A new summer Smash Book

Having been inspired by the ladies on UKS to create a smash book that will reflect life for a period, rather than be used as an ongoing inspiration book, I couldn't decide how to do it. It needs to be small, so I can carry it around, so I dug around in my stash supplies and came across a blank 7 gypsies mini book that was perfect except for the number of pages on offer.

Having committed on another UKS thread to use up my stash, and another to actually finish my projects, I decided to be focused :) Using up a Crate paper kit from Gottacraft from ages ago, another one of Glitz Design, which I'd used for 1 LO and then put aside and some odd sheets of Cosmo Cricket Girl Friday which I'd been tempted by but never got around to using, I made some extra pages, covered the outside and then came the challenge of pamphlet stitching the pages into the book.

Not hard in the diagram, but then I realised that as I had double the number of sheets I needed to make the holes big enough to hold double the number of stitches - cue hammer and eyelet punch as my Cropadile won't reach the middle!! Do I need a Big Bite?

Finally managed to get all the stitches tight enough and the book looked great. Inspired by Mary Anne's pictures of a hairband loop closure, I had a go.

Tips for doing this:

1. If you want to hold a pen, then make the cover big enough compared with inside sheets -(did not apply for my project)

2. Check that your hairband will thread through a small hole, if not make it bigger, but still use a small hole linking with the big hole that the eyelet is set in.

Finally, I opted for a button closure, and punched holes in the front cover and sewed it on tightly so my loop can go over it.

et voila! I'm pleased with my efforts. I'll see how it goes and how it could be improved as I use it.