No, I haven’t gone AWOL – I’ve been working on a few different projects, the first of which was a commission from my new boss. She asked me to design a memory book for her parents’ 50th anniversary. Here’s what I came up with:
I’m not really partial to green, but this Japanese chiyogami paper is so amazingly beautiful – and the inside pages are just as wonderful, although it’s hard to see their fabulous colour. I kept the stitching on the spine simple so as not to distract from the cover paper – I’m so thrilled I got all the holes straight!
I also created a number of pockets so they could include letters, photos, CDs, and other mementos in the book. I’m extremely pleased with it – I had a vision in my head of what I wanted it to look like, and it came out pretty darned close to the vision… By the way, do any of you know of a tool that can create round corners on chipboard? The scrapbooking corner rounder I own could never cut through chipboard, but I’m hoping there is something out there that can create beautiful corners…
Another reason I’ve been so busy – next weekend I’m taking part in a craft fair at nathalie-roze & co, and I barely have any inventory at all! Almost everything I have made recently is in stores, hence the need to start producing new stock. And produce, I did! Here are the results of this weekend’s bookmaking blitz:
I must say I am impressed with myself, although I’m in much pain (my shoulders get very sore and stiff when I craft all day). I’ll make a few more books throughout the week, but this should be the bulk of it. I’m really looking forward to this craft fair; I just hope the weather holds up (the tables are outside)…
Papermusings 
You can buy corner rounders at Talas, a book arts supplies company. You can buy online at http://talasonline.com (search under ‘keyword’ for ‘corner rounder.’ They’re not inexpensive, but they’re not prohibitively expensive, either, and are worth the money if you use rounded corners in your books often.
Thanks for the info, bookartgirl!
I checked out the Talas site and although the corner rounders are out of my price league at the moment, they’re definitely going on my wish list!
I also already thought a lot about how to round corners. I didn’t know there are scrapbook cornerrounders – I’ll immediately go hunting for them 🙂 Concerning the rounding of chipboard, I think you could probably use a coin that nearly fits the circle of your corner rounder. You could cut around it, and probably fix it with a clamp (I use one like this, only smaller: http://www.prontobuy.de/osc22/images/5250010.jpg) while cutting, though I’m not sure this will leave marks on the chipboard?
Last but not least: the album is really very pretty. I ‘m intrigued with the design of the chiyogami paper!
Cheers,
bookarat
(smacks head)
Well, bookarat, it never occured to me to use a coin to round the chipboard corners – sometimes the most obvious solutions are also the most elusive… I will definitely give it a try next time. We’ll see how easy/hard it is to cut in the round.
Thanks for the tip!
The chiyogami paper is even more beautiful in person – the colours are so vibrant, yet peaceful (hard to describe). Thanks for looking!