June Journal with Belagio Cork Fabric for Eileen Hull Designs

Hi everyone and welcome. This month Eileen Hull's Inspiration Team are excited to be collaborating with Belagio as we all create our take on the theme 'June Journals'. My June Journal is based on Eileen's 'Notebook' die and features a few of the gorgeous Belagio cork fabrics - they proved to be perfect for altering. You may also spot the rather large flower! It's been made using Sizzix Surfaces Sculpting Foam, inspired after seeing Eileen demo it on a Facebook Live for Creative Scrapbooker Magazine HERE.

Durable and user friendly, the cork fabric can be easily die cut, sewn by machine, combined with fabric, paper or pretty much any substrate you can think of. Thin sheets of real cork are laminated to a fabric backing so it is very flexible and durable. It’s perfect for covering three dimensional projects like boxes, books, and home decor pieces. Additionally, you can also use it to create 3D flowers and other embellishments… Living up to the Belagio motto: You are only limited by your imagination – this fabric will expand your creative possibilities! Here in the UK it's well worth hunting online for and it comes in many designs, whilst over in the US you'll be pleased to hear it's carried by Walmart and Hobby Lobby.

Let's start the brief tutorial by showing you the first of the cork fabric layers, added to the covers of a hand bound notebook. The design originally comes in just black overlaying the cork base but I wanted to add a little more to it so used a white gel pen to colour in some of the lines. The colour took beautifully first time - no need for reapplication, and I have to say it's really tactile as well.

Continuing along the theme of seeing how much you could alter it I put this piece of rose gold flecked cork fabric through my die cutting machine with one of Eileen's embossing folders, then sanded it back gently to reveal the pattern even further. I layered it over a piece of black card to add to the contrast.

So can you stamp on it? The answer is yes! This is one of Seth Apter's new stamps, teamed with black Archival Ink and as you can see even the most detailed of images can clearly be seen on top of this plain piece of cork fabric. I stamped the same image onto a piece of tea stained copier paper ready for layering underneath the black card on the front of the notebook.

With the cork layers die cut and glued in place on the front of the cover I needed a pop of colour to contrast with the neutral tones. Inspired by seeing Eileen play with Sizzix new Sculpting Foam (which is available in the UK as well as the US). Mine came as part of a pack with a 3D Leaf embossing folder and some Jen Long flower/leaf dies (as also seen on Eileen's video HERE). It was easily shaped with a some heat and an embossing tool and I used Eileen's Colorbox Blends Ink to add some extra colour and contrast. The golden stamens in the centre also come from Sizzix.

Once assembled the flower was glued firmly to the front of the notebook and I teamed it with a coordinating cotton yarn tassel, created using Eileen's 'Twist & Style Tool'. Here are some close ups of the finished book (which has blank tea stained copier paper pages inside);

That's it for this month's theme from me but make sure to check out the June Journals that the rest of the team have created using Belagio cork fabric  by visiting Eileen's website.

For now, thanks for visiting,
Jenny xxx