Hello everybody, it´s again time for another STAMPlorations Stencil Sunday. My project for today is really very small – a button book! The idea of creating a button book is not originally mine, I saw it somewhere while surfing the net and was immediately intrigued to try such a tiny size out. This is my take on a stenciled button book:

I started by folding a 12 x 2,5 inch long piece of white paper into folds the size of the buttons I had chosed to be the minibook “covers”. I didn´t do exact measuring, just eyeballed the right size. I can live with measurements like that :). The paper had been pre-treated with blue Distress Ink tone “faded jeans”.

I did a project recently, where I used that color and this was a piece I had dabbed the residue ink onto while finishing the other project. I always to that to save the residue ink. The bits and pieces of paper then later work as nice starting points for other projects. Like for this one, for example.

I wanted to add more color to the fanfolded page(s) and grabbed Distress Oxide iced spruce and twisted citron tones. I added them directly to the work surface and sprayed water mist over then. Next I just dabbed the paper into the wet ink. I repeated this until I was happy with the result. In between dabbing I always used a heat tool to dry one layer, before moving over to the next one.

Here you can see the end result with the inks.

To make sure that the folds would hold, I added bits of washi tape onto the flipside of the fanfolded paper. I used quite a sturdy paper (Luxo Art Samt) for the pages, but still wanted to play sure and added the washi.

Then I took out some STAMPlorations stencils to add color and pattern to the background and make it more interesting for the eye. I went for purple Distress Oxide first and added a leaf pattern very randomly onto the front side. I kept the flipside the way it is.

For the next step I chose to add a bubble pattern with blue Distress Oxide (for a full material list, see the end of this post with direct links to used product). I really like the look of the fanfolded paper and the colors work well together too.

Next I took a piece of scrap paper in white and stamped two motivational sentiments with black ink. Those would be the story inside the book. Since there is not much place inside the book, these small sentiments will easily fill it.

After stamping the sentiments I fussy cut them into smaller pieces, so that one word/part of the word would fit into one fold opening. I also added some stamped flying birds here and there for additional interest. I found that they work well together with with sentiment theme. Here is the finished result:
Finally all I needed to do was to adhere the book covers (=wooden buttons) onto the fanfolded paper piece. I used gel medium for adhering just to make sure the buttons would stay put :). Here you can see the reverse side of the book:

Here is how the finished tiny button book looks like. I have been wanting to create a kind of treasure box with various kinds of altered items, tiny books and altered found objects etc. to put on display somewhere in our home. This tiny button book will mark the start of this project. I will be adding various projects along the next months to that box and then finally create the treasure/keepsake box for those items in the end.        

This is the reverse side of the book:

Here is the front to the book: Just to give you an idea of how tiny this little button book is: the button itself has a diameter of approximately one inch :). I loved creating this piece! So refreshing to try out something totally different for a chance! Too bad I can´t remember who´s button book inspired me to try this idea and where I saw it, but I´m hoping that person might see this and leave a comment so you can go and take a look at that piece too.

Ok, enough of this project, now hop over to the STAMPlorations blog to see what my design team colleagues have been upto and creating! Hope you get inspired by the projects, get your stencils out to play and also join the Mixed Media challenge here. See you around!

Don´t forget that you can use my gift code for 20% off your order at the STAMPlorations store!!! Just add “STAMPGIRLSANNA” upon checkout…

Happy crafting,
xxx, Sanna

Supplies: