Crealies: Crealies, Christmas memories to cherish

Today Caroline is our guest designer.

She made this lovely memory book.

Hello.

I am super excited to be sharing something with you all today, I cannot lie, I’m a bit excited. I have had the privilege to be a guest designer for Crealies!! I have always loved their products, so this is special for me. I was given a goodie box with dies to make a memory book, which I had never tried to make before! So I was feeling quite daunted with this prospect, as I always thought they were complicated........wrong! I went onto YouTube and watched a video by Patty - Crealies mini albums binding system A. I followed all her instructions and made my first, second, third, fourth and fifth book. I was hooked on making these, but then I decided I wanted to go a little bit further with my design (all the dies I have used will be at the end of this post).

I had cut everything out that I needed (using the dies listed). I used the largest of the nesting dies to create the pages, and used the edge dies to cut into some of these, to create some pockets. So I had some waste (See picture), so I decided to use these as tabs to pull out the pages from the pocket.

I glued 2 together, and then cut them roughly where the pokey took is in the photo, as you need to use a smaller nesting die to put into the pocket.

I then got 2 smaller pieces of die cut card, using a smaller nesting die to cut these, applied red liner tape to all edges on to one of them, add the edger to one of the smaller sides, apply more red liner tape over the top of the edger, then put the second piece of card over the first piece.

You can make as many of these pocket cards, as you require for your book. I also used the smallest and second smallest nesting to make some more tabs, this time to go onto tags which are in the pockets on the book. I made them, using the same principle as before in the post

Using one of the middle sized nesting dies I cut several of them. I took 2 of them and scored both of them on the short edge at 1 cm, and then adhered them on the backside of one piece of the same sized card, so that they fold into each other. You can either add a pocket onto the middle piece of card, or fold a piece of card into a concertina and add that to the middle card.

Once you have made all the pages, cut tags, cut and made all the pockets, use decorative paper to cover the pages and add decorative pieces to the front. I used the nesting dies and tag dies to cut the decorative paper, using the next one down from what I had used to create the book. Also on a few of the tags I used plain paper on them, so you can write special memories on them. Again, I must stress that I followed the instructions given by Patty on the YouTube video to create the basic book.

I have thoroughly enjoyed making this book, and as Christmas is my favourite time of year, I knew that for my project I had to make something in this theme. I will also definitely be making many more of the memory books, and adapt them to how I want them. You can make them as plain, or as fancy as you wish.

Here are some photographs of each page of my memory book, showing you the different little pockets and flaps I added to this book. I will also be filming a video going through this book.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this and hope you create something special

using some of these little ideas.

Thank you for joining me.

Bye for now

Caroline