Hello again! This post may not make much sense as I have had a bad day today, but I am going to attempt to explain how to make the actual book and drawer part of the stack. To make the drawer, I followed the drawer part of the tutorial on this link:
http://thegentlemancrafter.typepad.com/files/treasure-box-mini.pdf and re-sized the template to my specifications. You can use any size you want, but suggest you keep it to a size you can easily fit on a 12 x 12 sheet of paper. I didn't do this and ended up having to add extra paper to fill in empty space that was left over. As you can see, I used plain black card stock for the inner lining of my drawers.
I need to go in and touch up the drawer on the top. I'm not sure what happened, but, the back flaps didn't turn out right. I grunged up the outside of the drawers with gesso to make them look sort of antiqued or patinaed (is that a word?) or something. The drawer pulls are made with fishing wire and beads from my stash. (My husband and I love to fish so there is no shortage of fishing line in this house.) The pulls are attached with hot glue. I probably should have used something stronger, but used what I had readily available.
This is a side view of the books, or the part that would be where you see the pages. What I did was measure the height of the drawer and add 1.5 inches. I then measured the length of the side of the drawer and added an inch and cut the measurements out of cardboard about the thickness of a cereal box. I then randomly chose pages from an old dictionary I had from high school and misted them with my tea spray and let them dry. Once dry, I mod podged them to the cardboard strips and let it dry. Once dry I scored the strips at 3/4 inch in from one of the long sides and 5/8 inch in from the opposite side and folded both in on the score line. These flaps are where the glue goes when it is time to construct the book.
Book Covers:
I used the same material for the book covers as I did the sides. I measured them to my specifications and covered both sides with coordinating paper. I then cut a strip of coordinating paper the same length of the book and 3 inches wide and adhered it to what I considered to be the top cover about half an inch in from the edge.
Construction:
I wanted the inside cover to be seen somewhat when the drawer was closed, so I adhered the "pages" 1/2 inch in from each edge (front edge, back edge, and bottom edge) of one of the covers. I did this with both page strips. Adding the top was a bit trickier, but I followed the same measurements. My husband helped with the 2nd and 3rd drawer, which made things much easier. I then bent the flap that was sticking out from the top cover and adhered it to the back cover, again in about half an inch. I did end up having to trim some of the paper off. It wasn't perfect, but no one will see that side.
I made three books and glued them together with hot glue and then went to town with embellishments.
All the flowers on the side of the book, were hand made by me. The butterfly on the purple rose is made out of card stock cut on the Cricut with the ultimate creative series cartridge. The leaves on the purple rose were cut from the giant flowers cartridge and then misted with 2 shades of green glimmer mist (Ditto green mist and Eucalyptus walnut ink). Check the clearance isles at your craft store, I got both of these mists for less than $2 each with the clearance price plus a 25% off entire purchase coupon at Michael's. I got the crocheted butterfly in the clearance crafting stuff at Wal-Mart. I think it was only fifty cents. And again, I have had the feather butterflies in my stash for quite some time now.
The purple rose is made from purple card stock and I inked the edges purple with some studio g ink I got either at Wal-Mart or Michael's in the dollar bin.
All of these flowers were made with either ribbon or card stock I had in my stash.
The clock and the "Beauty" heart I picked up at Michael's in the dollar bins. The watch face was something I found at one of my trips to GoodWill with my sister.
The gold chain with the clear beads was something else I picked up at GoodWill. It was part of a really tacky necklace. The gold ball just above the butterfly was also part of that necklace.
Hope you like it. I'm not sure my description on how I made this is very clear, so if you have questions, please feel free to ask.
I am currently working on a mini-recipe/scrapbook album as a gift for my mom as well. Once it is completed, I will show it to you, but I have to dig up some pictures before I can do that, and that means a trip to mom's when she isn't home. That can be tricky, as I never know when she is or isn't home. So, whenever it is done, I'll show you. Until then, I think I will work on a new shadow box. Here are a few I have already done.
As you can see, I like butterflies and flowers. (Sorry about my shirt and the blood pressure cuff in the bottom picture.)
Thanks for stopping by.
Miranda
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