Date Books Revisited

I know. I said I'd never do it again. But then I don't listen to me much. Remember when I made a date book back in May? Here's what I made:


and here's all the reasons why I said I'd never make another one. Ever.

Like I said: I don't listen to me. But then most of my customers who have seen this tossed on a table have told me they LOVE it and would totally buy one. Hmmm ... craft show season is almost upon us .... Plus, I have a bazillion packages of 12x12 paper clogging my craft room, so remembering Lauren's comment about how this was just my prototype, and now I know what I did wrong and it would be easier next time, I grabbed a pack of Afternoon Tea paper and spent an entire weekend plus a Monday evening making four date books, three of which are sale-able. Sigh. *shakes fist to the Northeast*

This is what came out this time, and I'm still not happy:

The flower sucketh. I need to get more white felt so I can make flowers like on the prototype. But then, is this better because it's flatter? Hmmm, maybe not. I also need to add ribbon to the coils.

Here's a side shot (sorry about the blinding light) where you can maybe see the pages:

One thing I did differently this time was for the month names I stamped them using a calendar set (that I had to trim with my rubber scissors and mount - the set is that old!) instead of using the AlphaDots set to stamps the individual letters:

Plus, I liked the font. And it justified my purchase. :) See how December has a little chunk out of it? That's because I stamped 48 month names on one piece of card stock (12 months x 4 books - sigh) and my Nestabilities didn't line up the way I thought they would so some of the months suffered, and this was my solution to make it look like I meant to do that.

I may go back and add some paper buttons to the pages. I think they need something.

I made four of these, two with a blue cover and back, and two with this green cover:


Check out those wonky letters on this one! I was running out and had to mix & match for this last book, and I almost like this one the best! :)

So yeah, I may embellish these a little, then bag & tag them to see how people react to them at the market. The non-sale-able one (totally crooked) will be my sample so people can see what the innards look like. And between now and November I may or may not make another batch. The jury is still out.

Thanks for listening to me whine some more, and thanks for stopping by!