Quotes for life – mini-book

10/11/2011 by UKMA 2 Comments

OK, so I made a bit of progress on my mini from yesterday, then wrenched my back badly doing some cleaning in preparation for our visitor’s return from his European jaunt.  Grrr.  I’ll share where I am going with it and some of the bits.

The basic book is sort of built on the Kennedy Book idea (PDF in the sidebar, right) but using coin envelopes rather than pieces of cardstock as the “pages”.

Each envelope is covered with a bit of Basic Grey Obscure, with a contrasting paper lining the interior.

Then I have a variety of things I add:

Some flourish stamps, some paint on an OJ bottle cap, some small stamps for text, and letter dies.

The paper-covered envelopes get sprayed with some sort of ink (either the ones I made from the little packs of scrapbooking dyes or Cosmic Shimmer Chalk ink – sometimes both although the chalk ink is hard to see) and splattered with white paint mixed with a little water – I have this mixed up in a spray bottle but I usually just pull out the spray part and flick it.

Each envelope is labeled with the day of the week, and has a bit of a song lyric that includes the day name.   The day-name is done with the letter dies and the additional text with the small stamps, usually on the same paper that lines the envelope.

It hopefully looks fairly grungy (which I always think of as boy more than girl) and enough contrast with the black and the white for even my colour-blind DS to appreciate.

The pages will get mounted on the accordion spine and then it will operate like the sliding Kennedy Book.  I hope – if it doesn’t work like I hope,  I can make it into a non-sliding book and not have lost all my hard work!

But now a diversion.  I am always dropping what I think of as little bits of wisdom (and he probably thinks of as little annoying lectures)  on my son.  I’m sure most parents do this, with more, or less, success than me.  I am always hugely happy when one of my little lessons lands on fertile ground and takes root.  A few years back we had a discussion (or I lectured him, depending on your POV) about cursing.  My lesson was that words have power.  Use them too often, and they lose that power.  A carefully placed curse  will provide impact, but save it for when you really NEED that impact. If every other word out of your mouth is a curse, the words lose all meaning.

Fast forward a year or more.

I forced DS to watch The Princess Bride.  I had tried to read him the book (and I often read to the kids on long car journeys so this was not an odd occurence) but what I found so funny about the book, the WAY it was written as an edited story told by the Grandfather, but including all the bits the grandfather left out,  he just didn’t get.  So I settled for making him watch the movie.  Inconceivable!

At the point in the movie when Inigo Montoya comes face to face with his father’s killer, he extends his recurring statement of My name is Inigo Montoya.  You killed my father. Prepare to die! to add  I want my father back you son of a bitch! My son turned to me and said Mom!  I know what you mean now! He only cursed that one time and it DID have more power! Oh joy!  It sank in.  And he was able to identify the lesson in the wild! Amazing.

So the idea of this envelope is to provide me a oppourtunity to pass on these sorts of little life-lessons from a distance.  I’ll hope, if I can manage to sit at my desk long enough to gently craft, that I can work on that aspect of it so I can share a visual rather than just tell you my plan. I think it’s pretty clever (modest? nope, not me) and hope it will work like I want it to.  And that DS will actually play his part in it when it’s done (and that, fellow crafters and Moms, is where it is likely to all break down.)

Watch this space.