I Felt at Home with Eileen Hull Designs Inspiration Team

Hi everyone and welcome! Today marks the start of a new crafty journey as I post my first project for Eileen Hull Designs. As many of you will know it was my absolute honour to help represent Eileen at the Creativation show back in January. Having initially been invited to be a part of Eileen's magnificent Inspiration Team some time ago, the stars have finally aligned and I'm thrilled silly to be jumping on board.

For the entire month of May the Inspiration Team are sharing projects featuring Eileen's HeARTfelt Collection by Sizzix with Kunin Felt, which is 100% Polyester Fibre, made from recycled post-consumer plastic bottles. I have never worked with this felt before and am now well and truly hooked! It cuts like a dream, is easy to sew, adheres well with adhesives and comes in a huge range of colours.

Given recent form, it takes little guesswork to know what I created as my first project...

Cutting and binding the notebooks (shared recently over several posts) by hand has got quicker but is still time consuming.
Eileen's Passport Die speeds up the whole process immeasurably and here's how;

I began by cutting two cover pieces and one spine from Matboard, then painted them (Cracked Pistachio Distress Paint).
I also cut two covers and the central section of the spine from Kunin felt.

I machine stitched some wavy lines over the two felt cover pieces (this felt is a dream to stitch on!) and then hand stitched some more lines embroidery thread. Tucking all the spare bits of cotton underneath, I then stuck the two felt covers to the coordinating painted Matboard covers before attaching them on each side of the spine with a strong wet glue. None of it bled through the felt and it gave me a bit of 'wiggle room' to match up the cover pieces perfectly and stayed in place firmly when dry.

Cutting Eileen's Stitchy Flowers from the felt was a breeze when I used the following sandwich through my Big Shot; Multi Purpose Platform, Precision Base Plate, a piece of copy paper, Kunin felt, Thinlits dies, Cutting plate. My favourite parts to this set are the central stamens and they cut easily too.

I cut more of the stamens from card to add to the bottom of the felt layered flowers, then stitched a little more embroidery thread to the centre of each flower to secure them. Then it was just a case of cutting a couple of leaves from the same set, positioning the flowers and leaves on the cover, and gluing them in place. At this stage I also added the central spine section cut in felt to the Matboard base.

To enable me to add signatures easily inside I threaded three pieces of coloured elasticated cord through the holes on the spine that are part of the die design, Travelers Notebook style. The ends were trimmed too.

Now this is the bit that can take time - creating the pages to go inside the notebook. However, Eileen has made life so much easier by including the page template part of the die design.

I used the matching floral sheets from her HeARTfelt Paper Pad and cut three as cover for the signatures. The design pre-cuts the holes for stitching and even rounds the corners off perfectly! You could colour in those flowers to match.

I used the same part of the die to cut the pages by folding copy paper in half and running three sheets through at a time. So that's 6 pages cut in one hit! Once you've cut enough pages simply pop them inside each of the three patterned paper covers and thread through some waxed cotton, knotting it on the back to secure them.

 The signatures easily slip through the elasticated cord inside the notebook as can be seen below;

And here's the full view of the completed felt cover;

So that's it for my first 'official' Eileen Hull Designs project as part of the amazing Inspiration Team!

I hope you've enjoyed seeing just a fraction of what Kunin Felt can do when combined with Eileen Hull Designs fabulous dies. Eileen will be sharing lots of the team's makes and also those by the Kunin Design Team all this month HERE so do make sure you check them out.

For now enjoy the rest of your week, take care of yourselves and get creative! Jenny xxx