Let's take a deep breath everybody, {{inhale, exhale}} This is a jam-packed post. Get all the way through it, and you'll find a GIVEAWAY at the end. Haa!
Happy Friday! If you are visiting me for the first time from the We R blog, then I'm very pleased to meet you! Thanks for stopping by. My name is Amanda Rose Zampelli, and I was recently hired by We R Memory Keepers as a product designer and as a bonus: I get to blog a bit for them too!
Today I'm excited to share this watercolored mini book I created with the help of the We R tools and supplies you see below. The Cinch, some coil binding, one of the beloved TAB punches and adhesives, and part of an AlbumsMadeEasy pocket page were the basis of what helped me construct my mini book.
First, I cut an AlbumsMadeEasy pocket page down the middle to use the plastic 6x6 pockets as protectors for my front and back covers.
Those pockets also dictated the size of my photos. Because the front and back covers were going to be 6x6, I made the photos the same width, but and inch shorter in height. The photos were printed 6 inches wide x 5 inches long, so I would have room for the tabs.
Here's where this project gets interesting. ;) I could have printed my 6x5 photos on photo paper. I could have trimmed my photos to size, put them in my mini book, and called it a memory-keeping day. I, however, had an idea: I wanted this account of my Monday to be in watercolor. Yes, it involved some extra steps. Yes, it took about 2x longer than if I just used printed out photos, but it's how I wanted this mini to go. (And I love the result!)
Okay, here's how I did it: watercolor paper (trimmed to 6 inches x 5 inches), your photos, and...the kicker...CARBON PAPER. Oh, the crafty miracle of carbon paper.
I put the carbon paper between the watercolor paper and my photos, and with a ballpoint pen, traced the edges of the things in my photos. What results with this method is a line sketch (water-coloring book of sorts) of your photo, ready to be painted in.
Once all my photos were turned into line sketches, I put them in order, painted on them, let them dry, jotted a few notes right on top of the painted images, and attached the time via my We R TAB punch that the event occurred.
After all my tabs were on, each page was ready to be punched and binded using the Cinch.
It's amazing how much of a 'cinch' the Cinch really is (I had to do it). So simple, and within minutes, my mini was perfectly (like, literally flawlessly) bound.
The rolling and twisting of the curly white binding wire was one of my favorite parts.
Mini book bound, tabs in place...
...and now I have a sweet little 'Day in the Life' watercolored mini book account of my March Monday.
Without further ado, I give you my watercolored documentation - one handcrafted page after another:
'Day in the Life' is a fun documentation project. I've done some in past (see here). Documenting it the way I did above allowed me to practice sketching the lines and shapes of everyday objects, and have paint brush play with my watercolors. I also was dying to break out that Cinch! Haa haa!
I'm coming to you next week with another Cinched mini book, but one very different from the one above. Stay tuned!
You can catch me here on this blog daily, find me on instagram | twitter | pinterest | bloglovin', or pop in every Friday to see my crafts and fun things in collaboration with my new work family at We R Memory Keepers.
...and speaking of We R Memory Keepers, they're hosting a weekend-long GIVEAWAY! How would you like to win all that you see below? An Instagram Album, Corner Chomper, and Instagram Jouranaling Card pack! To enter, go here https://a.pgtb.me/T1w4hK.
