Makers Halloween Mini books

Halloween is soon coming, and I've had these little minis made for over a week now. 

These recycled items were tossed in the pile of Halloween junk mail and scrapbook supplies I gathered together for the Spider Silk journal.

These are plain little notebook/sketchbook journals made from a tissue box and some packaging from a set of Halloween tights by Maker's Halloween. 

I added a purple ribbon closure to the Maker's Halloween mini. The look of it just seems so perfect as a book cover.

And the spooky tree tissue box is one of my favorite tissue box images, pretty, yet haunting. It's the second tissue box book I've made, using O wire binding methods.

Back side of the books. I left the Maker's Halloween journal the way it was front and back. The information and bar code seemed charming, so I left them.

For being so small, both books hold quite a few pages, and can serve well for writing, sketching, or even small wallet sized photos.

I used some pretty raven paper from my Halloween paper stack to cover the inside of my spooky tree book. The ravens seemed fitting for the theme, and style. 

The tree book contains sketch paper, with some black scrapbook pages in between as dividers.

The picture above shows the first page with just a plain sheet of black paper for the opening page.

Later I took the corners snipped from the inner covers for this book, and applied them to the back and front page for more interest. I felt it made kind of a nice spot to put a title or picture.

In the Maker's Halloween journal, I covered the insides with some leftover scrapbook paper.

It's one of my favorites, metallic skeletons and skull faces that reflect the light. Since the scraps weren't large enough to cover the entire inside, I accented the top and bottom edges with sparkly purple scraps.

Again, for this journal same as the spooky tree one, I used some corner pieces to make the front page more interesting. It's also a nice way to use up the tiniest of scraps.

The Maker's Halloween journal is made up of all scrapbook paper, mostly plain in the shades of white, purple, and black.

The only patterned papers added are in two spots of the journal. It kind of just serves as a divider in both sections.

The book only measure about 3 1/2'' x 2 1/2''. It's a pocket sized journal.

Spider Silk Halloween Journal

 (Completed Sept. 28, 2016).

So much to share, this took some work getting down, but it came out fun. The Spider Silk journal contains three signatures, which means it kind of springs open on its own. to keep it slim on the shelf, I added a sheer, black ribbon closure.

The book is still pretty thick even with the ribbon on....I'm starting to believe I should have only added two signatures.

The book cover is made from a Shutterfly box. I liked the orange, and it just seemed perfect for a first time Halloween journal.

I didn't want to cover certain parts of the box, or take away from the color, so I avoided covering it with scrapbook paper and took a more adventurous approach.

I hand stamped the entire thing with my spiderweb stamp kit using black stayson ink. It felt kind of plain in just black, so I embossed the webs with clear sparkly emboss powder, and the smaller spiders with black emboss.

I also hand drew in extra lines with a black pen to extend the webs and make them connect together.

I placed the webs around the title, liking the look of Shutterfly font. It became the focus and grounding point the main webs attach to.

 

The stamping was continued to the back side, and I kept the address label as an anchoring point for the webs.

Part of the charm to keeping the label is the name of the place it was from. Whispering Hills, a fitting name for something Halloween based.

The giant spider on the front is a stencil I drew on, then colored using a black jelly role glaze pen. Then to give interest, I added metallic purple designs to it with another one of my jelly role pens.

Notice how I directed the large spider at the word fly. :P

My little black spiders got a coating of sparkle since I added the sparkle emboss on after I had done the spiders. I decided I liked the spiders to be sparkly too.

Here's the spine and side view of the book's contents.

I continued the spiderweb across part of the spine to make it seem like it was all held together.

And for this book I did an exposed stitch, sewing my signatures directly into the spine, and keeping the stitches on the ends, away from the spiderweb.

The first page makes me happy. I covered the inside with spider scrapbook paper, coating it and the outside cover with Liquitex satin varnish.

First page is a cute illustration from a Red Barren pizza box.

I added some mustache washi tape to the top of the next page as part of the Red Barren pizza theme.

In the corner I used some images from a Joan's flier to make a tuck spot, with some little spooky Polaroid cards created from Joan's coupons and scrapbook paper.

I loved the swirling text paper and its other side of orange and black.

I also added parts of a recollection paper package to the book, the large page making me chuckle because the words "capturing special memories". Fitting words for a book covered in spiders.

On this page is another example of using flier images to decorate. Again, I used some flier images, this corner tuck spot a scrap from a Michael's flier, and spooky Polaroids are from Joan's fliers.

I added an Angry Orchard box to the book, this ones color being good for the theme. Plus orchards with angry trees are great for Halloween.

On the other side of the angry Orchard box  I covered the sections with scrapbook paper, then added an old ghoul gummy tummy bag with some washi tape. Those candies are from Trader Joe's which had them ages ago, but I don't think they sell them anymore, so yay for having several of the bags in my stash.

I enjoyed trying out some of the scrapbook papers from the only Halloween paper stack I have in my collection. The black and white paper just seemed to go so well with the candy bag.

I added in a very light purple paper that's from packaging, and created a tuck spot with tag flip outs. I decorated with some tapes, and used paper scraps to add interest to the tags.

There's even some black striped paper in there, and some green paper too.

The green paper is an extension of the Angry Orchard box, made into a tuck spot with a few scrap paper writing spots.

Orange and black with a bit of white and sparkly silver. Looks fun.

I added a flier page that looked nice with the framed raven image to the right. Pier 1 fliers always have nice pictures to play with.

Here's the other side of that pizza box, turned into a tuck spot which I added some parchment paper to. And on the other side is some scrapbook paper.

Third section was skipped in photo session since it's all black and white paper for adding to, but the third section has some more scrapbook paper.

And another part of the pizza box, this time with a zombie on it. Looks like someone ate too much candy.

The picture just seemed to fit the orange scrapbook paper behind it.

Some more of that recollection paper stack stuff.

Some very sparkly purple paper and the other half of the Angry Orchard box.

It too flips out and has room for pictures and writing. Then there's more recollections paper stack scrap with some interesting copper foiled paper.

I have more to add to make the tuck spot for this look good, but there's another spot with some flip out tags (left). On the right I used some more flier imagery, and a scrap of scrapbook paper to cover up part of the Halloween pizza box with little on it. This spot is actually a very small side loading tuck spot.

Another ghoul gummy bag, and a tweaked Michael's flier image turned into a tuck spot. I added some card stock over the letters of the coupon, transforming it into a writing spot. I also covered up some words on the pumpkin with more stamping.

Tag tuck spot and a mini booklet.

The mini booklet is for writing notes or a small story. I made it to use up a few scraps, but also so I could remember the name of my favorite paper.

Both sides are fun, and I sewed the pages in.

The fun page, a haunted house image.

Here's a few more tuck spot, one small, and the other quite large with a nice big tag.

More writing paper and scrap packaging.

And the end of the book with a witch on the pizza box.

This large book has a lot to go, and I hope to use it for personal journal keeping  during October. Once I work in it more, it will probably look really fun, and then I can share a full post on the completed thing.

I like to leave my journals mostly plain when I first start out, liking the room to create and decorate as I go.

The fun isn't over yet. Here's a peek at some packaging set to the side for a few smaller projects this month.

   And now for a flip through.