Baby Card & Album - Sofianne

Recently my friend had her first grandchild.

It's hard to decide what to send when you don't know what they have and don't have! I knew there would be a card....  I wandered through a baby store and came out bewildered.  And then I remembered I'm a bookbinder....  I thought I could probably come up with something that no one else would give!

I started out with these adorable little rocking horse stickers from Martha Stewart and designed with Spellbinders around their colour scheme.  Here is the card.

I love the dimensional effect that the Pop Dots give.  And when you layer the Edgeabilities just right, you get this little heart peaking through.

One of my favourite thing about Spellbinders is the ovals.  You can draw and cut a circle pretty easily, but ovals....  that's another thing.  And you get this gorgeous embossed edge.  Absolutely classy.  It knocks anything you make up a notch (or two!).

Here is the album made to match the card - it's designed as a little coffee table brag book!

And here is where I get on my bookbinder's soapbox (it's been a while!). These stab bindings look so lovely and you can dress them up so beautifully, but really they're a horrible binding for a Western book.  The Japanese binding uses soft oriental paper and a soft cover and having the book lie flat and the pages fold over the previous page isn't such a big issue.

Adapting the binding for Western uses requires some finesse.

Here is a photo I took before I bound the book.  You can see the spacers between the pages, inserted so the book won't yawn at the foredges when photos are added.  You can also see the pages are scored sequentially so that they will fold over the page before it.

Card Synthesis:

Card Blanks

"Sofianne" handlettered with a Mitchell Roundhand Nib

Winsor & Newton Maganese Blue watercolour

Arches Text Wove paper

Spellbinders Grand Calibur

Spellbinders: Classic Ovals Small, Classic Ovals Large, Lacy Ovals, Edgeabilities Classic Petal

Coordinations Core Color

Sookwang Be Creative Double-sided Tape

Glue Dots, Pop Dots

Ribbon

Brag Book Synthesis:

Pre-cut bookboard

Black acid-free cardstock

Self-adhesive Linen Hinging Tape

Oriental paper

Coordinations Core Color

Spellbinders - as in the card above

Scor-it-All

Drill

Glue, Xyron

Ribbon

Nerves of Steel ('cause I haven't made one in so long!!!)

Thanks for looking!
Suzanne