2 Ring Envelope Pocket Mini

Hello Hello

How's it going?

What have you been crafting lately?

I can only wish that I was crafting right now...

I've actually been fairly busy lately so...

I haven't done a whole lot.

I have managed to get some organizing done though, it was on the verge of becoming chaotic, so thank goodness that is checked off my 'to do' list. Now hopefully I can get back to crafting soon.

Here is the next style in my mini book series that I made for Pirates Cheer here in my hometown. For those of you who don't know...in the months of March and April I made 65 mini books to sell at a local venue here in my hometown. Quite a feat if I do say so myself and even though I haven't sold them all yet I'm really glad I took the challenge.
Here is the second in my series. I am calling this one a 2 ring envelope pocket mini because all the pages are pockets that are made out of envelopes. I won't swear that my pages are not made just like Laura's over @ Follow the Paper Trail on YouTube but I just can't remember, I know that is where I first got the idea so I
owe her some credit.

I started with making the covers out of chipboard, covered them with pattern paper, finished the inside with a black cardstock, then added the 2 ring binder from Tim Holtz's Ideaology line. The way I add my binder in is by putting the two prongs ending up on the outside of the book because there I can secure them a bit better and then I can cover them with an extra spine piece which is also made from chipboard and covered either with the pattern paper or a solid cardstock. Aside from that it makes the inside a bit cleaner and looks more polished I think.

Now for those pages I mentioned a minute ago, what I did was take some regular size business envelopes and seal them then cut the short ends off of both sides, leaving me a long tube that I could stick my hand through. Next I had to decide where to fold it at, not in half that wouldn't do, instead I folded it at about 1/3  up from the bottom this essentially created my page. The envelopes that I used already had a bit of decoration on them so I just used that to my advantage. On the opposite side though I did use a black & white pattern paper from a stack that I'd purchased specifically for this project. 

For the pockets I did create some tags, our colors here are orange & black so that is what I went with. I did not want to make any of the mini books to specific to Cheer Leading in case others were interested in them too so I settled on just doing them with our Pirate colors.

The binding is well...unique. In order for my pages to turn correctly on the rings I had to come up with a way that did not involve punching the holes in my pocket pages. So what I came up with was adding in an extra piece in between where my envelope folded up. When I added it in I gave myself about 3/4 inch of 'hang off' to work with and that is where I punched the holes, surprisingly adding in this extra piece also added a bit more strength to the pages themselves. Then to finish off the 'rough edge' that's where the pattern paper actually came in, I used it to cover up the top half of the extra piece. Hopefully all of that made since to you. 

Now when I added that binding piece in I didn't use just any piece of paper, in fact I didn't even use cardstock; I knew it had to be something really durable to hold the weight of the page so what I ended up using was a 'make your own' blank flash card. Odd huh? I know but so far it seems to have worked well for this binding system, thank goodness.

So there you have it, number two in my mini book series. I do hope that you like it. If you have any questions please feel free to comment me and I will answer to the best of my memory (lol).

I sure hope you are having a good start to your week and enjoying yourself, thanks for taking another peek! 

just B