Mini Christmas Books and Boxes

On Dec. 12 I had found these holiday craft tapes at the Lidl's store. It was my first visit to the store, and I discovered many interesting things in the 'stuff ' section. The main thing that interested me were of course the scrap book items.

I had been wanting some holiday tapes for my Christmas books that I've been working in, so a pack of 8 tapes for two dollars was a great find.

My first craft project using the tapes started on Dec. 13, 2017.

I had a bit of fun tonight with a small project. The craft tape  had these little cardboard ends in them to hold the tape in place. I took those ends and turned them into mini boxes, then decorated them with some of the tapes.

They could serve well for any miniature dessert or gift in the doll world. I love the classy look of the gold trees, and the red Polish country look of those funny reindeer with fur trees.

The gold box came out better than the red because I did the red one first.

On Dec. 18, 2017, I had some fun with making these mini Christmas books. They only measure 4.5x4.5 cm. and are made from the box tabs of some festive Crelando craft tapes.

I used some folding and gluing techniques to makes the pages for these mini books, each only needing one sheet of basic printer paper and a bit of card stock for each book.

It was super simple making these, the spine was formed by gluing two parts of the box tabs together.

On the insides I wanted a bit of interest, so I used the tapes that came from the box to decorate.

There's the starry gold album, and the red reindeer album.

I added closures of ribbon and gold elastic. When open the little books kind of like to splay out.

Blue Bubble Book

Started Dec. 3, 2017- completed Dec. 5, 2017. Measures: 12.5 x 11 cm.

The Blue Bubble Book was one of those randomly started mini books made from square tissue boxes.

I had started it with two window pages that were going to be added as free floating pockets in a different island themed journal (the first island themed book I had started in a teal colored binder to be precise). 

I had several other tissue box tops and sides which I had saved and not used. This seemed like a good opportunity to turn them into something, and the whole bubble theme sort of just came together on its own.

I made a few additional pages from white card stock for the book, decorated with scrap book paper strips and security envelopes, added mats and tags here and there including in the front pockets of the cover itself, and did a bit of detail work with a Tim Holtz stamp and stencil.

I inked up my fins, pages, and tags with light blue and also black ink, used Tim Holtz broken china ink for my stamping on the inside, colored on a stencil with a Le-Plume marker, and even had to use a bit of potato starch on the project.

I made a bit of mistake when making the covers. The tape I had added to the fins of the spine overlapped on the edge of the fin, which was still exposed inside the pocket. That little sticky strip still exposed cause my mats to tack slightly. In order to fix this I sprinkled potato starch in the pockets and dusted it around before shaking out the excess. This prevented the sticky from sticking for the most part.