This weekend I’m bringing you a little valentine book, complete with a how to & downloadable interior pages (includes handwritten “i love you” and lines for journaling). Here’s to working ahead a bit rather than scrambling the night before! This is a book focused mainly on words but could be easily adapted to include photos as well. Make one for a spouse, partner, child, parent, friend – anyone you love.
Right now I am really into my sewing machine + I have had this big piece of felt just sitting here waiting to be used for something (purchased it with good intentions for something else over the holiday). I’ve been inspired by a lot of things Emily Falconbridge has been creating with fabric and stitching and such – she is so great at putting all kinds of different elements together. She, along with Rebecca Sower, continue to teach me that my sewing machine and paper and fabric can be very good friends.
So here’s to a creative weekend + making simple handmade things for the people we love most.
Let’s start with the end in mind with a look at the completed project:
Supplies:
• 2 pieces of red felt (9.25 x 5 was my end result – I started with a bit bigger pieces and then stitched and trimmed to the final size)
• 5 pieces of cream 8.5×11 cardstock
• chipboard heart accents (K&Company Smitten Chipboard Box Glitter Icons)
• 1 sheet of red patterned paper (Anna Griffin)
• red felt flowers (Making Memories Noteworthy Embellishment Jar)
• adhesive (Therm O Web Super Tape – love this stuff + have been using it a lot lately)
• sewing machine or needle + thread
How To:
This book can be made without felt if you are just not into the whole fabric + paper thing. Simply download the PDF cover and interior pages and adhere them all together (see tips below):
DOWNLOAD COVER | AEvalentines2008_cover
DOWNLOAD INTERIOR PAGES | AEvalentines2008
If you want to play around and create the felt cover you will need two pieces of felt. My finished felt size is 9.25 inches x 5 inches. Cut your pieces a bit larger than that to begin with and then trim down after you have stitched (I found that a bit of shifting happened while I was stitching so I was glad to have the excess I could trim off). Using a sewing machine (or by hand) stitch the two pieces of felt together.
Lay a felt flower and a button on the cover (I used Making Memories Noteworthy Embellishment Jar for the felt flowers). Hand stitch button and felt flower (or use adhesive) directly onto/through the felt. For right now ignore the stitching down the middle.
Next I printed out the interior cover (AEvalentines2008_cover.pdf) and the interior pages (AEvalentines2008.pdf). Each one includes trim marks so you can see where to cut the pages to size (8.5 inches x 4.25 inches before folding). I printed one interior cover and four interior pages (you could definitely do more if you wanted).
Work with the interior cover first. After printing and trimming, fold in half. I used a bone folder to get a nice even fold.
Turn the interior cover over and lay in the middle of the felt cover. Using your sewing machine or hand stitching, sew the interior cover right onto the felt cover.
This is what it should look like when you are done:
Next fold all the interior pages in half with the printed portion on the inside.
You will now be adhering these pages all together back to back to create the inside contents for the book. For my adhesive on this project I used Therm O Web’s Super Tape.
This is what you are going for as you are adhering:
After adhering those pages together you will create an initial cover using patterned paper. This part came about because when I went to add the pages into the cover they stuck out due to not coming to a point when they were adhered together (they did not fit into the stitched seam). To get around this I cut two pieces of patterned paper (9 inches x 4.25 inches) and glued them back to back (so that you see pattern on both sides).
Fold the patterned paper in half and adhere the booklet into the patterned paper. I left a bit of room near the fold of the patterned paper. This whole part took a bit of messing around and trimming edges, etc. Just go with it.
This is what it looked like when I was done:
Now you are ready to adhere the booklet into the cover page. Lay the booklet in, match up the seams, and adhere.
There should be a bit of patterned paper sticking out of the edge of the cover page. Add a felt flower inside the cover to hide the stitching from the front.
Add chipboard hearts (or photos or anything you have on hand) and journaling and you are good to go.
Enjoy!
I also wanted to let you know that I did set up a Flickr group for sharing photos and creations that come about through these weekend prompts. You can access the weekend creative Flickr group here.
this is so cool…thanks for the instructions…will be making this soon
peace
Kim
very cool idea. Thanks for sharing! I am going to play with this over the weekend
Have a great weekend!
Marty
Wow, this looks so cool. I don’t have access to a machine. I will have to finger something out. I love this idea and I am going to look at your templates. You rock Ali:) Thanks, Jess
Oh this is the sweetest. My husband will love this.
I totally love it!! Thanks so much, Ali!
simple and sweet, yet super creative. That’s love.
Oh well love it Ali! thanks so much for sharing the downloads and how too’s!!!!!
So fun! Thanks for taking the time to share, Ali! Now, to dust off that sewing machine!
Wow! Very cool Ali! I wonder how to do this with no sewing machine (mine broke) there has to be a way.
This is way too cute
Thank you so much Ali!!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! YOU SERIOUSLY ARE SO KIND!!! I CAN HARDLY WAIT TO DO IT!! CAN YOU TELL I AM EXCITED??!!!
Perfect! My husband HATES it when I buy him stuff (“we have too much stuff, stop spending money!”). I know he will love this. Thanks, Ali!
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! YOU SERIOUSLY ARE SO KIND!!! I CAN HARDLY WAIT TO DO IT!! CAN YOU TELL I AM EXCITED??!!!
love you Ali!
this is fabulous….I am sure Chris is going to love, love, love it!!!
I can’t believe you are just sharing this!…thanks so much. Can’t wait to do it.
hugs and blessings!
I love this so much. Thank you for sharing!!
This will be the perfect gift for my 4 1/2 year old son to give to his big sister who is away at college. He can dictate to me, and add some artwork, then I can find photos of them together to add in here and there. Thanks Ali.
Wow… This is the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen. Thank you EVER so much for sharing this!! <3
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this!!! Thank you! I will be making this for my sweet Beloved this Valentine’s Day! And I love that you shared it with us well in advance!
I think I may make one for my kiddos, too. Then they have a sweet keepsake from Mama!!
AMAZING!! Perfect activity for this rainy weather. Something to keep us busy while we are indoors.
Thanks Ali! I already printed the pages and can’t wait to fill them on my creative weekend!
Ali: this is adorable. I happily just brought home a well-researched second-hand machine that is AWESOME! However, your readers shouldn’t rule out hand stitching the book as an alternative. Don’t let no machine stand in the way of making this cute project, or any adaptation thereof. Happy weekend to you.
you are amazing.
this is so fabulous!
thanks so very much for sharing this and for the wonderful tutorial.
TFS Ali- love it! I think I will do one for my husband AND one each for my boys as well. Excellent idea, keep posting em!
Thank you !
Can we share the challenges of you book on this group, I intend to do them.
thanks for the mini lesson… love the idea! have a great weekend!
love this. . .have been working on valentine cards for friends.
this will be perfect for hubby (must “lift” the page on not complaining about dinner. that’s a great one!!!)
thanks for sharing!
still want to do the word challenge from last week and haven’t done it. how ironic that my words are “just begin” ha ha ha
have a good weekend.. .. .isn’t snow in the forecast?
~mary
Fabulous! Love it!!!
Dude!!
Here’s to men who iron their own clothes and don’t complain about our cooking!!!
Whoo-hoo!!!
I’m so making my goofball one of these.
Did I mention I loved you?
Thanks for doing this..your instructions are so easy…even I could do this.
Awesome!
this is so lovely, TFS !
Thank you so much Ali! I love this and will defanitely be making this! Too cool! Peace!
Gosh you are the most clever gal, Ali! Thanks for sharing the .png’s & the how-to’s, etc. I have yet to try sewing paper with my sewing machine. This looks like a pretty straight forward project and somewhat simple to do. I’m gonna give it a go
Have a great weekend, crafty momma!
awesome!! Thanks Ali! Have a wonderful weekend. Peace and blessings….
You are such a giver.. Thank you so much
Alyson
Thank you Ali for sharing this with us. It’s always nice to see your stuff, but then to have you walk us though how you did it step by step is a bigger treat! Thanks for being so generous with your talent.
I whole-heartedly agree–You are SO generous with your talent! Thank you for sharing with us another wonderful idea! You are awesome!
I love you because you can read my mind. I have been wanting to work with fabric books for a while and haven’t been able to motivate myself! Thanks for giving me the boost I need!
Thank you Ali!!
So much fun. Let’s see what we can come up with.
Ali- thanks so much. I even have some red felt just sitting here, left over from holiday stuff.
I love the focus of text in this project. Sometimes I want to make things so complex and forget how special my own words can be to someone I love.
I’ve got something really similar in the works for Project 52 that debuts the first week of Feb. I’ve been really inspired by the fabric photo albums Jacqueline Yeo makes so I’ve come up with a version of a felt V-Day album.
I love this idea of sharing something creative every weekend. Thanks for the thoughtfulness you include in your creativity!
Seriously, thanks for the cute idea!! You are amazing!
Thanks Ali – you are so generous! Check you out all rugged up. It’s a hot one down under where we are celebrating Australia Day.
LOVE IT!
I’ve already printed mine to work on this weekend without Hub seeing it!
AND I my computer spent last night and all day today uploading pics to shutterfly and NOW to FlickR. Poor computer. It’s so busy I can’t even surf the web!
I can’t figure out how to move my FlickR pics from my account to a group…anyone?
This is the sweetest little gift book. I am going to a crop tomorrow and have already printed out a copy for myself and my friend. New I am off to Joann’s to get the felt! Thank you so much Ali!
AHA!
Never mind on the FlickR question…i just figured out how to send them to a group: FYI: ORGANIZE|SEND TO GROUP.
Oh my gosh! This is so awesome! I can’t wait to make several for my family.
I love this. Can’t wait to try it.
Love the idea Ali- I have a tip for you! try threading your bobbin thread with thick sparkly thread like “razzle dazzle ” by ricky timms and sewing upside down–the thicker sparkly thread will then be on the “good” side of your work and it looks really great> You cant do it the other way round ie thick thread on the top because it wont go thru the machine that way have fun!
wow – what a treat! thank you, ali, for sharing! (and who would think that paper-crafting might convince me to get a sewing machine!)