mini book – Lori Whitlock

Cozy up with the Winter Dingbat Font and make these sweet little stocking-stuffer notebooks! This is Michelle Zerull and I’d like to share a pocket sized project that can made in practically no time at all. Perfect for stockings, classroom gifts and coworkers. Make one for yourself too!

For these mini notebooks, I used “A Perfect Winter” papers by Echo Park. The colors and patterns are great for the holidays and beyond. For the “Faux Stamped” covers, I downloaded the Winter Dingbat Font which can be found in the Silhouette Design Store and also at Lori Whitlock’s SVG Shop. The books themselves were made from the 2×2 Accordion Mini Album SVG files that can be found here in the Silhouette Design Store and also here at Lori Whitlock’s SVG Shop. Lori has an excellent Tutorial Video where she shows how to assemble the books. Be sure to watch the seven minute video for Lori’s tips and tricks! I’ll show you here, how to use the adorable Winter Dingbat Font to make the book covers.

I’ve been a rubber stamper for over 20 years. I love the look, but I hate stamping on my favorite patterned papers. I’m always afraid that I’m going to get a bad impression and ruin them. Sadly, it happens. By using the Winter Dingbat Font, I know that I’m going to get a consistently perfect image every time without actually stamping. The Winter Dingbat Font contain 26 images and phrases that can be cut, colored and printed in any size your heart desires! Yes, that’s right…26 images…in ANY size! This “Faux Stamping” technique is so easy to do with the print and cut feature on my Silhouette Cameo. It’s my latest obsession!

After downloading your font and SVG design, open up your design area and type in the alphabet using your dingbat font. Look at all of those images! The hard part is choosing which ones to use! For this project, I’m going to use three of the phrases. I clicked on the designs, clicked on the fill tool and chose the color black. I ungrouped all 26 images and deleted the images that I was not going to use.

Next, I opened the 2×2 Accordion Mini Album files. I’m going to cut them all eventually, but right now, I’m working with the covers. I ungrouped the pieces and set them off to the side for later.

I copied the teal front cover piece and made three covers. (I made a lot of little books!) Move your phrases to the front of the covers and remove the cut lines by selecting “no cut.” Important! Remember to remove the teal color from your pieces and change it to transparent. At this time, I also changed my page setup. I don’t have a 12×12 printer, so I am going to cut my 12×12 patterned paper down to 8.5×11 so it will feed through my printer. In order for the Silhouette to read the registration marks, you will need to choose a light colored patterned paper.

Add your registration marks to your letter sized page setup. Place your light colored 8.5×11 patterned paper in your printer and hit “print.” Voila! Perfectly printed on patterned paper! Now you can put this sheet through the Silhouette Cameo for perfectly cut book covers that already have the phrases printed, or “Faux Stamped”on them.

Cut and assemble the other pieces like Lori shows in the tutorial video. Instead of using designer paper for the pages, I chose to use plain white pages so I could make them into mini notebooks.

I hope that you enjoyed my “Faux Stamping” with Dingbats technique. The dingbat fonts are so fun to play with!

Here we go again, it is already the middle of the month. The best part is that it is Monday, which means our awesome Creative Team is here sharing inspiration with you. First we have an adorable mini album from Traci…

“Today is Always a Happy Day” when you get to create fun projects with Lori’s designs, and I had a lot of fun with this adorable mini album. This album was created using Lori’s 5×5 album with box. The pattern comes in two files, one for the box, and one for the album, and the whole project is a snap to put together.

For the base of the box, album pages, and title (which is also one of Lori’s designs and can be found here or at the Silhouette online store) I used heavy white card stock. I wasn’t sure if it would be sturdy enough for the project, but once I layered all of the other papers and embellishments, it is very durable.

The paper is from the Here & Now collection by Echo Park and the little sun sticker is from A Perfect Summer line.

The little birds on the branch are an SVG in Lori’s shop called Love Birds. I chopped one of the little bird’s legs off (poor guy) so that he could sit lower on the branch.

I love how the design of this album has the ribbon/twine holes already punched for you. I did, however, use a 1/4″ hole punch to make them a little larger so that my thicker ribbon would slide through easily.

I will have a few more pictures posted over at Artsy Albums today, so please stop by my blog and say hello!

Thanks, and I hope your day is happy!

Traci

www.artsyalbums.com

Next, is this beautiful layout by Mendi…

Today I turned to the Maggie Holmes collection by Crate Paper and a handful of complimentary cutting files designed by Lori. I knew I wanted to do something fun with the 12×12 decorative tape sheet from the collection so I cut it into strips, mixing it with other paper strips and adhered them to printer paper. I then cut my mouse ears out on my Silhouette by welding 3 basic circles together.

I took Lori’s “memories” title from a layout cutting file and paired it with one of her awesome banners which I enlarged to fit over my mouse ears and popped up with foam tape between the layers for some depth.

I also used her scalloped border which I cut twice (once from blue and another without the inside cuts from ivory). I like to do this to minimize the visual distraction when a patterned paper is layered below my borders. I finished off my layout with a layered tag to document the basic details of the day.