Oriental Hinged Note Pad Cover

Here's the front cover of a note pad to match yesterday's card

"Wish List"

Many Eastern philosophies extol the virtue of "not wanting", so this cover is evidence of my contrariness :-)

"Inside is a note pad and pencil"

The inside has a note pad, so I needed a thicker spine to accomodate the extra dimension. A tutorial follows describing how this is achieved.

This design follows on from the previous two posts where I shared some cards made using Jim the Gentleman Crafter's Hinged Card design. I like to make dimensional cards, and wanted to be able to add more dimension to the inside of the design, so set about coming up with a way to make a bigger gap between the covers. I'd recommend you make a couple of cards using Jim's tutorial to get used to the hinge mechanism before attempting this one!

1. Start off by cutting two 5" x 7" pieces of card for the covers (I use strong card recycled from dog food nuts packaging).

2. Cut two bamboo skewers to 7" long (to match the longest side of the card covers) and sand the cut ends to get rid of any splinters.

3. Colour the skewers black (I use the chisel end of a black promarker pen).

4. Decorate the skewers with gilding wax, dry and buff with kitchen roll. I love the look you get using this technique; it looks like gold leaf that is wearing off.

5. Next cut three strips 2 and a half inches wide from A4 patterned paper. (I found the Papermania Oriental Treasures patterned paper perfect for this, the Graphic45 is too thick).

6. Make six hinges using Jim's method. I cut each of mine to length (3 and 3/4") then fashion each of the ends with a Spellbinders Labels 4 die.

7. To diecut the end of each hinge, thread the hinge through the die leaving the tail free over the top of the die. This way you can cut one end without cutting the hinge in half.

8. Once you've done one end, switch it round and diecut the other end.

9. Repeat for the rest of the hinges until you have six. Colour the cut ends with a gold aquamarker to cover up any white edges.

10. Fix three hinges to each skewer using Jim's method, matching the hinges to the same position for each skewer and making sure they can turn freely around the skewers.

11. Make another two hinges, this time make each hinge 2" long and fold both ends in towards the middle.

12. Glue the two smaller hinges in place to join both skewers together. It doesn't matter if they become fixed to the skewers in the gluing process. Put the assembly to one side to dry while you cover the covers.

13. Cover both sides of each cover with your choice of patterned papers.

14. Glue the outside of the covers to the hinges, three hinges to each cover, leaving a 1" gap between the covers and set aside to dry. Then you can add whatever decorations you like.

15. If you want to know how I made these outside covers, come back tomorrow ;-)

Well, that's the basic technique. All you need to do is decide what to put inside and provide a closure if you want one. The note pad at the top of this post uses a pencil in place of a skewer for a thick closure.

Ingredients

2 x 5" x 7" pieces of thick card (I used the packaging from a box of dog food nuts!)

Graphic45 Birdsong 8" x 8" paper pad

Papermania Oriental patterned paper pad A4

Papermania Oriental tags
metallic embroidered ribbon

large bamboo skewers

black promarker

gold aquamarker

adhesives: PVA

 

 Entered for the following challenge:

Simon Says Stamp and Show - Inspired By (Jim the Gentleman Crafter!)