simple Stories – Basement Studio

May Day

The beginning of April felt like it was going to be such a drag to get through the whole month in a lock down situation, with no where to go and no one to see! However it did pretty much fly by with a whole month of sunshine (no rain until a couple of days ago) and plenty of outside chores to do.

I’ve been experimenting with book folds and gone back to where I started in scrapbooking. These albums with a wide spine and wide gaps between page hinges are great for adding bulky embellishments and excellent for keeping everything neat without having stuff bursting out of the sides. Personally I don’t mind a bit of a fat book but not everyone does.

These books make fabulous albums for special occasions and include pockets, flaps and fold out pages for lots of extra space.

This one has been decorated with a mixture of two paper packs by Simple Stories Vintage Garden District and Vintage Botanicals both from Paper Pen and Plan. It has 4 pages but each page includes an extra fold out page or flap so there’s actually enough space for up to 19 square format photos.

It’ll be hard to let this little one go but it has be listed in my shop here simply click on this link.

Have a lovely day and stay safe.

Jaine xx

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Tiny TN Insert

Every tuesday it’s #tinytntuesday on the Facebook page of Paper Pen and Plan, when we showcase our tiny pages and think small. This week I decided to think a bit bigger by creating not just a page but a whole insert. My old insert is pretty much busting out of the cover by now anyway, so as I had some time on my hands (like a lot of us do right now!) I thought I’d put together a new one.

Rather than create a new one with blank pages I decided it would be better to make one where each page has already been started to save time later. This is my mop up paper which I keep in a cheap A5 sketch book. I use it to clean brushes, stencils and anything else which might be messy.

It’s perfect for collages.

I cut a strip the same height as my tn from a section I liked, and stamped a couple of stamps over randomly.

I folded this up to create pages.

I glued each fold together,

forming my little booklet.

It was just a matter of covering it with some cute paper (Simple Vintage Garden District by Simple Stories) from Paper Pen and Plan and it’s ready to go.

The Paper Pen and Plan Facebook page is here and the Etsy shop to buy the Simple Stories papers is here

Stay safe

Jaine xx

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A Valentine Mini Book

I’ve spent quite a bit of time recently sorting out some of the hand bound books from market and art fairs so I can add them to the shop. This meant photographing and numbering each one before uploading to the site. It’s been a while since I made a mini book and this process made me curious to try out something new.

Meet the Square album. It’s a dinky little size at 10.5cm and the inside pages (all 14 of them) are made using Vintage Botanicals double sided patterned papers, originally bought from Paper Pen and Plan on Etsy. If you check them out they’ve lots of paper packs on sale and with my code JAINE10 you’ll get 10% off too! The cover has been covered and decorated with paper and embellishments from the February Sweet Treat box also from Paper Pen and Plan.

It would be perfect for a few Instagram photos and some journaling, personally I wouldn’t want too much to cover up those gorgeous pages.

This is a new binding method for me but I’m now inspired to create something on a bigger scale perhaps.

It sits on a shelf perfectly out on display rather than being tucked away between other books so in that respect it’s more of a decor piece than a simple album.

I haven’t decided yet if I want to keep it or add it to the shop but what ever I decide I’ll be adding to the family.

Happy Valentine’s day,

Jaine xx

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Does Size Really Matter?

It seems in notebook and planner terms it really does, especially when travelling with art and craft supplies, when you need to justify every inch!

I’ll admit it takes me a long time to warm up to something and I’m quite sceptical about most things in the craft industry, putting them down to fads and phases. Micro and tiny sized travelers notebooks are nothing new but have been something I’ve wanted to explore for a while now and a recent flood of pictures on social media recently of cute mini tn’s had me longing to make one of my own!

Yesterday the weather was so awful, gardening was off the menu, so I was forced to spend the day in the basement studio making scrapbooks for my up coming KUKI stand. The materials were all out on the table and a little pile of discarded leather pieces sat looking at me so I decided to cut a micro sized piece just to see how it looked. Of course one thing led to another and I had to make inserts too otherwise how else would I be able to test it out? An hour later I had my micro and four inserts made from scrap papers and sketch paper.

I have a book of sketch paper, one made from mop up and scrap papers, one in watercolour paper and a fourth, the blue backgrounds all from a large piece of pre ink sprayed paper. So plenty of choice of backgrounds depending on my mood and where I am and this little chunky will travel with me when I’m away this Summer.

Using scrap papers and my ready made background papers makes it already feel familiar to me so I won’t have any trouble filling it.

Here you can clearly see the progression in sizes, from my Carpe Diem by Simple Stories at the bottom which is my every day planner, Prima Jet Setter for journaling in, Prima Misty Rose for my hand bag planner and now the micro for on the go journaling. Simple Stories and Prima are found at Paperpenandplan on Etsy as well as the planner accessories.

Have a good weekend

Jaine x

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