Stamped Blizzard Book

There were so many possibilities with Gwen Lafluer's new PaperArtsy stamps EGL34 and EGL36 that I spent a lot of time experimenting with them and ended up with quite a pile of collage elements and expressive faces piled up on the table in my studio. A light bulb went off in my brain when I realized that if I used ALL 15 of the stamps on a big sheet of paper, I could make an overall pattern and then fold it up into a blizzard book! The book The Art of the Fold has lots of creations that are done just by folding paper. Their blizzard book is my favorite style from that wonderful publication.

With the other elements I had stamped and painted, I decided to make cards to tuck into the eight pockets of my blizzard book.

I conducted a bunch of experiments with my new stamps and made quite a mess on my worktable!

I didn't have any really big sheets of plain paper to make the blizzard book. I needed a full sheet of strong, lightweight paper 13" x 29" that could be folded to yield the size book I wanted, 5.75" x 3.5". However, I DID have a beautiful full sheet of Florentine paper from Gwen's online shop. I decided it would be perfect to stamp the plain back of the Florentine paper since on a blizzard book, both sides show.

I used all of the stamps from both sets with sepia, black, indigo, and gray Archival ink, stamping them in every direction to create an allover pattern. They harmony of earth and neutral colors kept the design from getting too busy and added a vintage feeling. Here's how I did it:

 

And here's the finished paper before I folded it up:

I cut the stamped paper to 13" x 29". The Florentine paper is on the other side.

I used both the book The Art of the Fold and a YouTube video to get the blizzard book folded correctly. The first time I folded it too many times and had the inside where I wanted the outside.

On my first try, I had too many folds.

So, I reviewed the video and eventually got the book looking the way I wanted. One of the advantages of the folded pockets in a blizzard book is that they don't need to be stitched, glued, or secured in any fancy way; the crisp folds keep the pages in place and securely hold the cards, tags, or whatever you tuck into the pockets.

On some of the interior pages, the Florentine paper shows, on others, only the stamped paper. No stitching or glue is needed; the crisp folds allow the artwork to slide in and out of the pockets.

I decided to use the Florentine paper for the outside of the book because I wanted more of the stamped paper to show, which it does on all the inside pages. For the front cover, I chose a bit of a vintage music sheet and combined it with a brown kraft paper tag. Using versamark ink, I stamped the small sacred heart on the tag, sprinkled white embossing powder, and zapped it with my heat gun. I attached the embossed tag and sheet music to the front of the blizzard book with an industrial-looking brad.

Attaching the tag and sheet music with a brad allows the cover elements to be movable.

Now it was time to fill the book. Fortunately I had a bunch of small 3" x 5.5" pieces I had been working on with the many stamps in sets EGL34 and EGL36. I also added some elements from other sets to complete the book. Here's the whole creation:

The male face on the bottom left uses the same stamp as the female face on the top right. Isn't it interesting how a change of hair or face color can give a whole different look? The card on the top left uses a frame from set EGL14 and the green and yellow card on the bottom right uses stencils from Gwen's Boho Vibes StencilClub set plus the Cyrillic Alphabet stencil.