Summer may be long over, but I finally finished putting my summer 2010 minibook together! After having so much fun with the kit I bought last year, I decided to buy another of Elise Blaha’s summer mini book kits. I worked on it a bit during the summer while I had the supplies out for my 28 to do list book, especially because some of the events appear in both books. I was really inspired after taking Elise’s Big Mini online workshop in September, and found myself incorporating some of her most helpful ideas as I was putting this book together.

I tried to limit my supplies to help focus, including Paper Source paper, transparencies, my brand new washi tape, and of course the date stamp. The book is really photo-heavy, and that’s one of the reasons summer (or seasonal) books are fun to put together – this became a diary of the noteworthy events from this summer, so the straightforward nature made putting it together feel quicker. Some of the pages are very simple, but I like that. And I’m hooked on using the transparencies to include ticket stubs in the book. (Jodi and Cynthia, I’ll totally share mine with you!)

So here are some of my favorite pages. As for my next project? I think I might try a December daily book for the holidays this year, because I have a kit that I bought last year and didn’t use. We’ll see. Daily pages are a whole different can of worms, an entirely different minibook style… but it might be a lot of fun.

GOventure day three was a little harder. I confess I spent most of the day walking around waiting for a coincidence to hit me square in the face. That didn’t exactly happen. So when I got home from work, I was thinking about coincidences. Does it count as a coincidence if I can’t think of any when I’m trying to? Not really. Murphy’s Law, more like it.

So I got out my paper and my stamps and set to cutting and gluing my most boring, geometric, office supply type papers on a piece of 4×6 cardstock, pondering as I went. I’m not sure how I feel about coincidences in the end, because it’d be so easy to go back and think of some random thing, some tiny bit of chance, and start plotting out how much it changed the course of your life. And I do believe it happens, more than we realize. It’s a crazy thought, thinking about how much of our lives is based in random chance encounters or discoveries.

But I think in the end I personally am a little more fond of the idea that we make our own chances. Our actions, decisions, and choices, how we REACT to these coincidences that are all around us, THAT is what it’s all about.

I’ve been inspired by crafty blogs like Elise‘s for a while, in my quest to add more craftiness to my life this past year. So when she and Kal invited anyone interested to join them in a week of GOventures, I thought it was a pretty cool idea. The plan was that Elise and Kal would come up with prompts every day for a week, and we’d use the prompts to do something (anything) creative. I was a little intimidated by the prospect, because I tend to craft in spurts (other than the whole photography thing), so weekday craft plans don’t always pan out. But Jodi and I emailed about it, and our conclusion was that at the very least, it’ll be fun. Even if we can’t keep up, getting your brain thinking in a creative kind of way is the whole POINT.

Anyway, day one’s prompt is wander, and I couldn’t help but go right to one of my constant battles: a wandering mind. Sometimes it can be pretty awesome, but sometimes the endless internal analysis and debate just makes my head spin. It’s something I wish I could reign in a little, but am hesitant (not to mention UNABLE) to really curb entirely. My brain is always, always wandering. And it sure can be an adventure. (Don’t even get me started about how I’ve been bitten by the “I want short hair” bug again!)

I really like the idea of making small gifts to give people around the holidays. Putting them together is something that makes me really happy, and it’s also nice to have a reason to craft other than for yourself. I mean, there are only so many little books one person needs. Or can ever fill. So this year I thought it would be fun to make little blank notebooks for a few people. And since I was in the getting things done spirit (see also: the beer bottle cap wreath), I actually did it. And they turned out so cute, if you ask me. Here’s how I did it.

I used patterned file folders and an old card holder/envelope that came in a Piperlime box for the covers, mostly because they were heavier paper and they already had creases that I could work around.

I wanted the finished books to be 4.5 inches high and 3.5 inches wide, so I cut the pages 4.5 by 7 inches. I used a variety of paper that sort of coordinated – loose-leaf paper, graph paper, old planner pages, solid colored cardstock, and some patterned scrapbook paper. (I didn’t use the kind with gridlines on the back, because once the pages were in the books, both sides of the paper would be visible.)

I have been collecting spools of ribbon like this from the dollar aisle at Target for a long time, and it was perfect, because each spool had about 12 inches of ribbon, which ended up being exactly the amount I needed for each book.

Once I had all the pages cut, I arranged them in four piles and put them in the order I wanted them to appear in the books. (Haphazardly on purpose, you know, so they wouldn’t look so organized. I am organized even when I try to make it look like I’m NOT being organized!) Then I folded them in half in batches. That part was kind of annoying, because to make nice folds you’re supposed to use a tool called a bone folder, which until now I’ve brushed off as completely frivolous. Who knew?

I found a book binding tutorial online that explained the method I wanted to use. Their instructions said to punch tiny holes in the pages of the book using an awl, which I don’t have, and then to sew the binding with embroidery floss or thread. I wanted to use ribbon because it seemed like it would be a bit sturdier, not to mention prettier. So I punched three holes, in several pages at a time, with my boring old hole puncher. That tutorial does a better job of explaining how I threaded the ribbon through.

It was a little fussy, making sure that the ends were even and the ribbon lay flat, but totally worth it.

If you’ve threaded the ribbon correctly (or, the way I did it), both ends should exit the center hole and hang on the outside of the spine of your book. Then tie them in a bow, and you’re good to go. After I finished all four books, I left them under a pile of heavy books for a few days so they could flatten out a little more. I think that if I’d used a bone folder to make better creases, this part would have been unnecessary.

I decorated them (or if you want to use a fancier term, I embellished them) using a sharpie, a shipping label and stamps, and some alphabet letters. But really, that’s the fun part and that’s where anything goes.

It was a lot of fun to put these together, and I could see doing this again and trying out different sizes, different varieties of paper… the possibilities are endless!