Craft Gossip Fork and Meet and the Hazzards of Living Under a Spaceship

I've been slaying the dragons of faulty internet for more than a week and at last I have service.  My provider suddenly stopped providing and after several long sessions with tech support, a new modum overnighted and updated software they regretfully told me that their signal was too weak.  Apparently I live under a parked spaceship so though wireless signals from at least two companies are strong at my mailbox they are barely there over the house.  Maybe the aliens are in the attic.  We found a provider that just put in glass fiber to the neighborhood so maybe this time the service will work. 
A week ago I got to go have lunch in Little Rock and visit with the editors of Craft Gossip and some great bloggers.  It was so fun to chat with a others that get giddy over craft supplies.  As one of my tablemates said, "It's not that I don't have friends that love what I do, they just don't want to do it with me".  The Craft Gossip folks teamed up with EK Success Brands and we got a huge bag of terrific swag from EK.   The BestLoved Bitty Girls are getting some great kits out of it.  Much of the loot was papercraft centric that I'm not usually as interested in but when I saw the big pad of paper from K&Company I was in love.  It was the pinky toile with frogs that swept me away.  I wanted to wall paper my bathroom with it but there was just the one piece and coordianting papers. 

I knew I would never scrapbook, but I can't get enough sketch pads.  A trip to the Wal-Marts and I had a 2$ unlined pad and some Tacky glue.  I wanted to cover a pretty sketch book to fit in my purse.  It didn't need to be fancy drawing paper.  I will be tearing out pages and want to be able to replace the pad when it's used up. 
I had an old calender that had a chip board back and I cut two pieces a quarter inch larger around than the pad.  I didn't get out the fancy measuring tools, just lined things up with a straight edge and guess-ta-mated it.  I cut a "spine" the width of the covers and as tall as the sketch pad.

Next I did a series of pasting the cardboard covers on the back side of the paper.  I left a 1/4" space between the cardboard covers and the spine so there was some "bending" room.  

After I pasted each board I would weigh it down with books so they would dry nice and flat.

The paper sheets weren long enough to cover both the front and back so I covered the front, spine and part of the back with my beloved froggy toile and used a coordinating pink houndstooth for the back. I trimmed the paper so it matched the edges of the cardboard.

The inside of the cover needed pretty-fied, so I pasted on a piece of a 2nd coordinating pink paper covering the inside of the front cover, the spine and the top of the inside of the back cover. This time I cut the liner paper about 3/8" of an inch  larger than the cover.

This oversized edge let me fold it to the front so the raw edges were covered and the cover had a border.  Sort of like a binding on a quilt (yes, I quilt better than I glue). 

For the inside back cover, I cut a piece of paper wider and longer than the uncovered area and folded and glued 1 inch over to make a "hem" to reinforce the edge where I would insert the sketch pad's back.  I folded the paper around the cover with the pad inserted so that there would be room for the pad.

I folded the paper to the front and trimmed it so I had the border around the outside edge of the cover like I had on the front cover.

I weighed down the whole shebang and let it dry.  Not to bad, but there were some rough edges. 

The pack had this paper as part of the set and I loved the butterflies.

Cut out, they decorated my oh so pretty sketch pad and covered up some of the less than perfect spots.



My so pretty sketch book.  No taking notes on the fly on the back of my hand or a Sonic reciept.  I can record any design ideas I have right when I have them.  Thanks so much Craft Gossip.