Lace and Fabric and Tags, Oh My

As is often the case, inspiration began with a blog, was enhanced with a video, and just took off from there.  Elena, the ringleader of most of my collaborative projects sent everyone a link to this video, with the comment, "I HAVE to do this!" 
Prior to that, I was blown away by the lace journals my friend Sox has been making.
The result is kind of a cross between the two, and I'm really excited about it.
Over the weekend that NY was hit by hurricane Irene, I worked on making a book to distract me from the howling wind and torrential rain.  It was supposed to be an exposed spine book, but I totally messed up the sewing, so wound up covering the spine with fabric, which led to more fabric and lace. 

Above, the front of the book, embellished with some Prima loveliness and beaded trim.

The back....so far.  I'm not sure that I'm finished adding fabric, lace and trim.

The pages inside are paper, and some signatures were wrapped with patterned paper, and some with wide pieces of lace.  I think this does two things.....for sure it adds a bit of interest, but also, it makes the pages stand a little more apart from each other, allowing extra room for embellishing each page.



And some pages, like the one above on the left were cut from scrapbook paper instead of plain white paper.

If you checked out the video, you'll see that the tag project was done with a totally fabric journal.  I didn't have a huge selection of upholstery weight fabric in the right size, but I did put one together.  I sewed all the pieces together as one signature, and I did that sewing by hand, not wanting to risk messing up my very basic (and inexpensive) machine.  It's OK, and I may use it, but I'm thinking right now that I'll be a rebel and use the book I showed you above instead.  I have plenty of time to decide, as I have to wait for the other 15 people in this project to make and send me their tags.  Anyway, here are some snaps of the fabric journal.....totally unembellished, but when you view the video (if you haven't already) you'll see how cool it can turn out.

We decided that our tags could be any theme, but that we'd all include some Tim Holtz stamps, die cuts, embossing folders, etc.  Thanks to a lot of horrible rainy days I was actually able to finish all of them, waaaay ahead of schedule.  We're sending them on with coordinating lace trim and buttons to assist in the decorating of the books.  All my tags are of the same design, with some variations in color and trim.  The first picture shows a part of four versions:

The beaded trim is attached to the bottom of Tim's dress form from his "Sewing Room" die.  The forms were cut from several different colors of the Core'dinations paper that matches the distress line.  The torsos were covered with french text.

I stamped Bon Voyage (a Stampsmith stamp) on vanilla seam binding ribbon (Stampin' Up) with black archival ink, which is permanent, so I could then dye the ribbon by swiping it with Old Paper distress stain.  A quick blast with my heat tool and they were dry, and wrapped around the dress form.

I cut up some zippers to use as the tag toppers and kept them in place with some twine.  Why the staples on the top?  Well, the zippers I used are craft zippers and they came with adhesive on the back.  I folded them over, but the adhesive wouldn't hold and they kept separating.  I tried other glues with no success, and removing the adhesive was a nightmare, hence the staples.

The little butterfly resting on the dress form's shoulder is from a Stampin' Up sizzlet die, cut with Core'dinations paper left over from cutting the dress form.  With a little added bling.

And, here is a full shot of one of the tags.  The background is a piece of a brown paper bag, stamped with sewing themed stamps from both Tim and Stampin' Up, then embossed with Tim's Sewing Room folder.  Behind the dress form is the Eiffel Tower, cut with Tim's glasseine paper with an old Sizzix die.  I know I seem to have two themes going here.....Paris and sewing, but they feel like they belong together.

Oh, and how could I forget to mention that I attached the brown paper to my tag base by running a zig zag stitch around the perimeter....on my machine on all 15 tags.  Yes, I am  proud of myself for that.