May Flowers with Eileen Hull Designs

Hi everyone and welcome. As we are now surrounded by May flowers this month Eileen Hull's Inspiration Team are sharing projects, ideas and inspiration with a distinctly floral twist. I've got a couple of projects to share with you today, both based on Eileen's 'Notebook' die.

This little hand bound notebook uses Eileen's 'Stitchy Flowers' dies to create the decoration for the front cover and was designed based on the scrapbook papers I found in my stash for use inside. I've put together a tutorial to show you how the cover came together.

I think the scrapbook papers chosen were from a bumper pack of K&Co ones that I tea stained a while back. You'll see from the photo below how the burgundy/brown background looks like it's worn away with hints of a paler colour beneath. I replicated that look by covering the two sides of the Notebook cover in canvas before painting them with 'Mustard Pickle' Fresco Finish Paint from PaperArtsy (you'll see that the spine was removed before doing this).

I then painted over the top with 'Mahogany' Fresco Finish Paint to echo the main colour visible on the paper.

To get that worn look I used a sanding block on both covers to reveal some of the yellow colour beneath.

The removed spine was re-attached using Architape, some Hinge Spacers and a Teflon Tool, all from Cool Katz Craft in order to make it more flexible.

To match the white tape spine with the covers I painted it with 'Haystack' Fresco Finish Paint and then blended 'Walnut Stain' Distress Oxide Ink around the edges to give it an aged look.

I drew inspiration for the flowers on the front cover from more of the scrapbook papers inside the book. This first one used the larger stamens from Eileen's 'Stitchy Flowers' die set with a centre stamped using Wendy Vecchi's 'Reverse Dots' Background Stamp.

I used the same 'Reverse Dots' stamp to decorate the painted leaves to echo some of those on another of the paper designs. More of Eileen's 'Stitchy Flowers' were painted using 'Haystack', 'Vanilla' and 'Mud Splat' Fresco Finish Paints before being layered together.

The final 'Stitchy Flowers' were inspired by another of the papers, this time using more Fresco Finish Paints in 'Terracotta', 'Niagara Falls', 'Vanilla' and the 'Mahogany' colour used for the cover. All of the flowers were layered over a Wendy Vecchi designed stencilled fern that had been in my stash for ages.

The tassle and cord hanging from the spine of the notebook were created with coordinating cotton yarn using Eileen's 'Twist N Style Tool'. With the cover and spine finished I added the text block, made from those scrapbook papers and other tea stained paper, inside following the tutorial I first shared HERE.

Here are some close ups of the finished hand bound notebook;

And now for something completely different - at the beginning of this post I promised you two floral notebooks and here's the second one below. Last weekend I was lucky enough to join in the fun at Eileen's 'Beach House Art Retreat' on Facebook. From her beautiful beach home Eileen guided us step by step through three individual and very different project including this gorgeous idea for a felt pouch based on the Notebook die.

Again Eileen's flower dies were used to decorate the front along with some embroidery and the projects that everyone made are amazing. I chose to line my version with some matching faux suede to cover the stitching on the reverse and added a pockets at either side as shown below. We had so much fun together taking part in Eileen's virtual retreat and although the sand may not have been under our feet, the sun shone and the attendees all enjoyed themselves immensely - if she holds another one I can highly recommend it!

I hope the projects shared have given you some ideas and inspiration for creating your own notebooks using Eileen's dies. Make sure to check out what the rest of the team have been creating this month incorporating flowers by visiting Eileen's website.

For now, thanks for visiting,
Jenny xxx