Hey, y’all!
Welcome to March and new projects using Tres Jolie Kits! Did you get a chance to check out the reveal yesterday? All of March’s Kits are as fabulous as ever! Make sure to swing by the Tres Jolie shop and pick yourself up a kit or three!
For my first March project, I used the Graphic 45 ATC Tag booklet/album … thingy … and the Stamperia “Garden of Promises” papers and chipboard to create a little motivational and/or photo flip-book.
Make sure you check out the video to catch my thought process and see how I put this all together!
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I know Graphic 45 has dies that are made to work with their (larger) tags, I’m not sure if there is an ATC Tag one, and even if there is, it wouldn’t have worked for everything I wanted to do! My solution was simple though – I just used some clear plastic packaging, traced two tag shapes on it (side-by-side), and rough-cut it out! Why did I trace two side-by-side? So I would be able to make a few backgrounds with little flip-outs! Then all I had to do is use it to create all of my backgrounds.
Not all of my backgrounds are solid pieces, after I had cut into a few of the patterned papers, I decided to straighten up a few edges, grabbed a partial piece of an adhesive sheet I had left from a previous project added some scraps strips of printer paper, peeled the backing off, and started laying down all the various left-over strips and squares! I don’t like having a lot of little pieces laying about and I like the feeling of using up as much as I can, so paper piecing is my go-to move!
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I was never concerned about having perfectly straight, neat, and tidy edges because I had planned from the beginning to distress and ink them all – which is exactly what I did! I just used my scissors to distress all of the edges – including inside the ring hole – and used the “Pale Brown” Fluid Chalk Ink for a bit of color.
After I had my bases distressed, inked, and (mostly!!) ready to go, I started the sewing process. I picked one background to stitch directly to the tag, then on the background for the flip-side, I added the stitching first, then glued it to the tag. I decided to do my stitching this way so both sides of the tag would have the top stitching showing. It doesn’t really matter as far as the stitches are concerned, but the side of the paper the needle goes through tends to be a bit rough.
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As seen in the photos above, six of my tags have flaps that flip out. Of those six, four were created using a single piece I made using my template (double-width, and scored), and for the other two, I decided to make the flaps separate just because I wanted a little more control over what image was showing and which way the flap was going to flip!
I don’t like leaving folds without some kind of reinforcement when they are in a project that is interactive, and these ATC Tags were no exception – so I just added some of the seam binding from the kit to the insides of all the folds and stitched along each side.
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I really loved all of the quotes and phrases found throughout the patterned papers, and I wanted to incorporate them in a variety of ways. One was I did was to use the three bookmark-looking rectangles and create some fold-down, interactive elements – mostly because the paper strips were approximately 4” long, and I didn’t want it dangling out of the bottom!
Again, I had to reinforce all of my bends, except this time I used some linen hinging tape instead of the seam binding. Not for any particular reason beyond that it was a 9” piece I had “misplaced” during a previous project, and since I finally found it, I wanted to use it up! My linen hinging tape, however, is 1-1/4” wide – about 1/4” wider than the stripes – so I trimmed off the excess before attaching it to the backs of my pull-downs.
I added stitching to the sections that were attached to the background and added the three blue chipboard butterflies to use as “handles” (One apparently got edited out from the middle photo above without me noticing! Oops!)
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What did I do with a 1/4” wide, 9” strip of linen hinging tape? I cut a couple of pieces off and used them to reinforce the folds on the two fold-out pieces I added using more bits from the cut-apart sheet! And, just like with the pull-down stripes, I stitched the back of the fold-out piece to the background.
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I wanted to use some eyelets that I’ve owned for far, far too long, so I grabbed up a few and added them to the pre-punched holes on four of the chipboard pieces, then glued the chipboard where I wanted it. I didn’t use the eyelets to attach the chipboard to the background paper or tags, just because I didn’t! No real reason beyond that there wasn’t a real need to!
On the tag that has the large chipboard flower cluster, I didn’t use any glue, I just stitched it along one edge and the bottom so it could work as a tuck spot.
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Thank you for joining me here today on the blog! I hope you enjoyed this little project and it gave you some ideas of what you can do using this month’s Cards, Tags, & More Kit!
Stay Crafty, Friends
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In addition to this month’s Cards, Tags, & More Kit, I used:
UHU Stic, Art Glitter Glue, adhesive sheet, double-sided tape, eyelets, We R Memory Keepers Crop-A-Dile, LineCo Linen Hinging Tape, ivory/cream-ish thread
C.J.'s Corner Scraps 