Beautiful For Something - Pride and Prejudice Notebook

This make turned out to be much more problematic than I thought! How often do I say that! I wanted to make a notebook for my dear friend, Pauline's, birthday, as she carries around with her a notebook I decorated for her many years ago which she takes to shows with a list of what colours of Pro Markers she has, etc, in it. I had in mind to cover it with some adhesive fabric I had bought a while ago which I thought would make it quite textured but it turned out to be not very sticky, and to be quite stiff to work with. I wanted it to have an interesting 'feel' to it, without having too many bits stuck on that might fall off when it gets pulled in and out of her bag. I also found the fabric didn't take ink or glue very well either. I almost pulled the fabric off and scrapped it, and I am not sure now whether to give it to her or not. I know she would be appreciative of any present I gave her, but her own work is always such perfection.

Anyway, that aside I wanted the design to incorporate butterflies, for the Country View Crafts Challenge, so I used some pieces from the Tim Holtz melange tissue wrap. I was desperate to ink up the gorgeous Mr Darcy stamps Pauline gave me for my birthday which also makes this a fitting entry for the Indigo Blu challenge, which is Words and Phrases. I used their Background Script stamp over the whole of the back and front of the notebook, as well as the Pride and Prejudice quote. I painted the design with Fresco Finish paints, using the colours of the fabric to dictate my colour choices. I wanted to join in the Artistic Stamper  challenge  which this month is Texture as the fabric makes the whole notebook feel very tactile in the hand (the only thing that stopped me ripping it off and replacing it with paper), but for extra texture I added the only thing in this make that I am happy with - the flowers. I glued little pieces of the fabric onto grungepaper and inked up the stamp and pressed them onto the areas where the flowers were and cut them out. IRL they look really textured and I added some touches of paint to them to make sure each flower had the right mix of blue and pink, and added Claret in the centres.

Here's the reverse of the notebook just to show the pretty fabric and its texture, and the text:-

To finish off, I glazed the focal image to bring out the colours.