"Ship Ahoy!" Mini-Book

Happy New Year!

It's Amanda here, with my first project of 2023. I decided on a mini-book for this one, finally putting glue to paper to complete something that I planned nearly a year ago. We've been on quite a few different cruise ships over the last 10 years or so and I wanted to document them all before I forget where we went when. This is a work-in-progress as I intend to add to it for each future ship too.

I started by making my covers from a couple of offcuts of chipboard which I edged with washi tape

before covering the middles with smaller pieces of patterned paper from 49 & Market. I chose JWCF709 Compass to use on my cover, the perfect motif for a travel-themed mini-book.

The beauty of the digital versions of the cut-files is that you can cut them at any size you please, and I shrank this one down to about 2.5" across to decorate the cover. I cut the file in navy blue and backed the compass openings with a lighter blue.

My book is about 3.5" x 4.5" so I was able to use 6x6 papers for the pages. I cut each one down to 4.25" wide, folded the top 2.75" down to form a flap and cut away the top corners, alternating left and right.

I could then stick a photo on the outside of each flap, add the ship's name below and journal on the inside of each page.

Finally I glued each pair of pages back-to-back, poked holes through them all and threaded them with soft twine. I added a cord lock (pinched from my husband's camping supplies) to the twine so that I can take the back cover off when necessary and add more pages.