Oh How I Love To Read - A Challenge Mini-book

Challenge One is now live on the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog, and it's one that's a real challenge: to create a page or project with no photos, only journaling, about 'why I love ____ '.

I quite enjoyed this challenge! I always have lots of things I'd like to record, but because I don't have photos, they tend to get forgotten. For my project I ended up with a mini-book, as I was inspired by my theme 'Oh how I love to read' to use an old book to record my favourite novels in:

I'm going to show you how I put the book together, and then show you all the pages in case you wonder what my favourite books are (I warn you they are mostly Children and Young Adult Fantasy Novels)!

Here's the construction:

Step 1: Cut the front and back covers off an old book, using a craft knife and a steel ruler. I used a poetry book I picked up at a car boot sale for 20p, as I loved the yellow pattern!

Step 2: Cut a length of fabric approx 2.5" wide, and 3" longer than your covers (so there will be 1.5" to spare at each end). Use pinking scissors to stop the edges fraying.

Step 3: Use a hot glue gun to attach the fabric to your covers as a spine. Glue onto the outside of the covers first - make sure they are level, and leave a 1" gap in between them. Then fold up the top and bottom flaps onto the inside and glue them with hot glue too. Mark a pencil line 1.5" down from the top and 1.5" up from the bottom (I've added arrows to the photo as it was hard to see the pencil marks).

Step 4: Cut another strip of fabric that's 1" wide, and 1" less in length that the height of the book. Add hot glue above the top pencil line, and attach the top of this fabric strip. Then slide on a small book ring. Add more hot glue from below the book ring, to the next pencil line. Then slide on another book ring, and glue down the end of the strip. Done!

Now you just need to decorate the front cover:

I used all bits from my February Counterfeit kit. The doily flowers are punched from one of the 6x6 papers, using a Martha Stewart Vintage Doily punch.

I also used my kit for all the pages, cutting them to different sizes. I used the Echo Park sticker sheets, a bit of washi tape, and some misting with a wood arrow for a mask, for embellishments. The only extra pages are the front and back pages, which were original pages from the poetry book. I stuck two pages together to make them a bit stronger, and then used gesso to cover up the front of them for writing on:

I love my mini-book! I hope to keep adding to it, as I find or think of more books that I love. Hopefully one day my kids will look through it to see what books they might like to try! 

So, are you going to take up the challenge? If you need more inspiration there are more DT examples HERE. Or there's also the 'Progress' layout I made last month that had no photo! I'm going to try and do another 'no photo' layout for the member's blog hop later in the month, which you could be part of if you want to take up the challenge!

For those wondering, my sister didn't get a placement at a Camp America camp yesterday. We stood for 2 hours in the cold to queue up for the event, and by the time we got in all the positions had been snapped up by the people ahead of us! She can still apply online though, so fingers crossed. And we had a nice time in London, including dinner at Chiquitos, so it was a good day anyway! See my instagram photos in the right sidebar for some of the photos I took!

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