Do it yourself -- sometimes ...

Do it yourself -- sometimes ...

Kyle Brady - nice hand painted background!

I used to do more DIY stuff. From major yard work. In the past, I would have laughed at the heat, and resodded my yard last year. But, alas, I am too old and cranky. So, we hired that out. In the past, I actually did my own brake job on my Austin Healy. I sheared the lug nuts off in the process: leverage does work. So, it actually cost me in time and repair $$. So, I learned what I can do myself, and what I just shouldn't. All this being said, I still do a lot myself. I love to paint and do artsy-craftsy things. Take that backdrop on that portrait of Kyle Brady (left). Some good heavy canvas (from a scenic goods company here in town), a couple of quarts of carefully chosen paint. I was good to go. A beautiful hand painted canvas backdrop, classic in nature, 10' x 16' usually retails for over $200-$300. I think I spent a very hot afternoon in my garage, having a great conversation with my husband, painting, laughing, (drinking a little vino) and only spent MAYBE 50.00. And it has paid for itself again and again. I intend on doing some more.

But this post isn't about that... its about this:

Photos, scissors, ruler and base paper.

I recently did an engagement session for this wonderful couple, Shonda and Jorge. (They married in Florida last week - I couldn't do their wedding as I was already booked for that day.) As a wedding present, I thought I'd handmake some little accordion books to be filled with photos from their session.

So, I printed them up - tiny, tiny; 2x3 at the biggest. I wanted these books to be able to be dropped in a purse or a briefcase.  I figured out how many images on one side I wanted to include: 6. Double that, because a page has two sides. So, my little books would hold 12 photos. Did some adding to the photo sizes to get my page sizes: 1/4 inch all around the largest. My page sizes ended up being 3 x 4. (If you take a careful look at the above image, my math shows that I was going to try to use 26 images. But I thought that would make the accordion a little too wobbly. Also, it seems that I made the page sizes a little larger about 4.5") Anyway, hand made was the key. And this isn't brain surgery, so make the pages whatever size you need them to be!

For my base paper, I used archival watercolor paper. I love the weight and texture of it, and it takes glue great. I cut strips of my base paper to be the length needed. (4" would be the width of each page so 4 x 6=24" + 2 pages for a page to paste to front and back panels. So: total length: 32". I measured 4" increments along, and scored them for a nice fold. I have a desktop size GBC Model 1312 which has a straight cutter/wavy cutter/scoring tool. It really is fabulous. Instead of an expensive bone burnish tool to mash the score into a sharp fold, I used  the back of a spoon. Worked great.

Now the pretty part: The front and back covers:

I cut the front and back panels a little larger than the page size from scrap chip board. And covered them in some left over pretty scrapbooking papers I bought for my daughter's wedding invitations. Luckily my logo colors are black, white, gray and red. And this scrap book paper pack is all textured grays. Very pretty indeed.

I did cut and glue in an inner panel on the inside covers to cover all the folded in ugly bits. I could have included ribbons to tie them up with, but ran out of time. 

The red paper here is from other scrapbook paper I had, so I created little boxes to insert them in. 

Little red folded hand made boxes to keep the accordion books nice,

If they keep them inside, the books should last a while.

I haven't done something like this in a long time, I had fun creating them. I hope they enjoy them as much as I had creating them.

Next time: Beading!