Page Foundations

I have all the page foundations constructed now, it has taken quite a bit of time, because I have trouble making decisions.

First of all, I reasoned that I needed sturdy pages, as I was going to be adding quite a lot of bits and pieces on them. I used some thin chipboard that I recycled from the sheet metal (patting myself on the back, as I was USING UP WHAT I COULD FIND). Then I had to decide how many pages to make. 12? 25? 31? I settled on 31, because I thought it would be easier to do more now, than have to make more pages if I wanted them later. And of course, this made MORE WORK for me, which is another little issue I have - why do things the easy way?

The next delema I had was covering the chipboard. What paper to use? I have a lot of choices. My original plan was to use what struck me on the day, and just wing it. But like most of my plans, they evolve into SOMETHING MORE ELABORATE, and so I decided to use all one type of paper so the book had some consistancy. Paper of Choice = Basic Grey's Jovial.

And here is where the wheels fell off the cart, so to speak. I brought out my Jovial "snowball fight" paper, and discovered I didn't have enough for all 31 pages! So my little rule about USING WHAT I HAVE went out the window, and I found myself out at several scrapbooking stores trying to find this paper, which is apparently quite popular, because most places are sold out of it. I did find one store (and you know who you are, and I thank you!) which was willing to spare 3 sheets they were saving for an up-coming class, saving me from anxiety and more money spent on gas driving all over the place looking for this paper.

Once I had the paper cut to size, I inked the edges with "shabby shutters" distress ink, and then sewed around the edges. Now these pages look quite plain (it's truly amazing how much time it takes to create "plain" pages!), and I want that, because I have pre-made trip journals in the past, and have issues with picture placement interferring with embelishment placement. The only thing I am going to add is the date, and a title page, which I will show you later.

For now, here is a page:

More to come...