Book Arts: Thanksgiving Planner Porfolio

1. 1 Class Intro: Hello. I'm Daniella Melon and author and artist here on skill share. Welcome to today's class on creating Thanksgiving Planner Portfolio that stores recipes, menus and Thanksgiving ideas. You can use it as a place to gather in, store inspiration throughout the year and then refer to it each November. When planning your holiday, we'll create a folio from an unwanted book that opens up and provides pockets for storing recipes, menus and guest lists. Included in the class are templates to make the pockets and envelopes, ideas for materials to repurpose to use in this portfolio and even helpful Thanksgiving downloads. To fail your portfolio, in addition to our templates and paper supplies, will use standard tools like paper, trimmers, scissors, a bone folder and ruler. This class is designed for intermediate paper artists who are comfortable repurpose ing books and paper supplies To give new life to everyday articles, try your hand at creating a Thanksgiving planning portfolio and post a photo of your favorite embellish page in the project section. Be sure to follow me here on skill share to get notified of future classes and please consider leaving a review. Thanks for watching. Now let's get started 2. Portfolio Overview: So here we have a Thanksgiving planning portfolio. It's made from an old book that I took apart and then added a tip out page since pockets a little envelope and spots to tuck things in that will make planning a big party fun event, especially in an event like this that happens year after year. You know you have your menu of your favorites and your family's favorites, as well as some recipes that you refer back to repeatedly. And this is a great place to keep them all together in one spot, and you can keep them together to use throughout the month of November and on the big day. 3. Class Supplies: So these are the supplies that will use for our Thanksgiving planning portfolio. These air, their basic supplies are tools. And then I'll talk about the supplies we need specific to this class, so you'll need a paper trimmer, a pair of scissors cutting blade. This is in lieu of an Exacto knife. Ah, Long ruler. I have some neutral Ph. Adhesive, and the reason I like this is for when we do our bookbinding spine work, this dries flexible. You can also use fabric tack, clue that you can find anywhere at a craft store or a department store. Have a brush to spread the glue, a bone folder pencil. And then I have two more adhesives. I have a permanent double sided tape, which is very sturdy, which I really like for a hearing paper to to the book. And then I just have some masking tape as either a temporary measure or first layer of adhesion. Now, for our paper supplies is or more on the disposable end of the spectrum, as opposed to our tools, will need a few things for this planner. I use this old book and I got it, and I'll go over that in the next chapter, but it's a nice, sturdy book. The measurements are 10 inches wide when it's shut by 12 and 1/4 inches tall, and when it's open, it's about 20.5 inches wide. The spine is less than an inch, and I think that's the perfect size for what I'm gonna do here in my planner. I like to hold pages that I printed out for my computer, so I want a book that could take the full size print outs. And I do that for recipes, directions, contact information I just downloaded and printed. So I use this and I'll go over the next chapter had a gut This It's tonight's hardcover book that you can get at a thrift store. Sometimes library sales, this type of thing. Because it's such a large book over 12 inches, we need larger paper, so this is 12 by 12 paper, and I choose to sheets of cordoning coordinating paper to use on the cover and two sheets to use on the inside as well. So it's a total of four 12 by 12 paper or card stock. Your choice and what I coordinate that with is the gift bags that I used to make my pockets and my pages, and this is a great option. It's very affordable. You can find these gift bags at many stores, from pharmacies to department stores to discount shops. And what I do is because the material on these gift bags is so strong and the coin's coming such beautiful colors. I take it apart and I'll go over that in another chapter as well. But for this project, you only two large gift bags that coordinate or are duplicates of each other. I prefer the cordoning, the duplicates, but you can use whatever you like. I also have here a file folder, and this just happens to coordinate with the color scheme that I'm using. You can use any file folder. We are gonna cover up one of the sides, Um, and if you use a manila file folder and you'd like to cover it up further, just covered up with a piece of paper. So addis another piece of paper to your inventory. We have our downloads for class, and these are your templates. So you just download these on your computer. Make sure your page size is set to a letter size borderless, and you'll get the exact size. If you happen to print it out and it's not to set to the borderless, it might shrink it a little. So to do that, just check that it fits a piece of paper, particularly the large pocket. You want to be able to make sure you stick a standard piece of letter paper inside the folds and that it fits. And if it doesn't fit, you can just enlarge your sketch with your pencil. So that's a large pocket, a medium pocket and an envelope, and we'll use all three of these. So you download those, print them out, and then just cut around the perimeter to give you your template. We'll also need a piece of chipboard tow line the spine with, and this is 7/16 since inch wide by 12 inches tall. And all these measurements can be found in the class supply list you can download. That is a single sheet, and it will have all your information, your tools required in your measurements. And then I have this piece of paper for an outside spy. Now this piece of paper is a little tricky. You can use part of the gift bag that you have left over. The tricky part is that you want something this long, and this is 15 inches tall. What we want to do is be able to put that in the spine and then folded over. What I did was I found some gift wrap that I had again that coordinated, but it's made of, Ah, homemade paper, so it's a little more flexible. Or you can use tape if you have it. And then for the inside spine you want either a piece that's 14 inches long or what I'm gonna do is just use to seven inch pieces long by two inches wide so you can find all that information in the class supply list to download. The next chapter will go over gutting the book. 4. Gutting the Book: to prepare our book to use it as our folio. What you'll do is you'll find a book that's the appropriate size. Again, I'm using a 10 inch by 12 and 1/4 inch book. So what you do is you find the book a tag sales ones 50 cents, and it comes with the meat of the book, the pages here. And as you can see here, there's the little binding. What we're gonna do is gonna cut down here in multiple cuts and try and preserve the hardcover and the spine. But remove the pages, so to do that, you'll open Your book could even open it totally flat and you'll take your blade and very slowly. But deliberately, you'll repeatedly go over that little seem with the pages meat, and you just do this. You won't try and get it all done in the first cut. You'll continue to do this over and over and eventually little break free. You just keep trying it and you go back, and the best way to handle this is to be very gentle so that you don't cut through the spine. If you cut through the spine, it's not the end of the world. It just makes it easier if it's not cut through. So here I can see it coming apart. I continue to just gently make small cuts until it comes apart, completely helping it along. So that's one side of the spine. Then I'm going to flip it over and do the same thing over here. So I take my blade starting to come along and then I remove the meat of my book here. So now I have all my pages together. I can use these in another project. We're not gonna use thes today, so I'll set these aside. So now I have my book. It's a little raggedy and here, so I'll take a few moments and just clean it up because this is what we're gonna have to work with. So I'll remove any loose pieces, trim this down a little further, and I'll remove this piece here. And so that's the next stage is just to clean this up. I'll continue to do this, and I have one done, and here I have a nice, pristine center. I might sides and my spine. Now, on this one, I did make a little slice inadvertently through the spine somewhere here. But that's okay. I'm going to reinforce it later. So now that I have my nice, clean shell of my book, I'm gonna set this aside for now in the next chapter will go over using the templates and cutting out our pieces. 5. Using the Template: So here are the three templates that we have. We have a large pocket, the envelope in the median pocket. What you want to do is cut them out around the perimeter of the solid line. The dash line is just a guide for you, so you know where it unfold. But it pretty much folds on the intersection of the points, so you'll cut that out and then you'll take apart your bags. I like to take part, both of them at once. That way I have essentially sheets to work with. Some of these bags come with little tags up top or ribbon. So I just removed that first cut off the ribbon can save this for later. If you're If you like to use that, then I look for the seam of the bag. Sometimes it's helpful to open it up and then peer inside by peer inside. I could see and again I flipped open. The top here is Well, I can see that it the seam is right here down the length of the bag, so I'll just gently pry it apart. And I'm not going to use the bottom gusset so I don't have to be too careful with that paper. But I do want to open it up. Come in. I'll just tear it right to the scene. And now I have a big sheet of paper that I can salvage a lot of it. What I'll do is I'll trim out the edge here. I know I'm not gonna use Discuss it, so I'll trim this out and then I'll come sheets from there. I'll find out where I want to do, put my templates and I'll start with my largest one because I'm using two bags. I have a lot of area to play with and I'll try and maybe match up the seam. I know I'm gonna fold it here, so look for this. Already made fold. Set it down, trace around my image with a pencil and then cut it out. When I come back, I'll have all my pieces cut out from the bags. So here I have my two large pockets. I cut them out from the paper, increased, um, just like this, using this is my template. So now I have my two large pockets, my envelope that's cut out and nothing is adhered together. There's No, what he's of yet in my medium pocket. In the next chapter, I want to work on my tip out page, so we'll need to use another part of the gift bag and our file folder. 6. Creating the Tip Out Page: to make our tip out. Page will need our file folder and one sheet of the gift bag that we've opened up. And what we're gonna need to do is place the file folder on it to get an idea of how large a sheet will need. And we want a couple of inches on the top and bottom and on one side, one side's gonna be flush with the edge of the file folder so we don't have to worry about that size. But we want a nice amount of space here, and we'll trim it down. Further to start will take her file folder and on file folders. There's two sides, one with the tab and one with an in debt. You'll start with the in Dent and you're gonna trim those edges right off from there. You'll have a much smaller piece. So I take my peace, put it in my trimmer, line it up. So I get it nice and straight and just trim those edges right off. Go right to the folds. Thean Dent here. And so I'm left with this and I have a little edge on my back piece and then I have my little tabs here. So now I'm just gonna match the back piece to the front size. So I'll put it over here or have it exactly where I wanted. I'll take out my front page and I'll trim the back page. And now I've removed a large tab. So this is the perfect size for our book. For our tip out from here, I'll move this around, bring my scissors over. I'm gonna line up my page right to the edge. Doesn't matter which edge as long as it's the long edge. And then I'm gonna just trace the outline of my tip out page from here. I'm just gonna eyeball maybe an inch, an inch and 1/2 up top will make a rough sketch and the a little longer here. So maybe two inches down alongside and then another inch and 1/2 here because I've eyeballed it. It's very helpful to me. I could just make my lines here for my folds. Same thing here on the inside. And now I'll cut around the widest point. Not the point that we traced the exact size of the boat folder, but the widest point. So I cut it very neatly. You can use your straight edge cutter if you like, and then I'm gonna right over here is where I'm going to fold it. So I'm gonna make that fold on that line. We'll make it nice and light at first, and then we'll go increase it with a bone folder once we have the exact size. Another way to find the exact size is just to put your file folder down and bend your piece right to it and you'll do this on all three sides. And then over here is well, from here. We're gonna take one of those Benz and cut an angled going in. And then over here, we're gonna make a triangle with the line that we made. So we removed a piece. So from the long end, we cut in, and from the bottom part here, we're gonna cut that triangle in a swell. And now we have a piece to fit around our file folder. In the next chapter, we'll go over adding the adhesive 7. Adding Adhesive to the Tip Out: to add our adhesive to make our parts movable parts work be interactive. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna line the parts with this double stick tape. Now, this is the tip out page, and this is the hinge that's gonna attach to the book. So the tape will go on this side of the hinge to attach it to the book. I'm gonna wait on that until we have the book ready to go. But for now, I put the tape down on the backside here. And this is where, um, our file folders gonna go? I don't want this to show, so I could either flip it over and have the, um, pattern showing or I can flip it inside out. And I think that's what I'm gonna do. I like that color very much. I also want the opening to be up top here so that when it tips in my book, my book is closed. Nothing's coming out. So to do this, I'm going to just double check the size once again, put my folder down, and then I'm gonna open it up. I want these dis part, the top and the bottom to go on the inside, and then I'm gonna add here this part closed as well, and that will give me additional pockets. So to start with, I'm gonna take this back piece of it. He's of off, and I line up my folder to do that. If I pick up the hinge here and drop my folder right on the hinge, it helps need a line it up. And even though there's no adhesive on the hinge, I use that to help furnish that and he's of down. So now my folder opens up and it's attached on the inside. Take out this strip a little here. How very carefully Set that down again. I'm gonna burnish it. If the page sticks off the edge, trim that afterwards. Then I'll start up here and I'll fold this down right on the inside of my tip out and the same thing over here. So now I'm gonna applied more adhesive. This will adhere to my page and I'll have my tip out here. What I think will do without put a strip of blue down the center and that will give me two pockets top and a bottom, and I could slide things in there. So with my adhesive, I'll just go around here. I'll do the top in the bottom and there's no need to do the top where it's gonna fold. But I do want to make that, um pocket. So I'll just take my ruler. Just so I have a rough idea of where the center is, it doesn't have to be perfect and it's 11 and 3/4. So I go just a little bit above the six inch mark and I put a little mark here about there , and I'll put my tape from the top rate across. I'll burnish it. Then I'll remove the backing. And now I can gently close my tip out, burnishing on the areas where the tape waas. This part is gonna go into the book on the hinge, and it will tip out just like this with some hidden pockets. So now all I have left to do is to trim this edge and will be ready to adhere this to our book. 8. Adding Adhesive to the Pockets: using our templates, we created our pockets. I put strips of adhesive on the back. But for the large pockets in the medium pocket, I have not adhered anything yet. The strip, the protective strip remains, but it is ready to go into our journal. So I did that on all three of those pockets and then for the envelope. I didn't hear it closed. I folded it. And then I put some adhesive on back. So this is ready to go. So in the next chapter will go over starting to assemble our book. 9. Assembling the Book Part #1: to prepare our book for the binding in the pockets that we're gonna add. I took some adhesive, and I just very roughly put it on the back of this little piece of chipboard that's gonna reinforce our spine. So I'll remove the, um, liner, and then I'm gonna put the chipboard back in the book just to reinforce that spine lining it up with the base and the top. We are gonna cover it with paper, but for now, I just want to make sure it goes in there's room on either side. Then the next thing I want to do is I want to cover the book. So for this, we're gonna use a liquid it he's in the PV a, and what I'm gonna do is paint the back of these pages and then set them down right on the book to dry. And this will take a while to dry. And once it's dry, we'll come back and add the spine. I'll speed up this process so that you can see it. I'll burn us this, then let it all dry and we'll come back and work on the interior 10. Assembling the Book Part #2: So it's been about 15 minutes and my adhesive is somewhat dry to the touch. And since I'm not gonna work on this side, I think I'm okay to continue to move around. But if you want to, you can leave it overnight. So I'm gonna turn over. I have my cardboard piece in here and I'm gonna take my two pieces of handmade paper and I'm gonna adhere them down in here, and I'm gonna take this a little slower and really work the pieces in here. I want to make sure that the it's flexible hinges, flexible spine. So take my adhesive and I'm gonna go right up to this line here, and that's gonna be my guide. Preparing the book is the long term project, but it will give you nice results. If you take your time, we'll just go a little further down. Don't put my piece right on top train. Center it somewhat and then with my finger, I'm gonna make sure it's adhere nicely to the center here and then the pieces on the side before this he's of dries. It does have some ability. You have some ability to move it around. Could it. Go grab my bone folder and gently press that inside here, these ridges full that over, go across and do the same thing on this side. I'm gonna try and make. This is flexible as possible. It'll come back. I worked my way from the bottom up. And then over the course of a couple of stages, work those ridges right, and start gently. Then press a little harder with the bone folder, moved to the other side and work that right in a swell I'll go back. I don't want to tear the paper, but I do want to make sure that the adhesive is good and burnished into the paper conceits coming up a little here. So put some Ortiz of down underneath this paper right where the seam is. If you have just one piece unlike me and you're using one long piece, you'll have less problem with that. But it's not nothing that can't be solved when I'm confident that it has been burnished. Well, just come around here, President one more time, open it and close it maybe a dozen times to really make sure it's worked in. And then I'll just let this sit for another 10 minutes. So let this sit closed for about 30 seconds. I'll flip it over and then I'll open it up and let it sit for 10 minutes. 11. Assembling the Book Part #3: never. Their interior spine has dried enough that we can continue to work with it. Or you could leave this overnight. I'm gonna work on the exterior spine just like this. That's what I want to do is I want to put my adhesive down and I know that my spine is quite wide. My paper spine, my new spine. Somebody try and cover that nicely. I'm going first. Go for the existing spine. Add my glue to that. And I know my spine hangs over it. Maybe 1/2 inch or 3/4 of an inch on either side. So I had just a little more adhesive. I'll put my spine down. I find it easier to center it when I flip it over. So just gently put it down for now, like this and then flip it over and I could get a better idea of where it's located, so that's probably a little bit more centered. Pull it down here in here, and while I flip it over, I'll gently work that center spine, work it right into the ridges with my thumbs a little bit at a time. Then I'll go over here all the way to the right and then all the way to the left, lifted up, bend it a few times, and then I'll again pull it taut from the interior again, being careful not to rip it. And I'll start adding my adhesive over here. Like to add a little adhesive to both the paper and the book, pushing the air pockets out, making those ridges Mason deep do the same thing up top. Now I'm gonna get a little messy and burnish it with my finger. Just because I know my paper is damp and I don't want to tear it, I'll bend it and I'm just guiding it, not forcing it. It takes. If it resists, I'll just go a little slower. So I have a nice spine here. Go right on the edges and again right inside here in these channels, I want a nice adhesion. The book is coming along nicely again. I'll bend it a few times, and I'll give this 15 or 20 minutes to dry before we continue on 12. Adding Pages to the Book: Now that our book is dry, we can begin the assembly process by adding in our pages are tip outs in our pockets. So the first thing I did for this is I took We'll start with the tip out. Paige and I took it, and I put adhesive right on that hinge. So I'm just gonna pretend Just practice where I'm gonna put it right here, so it will line up. And when it opens with this hinge down, it'll open just like this. So I really like the way that looks. I think I'm gonna cut holes, though half holes right over here and here on each of these hidden pockets that we have just is an easier way to see what's in there. So to do that, I'll take my whole punch and just slide that in, eyeball it halfway and create that a round hole. This is completely optional. It just makes it a little more user friendly. Do the same thing over here in there. I have two of my pockets, so the first thing I'll do is I'll take this, that he's of off in strips. Then I'll line up my hinge on the edge of my book. Careful not to set it sticky part down looking on the side here, making sure my page and my tip in or not over each other and I'll just sent set it down when it drops, it drops nicely in place, burnished the edge and then I can put my paper here and I put I went ahead and put some adhesive on the back. And this will just create that base of the page. So when the tip in opens, it looks very nice. Swell. Remove the adhesive, attacks this page and then we can start adding the pockets again. I'm gonna try and line this up. Since I don't have adhesive in the center, it's easier if I just put the center down. Could go right to the edge here of my tip in, eyeball it and then burnish it in place. So here we have the tip in. The next chapter will add these pockets 13. Adding Pockets to the Tip Out Page: So now that we have our tipping in place and our page over it, I'd like to go ahead and add my pockets, gonna slide this down here so we can work on these two pockets Here. I have a little envelope that I want to put up here for business cards or stamps something along that line. And I have my medium size pocket here for greeting cards or recipes or directions or something else that I'd like to add. And then on this page, I have one of the large pockets which can hold either my printed out recipes or my menus from years past. So start with the largest pocket first, and I want the the base to go in first underneath the sides, or I should say, with the sides to go over the base. So press that down, move side adhesive, and then I'll do the same thing here. Press that down, remove the side adhesive and then find out where I want it. Once this glue hits the paper, it sticks. So I have to be fairly cautious. So there I have my large pocket. I want my medium pocket to go right to the edge here, right past that whole. So again, I want the, uh I actually want this one. I want the sides underneath here. Just like that. So empty the sides first release the adhesive and really see it. He's of on this side. Hold it down and then I'll really see it. He's it on the backing here and again. I have to be cautious before I place it down trying to get it straight as I wanted to be. Well, burnish that and then I'll do the same thing. Now I can decide if I want to at here my envelope open permanently or if I want. If I want to close it and it's gonna stay close, I might want to raise it higher. I think I'm gonna have the ability to close that. I like that. So I'll move it up a little higher because I just would put the tape around it. But I left the top open. It creates an additional tuck spot. If I wanted to put something behind there, I'm gonna fold it like this, eyeball it in place and then burnish it down. So that looks nice. I might cut a little hole there a little notch so I can put the peace down. Or maybe I'll just put a little ribbon. We'll see when we come back, we'll work on the next page on this side. 14. Adding the Final Pocket: Now that we have a tip out and our envelopes complete on the left hand side of our planner , I want to go into the right hand. This final page here, Same procedure. I'm gonna remove all the adhesive place down my first and paper and then put my pocket on top of it. I did go through a little more than a single roll of this, um, double sided tape. So don't be alarmed if you go through quite a bit of it. So I set it down, furnished the ends, and then I'll do the same thing with my pocket. It will set that right down where I want it. When we come back, we'll add some final touches, some labels and will fill our portfolio. 15. Adding Labels: Now that we have the bones of our portfolio complete, now is the fun time to fill it. I've also included a download in the project section with some labels. There's a page of blank labels in two colors, a bluish in a brown shade so you can, and there some of them are blank, so you could fill in what you like to personalize it. Then there are two pages with names on the labels, and again you get a brown color and a blue color, and they say recipes or stamps, invitations, cocktail contact info, guest list, this type of thing. So I made these into labels, and I'll cut them down, and I'll place them on my pockets so that I know what's inside, and it helps me organize. I've also included another page because it's Thanksgiving of a cheat sheet of informal place setting as well as a meat temperature cooking guide. And there's also a blank page for reading your Thanksgiving menu so we'll start here their main pocket, and I think this is gonna be where I keep my recipes. So I find my recipe card, put the ad he's of on, and then I'll just put this on. Actually, I think I'll put the rest of picky straight here, down on the bottom, in case I want to add other collage to it. Over here, I think I'll keep my menus, my menus from years past, if we had people with dietary restrictions or if we went and did a different uh themed menu . It's kind of a fun way. Put my tag right there. Maybe I'll stick ideas or I'll probably leave that one blank for now. But here, I think I'll put cards on this page. I'll fill up my portfolio and then we'll come back and take a look at it all complete. 16. 16 Class Wrap Up: So here we have our Thanksgiving planner portfolio, all completed and filled up with things that I wanted. It opens up just like we did with the fold, where we started with the book. We added the tip out page with the hidden pockets, the enclosed envelope with a little tuck spot behind it, where I'm storing just extra labels if I want to continue to add to them the downloads from class sim cards, my menus and my recipes. And throughout the year, when I find things like magazine articles or inspiration for the table, I'll just tuck it in that pocket. I hope. Youll try your hand at one of these portfolios and post a picture of your favorite page with embellishments in the project section of this class. Be sure to follow me here on skill share to get notified of future classes, and please consider leaving your review. Thanks for watching