Antique Linen distress ink and/or edged with my E04 Copic marker (Lipstick Natural).

This is the smallest piano-hinge book I've ever made, at just under 3/4 inches wide:

I learned this technique from a book, but I used the tutorial at Making Mini Scrapbooks to refresh my memory.

For the second book, I used my awl to puncture a hole in the middle of the pages/cover, and ran some twine around and through the tiny spools, knotting it in the middle.

The next one is basically an accordion book with a wrap-around cover:

Mom had also sent me several pieces of this particular part of one of the collections' 12x12 sheets. It's a column of three of the vintage stamps, so I glued 3 of those together to make the book. I glued the spine, so the pages naturally created pockets for little journal tags.

Finally, I used Prima wood pieces to make a funky little accordion book:

The metal clock hands are actually from Tim Holtz's Game Spinner collection, but hey they work!

I decided to decorate the back of the pages, so I stamped it with a large background stamp (Flourishes llc), heat-embossed it with clear embossing powder, and inked it with pink chalk ink. I had used printer paper, so much to my surprise the heat-embossed portion became almost translucent. It created a vintage look that I'll definitely have to use again.

Many thanks to my wonderful husband for taking these photos, and for giving me some pointers on how to get better photos from now on. We had a real family photo session for this!

Inspiration/Challenges:
Charisma Cardz #33: More than one fold
Love to Create: Fancy Folds
Opus Gluei Challenge #163: The Start of Something BIG! (This project was inspired by my wanting to start book-making again, and to do more 3D projects)
Stamps & Fun = Creativity: Box
The Pink Elephant Monday Card Challenge: Anything but a Card

Update: This was a prize winner at Love to Create. Thank you!

Thank you for visiting, and if you're ever in Peora, Arizona, be sure to visit Scraps of Love!