 Hi everybody it's Simon mixed up craft thank you for watching my tutorial today I've got another Mother's Day themed project these are these mini little notebook cases I guess they've just evolved from the travel journal that I done so I've just downsized that and made these little ones so I am still at my mum's on my holiday at the moment long holiday and so I'm raiding her stuff so she's got a laminator I had a laminator but when we moved and stuff we just got rid of it so it's something I haven't got again so I've laminated these ones as well the the idea is to just have that small thing to go in your handbag there's nothing too crazy on it I haven't gone mad with embellishments nothing to catch inside your handbag and it just I just want sometimes just a piece of paper that's all I need I don't need little pockets I don't need all those bits and pieces as lovely as they are so I've just done this really simple one so you've got a little Velcro there you could put magnets on there you could have the elastic going around like I did in the travel journal if you want as well and then inside I've got a little pocket here so you can put little receipts and appointment cards things like that and then I've just done two of these removable papers from just copy paper and it is just as simple as that so I'm gonna add another pocket into the one I'm gonna do today on this side just so it's a little bit more I guess it's storage for bits and pieces but that is it so it's a really simple nice little thing just to keep in your handbag so these are the two Mother's Day ones I've done I've done just little bows and little embellishments on the spine there so it's two and then the one I'm gonna make now is for me so I have used the Beyond the Shore papers today love love love these and I'm gonna be using this design here today so I just pop that to one side and bring in what we need so I've already kept my little kind of paper books so basically I just put together how many have I got here one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven I'd say twelve there's a one step together twelve pieces of just normal copy paper and then these have been cut down to six and a half by four and a quarter okay and then I've just folded them so six and a half by four and a quarter I've put through twelve pieces all at once through my trimmer it was you know I've got the this one here so it did manage all twelve pieces if you think it might struggle then maybe do half of that do six at a time but just cut that down like I said two was again four and a quarter by six and a half and then just fold it in half and that's all you want to do so you just I've done two of them if you want to do it all is one big one you can but what you find is the pages start to all kind of cascade on a slope so you don't maybe don't want to do too many pieces together if you want to do three of these you can as well but like I said I've just done two because that fits nicely on this half-inch spine that we've got there so that's those two pieces prepped and then I've got some Velcro dots these are just the sixteen mil ones which I use all the time and they're by the brand Velcro and then I think they're bigger I think we've just put them into this box but they are the Velcro brand but I'm sure my sixteen mil ones let me just check I thought smaller than that these are 0 10 15 no they are 16 mil so it is the right box okay then you're going to need so you need some laminating pouches so these are just inexpensive again I don't know where they're from they're in my mum's drawer so I've just pinched those but again I'll talk about them a bit more in a minute and then you just need a few bits of paper so I am doing as I said this lovely print here so this piece measures up at nine and a quarter by four and a half and what you want to do is score along the nine and a quarter inch side you're going score three and three eight sub an inch one two three yeah three and three eight then three and seven eighths of an inch then seven and three eighths of an inch one two three yep and then seven and seven eighths of an inch okay then once you've done that optional but I always like to corner round round corner punch this side here so you've got a big square there and you've got a half inch spine big square again another half-inch spine and then this smaller one here so if I just quickly burnish that just on that end bit there just so you can see that's the piece I've cornered from the corner around it okay punched that's that piece and then you just need two other pieces of three and one eighth of an inch by two and three quarters and these are for the inside pocket so you can do one or two or none again entirely up to you if you want to keep it really really simple then you can because it's gonna be reused because you just you can as I said you can take out the white bits paper so you can just add more in when they're done so that's everything there now okay so for the decoration you need to do that now before you friendly through your laminator now everything you do you need to make sure it's really flat so heat embossing is good to do die cutting but obviously just that one die cut and you don't really want to do a very thick card because it just means that the laminating pouches will adhere better to the card that you run through it and so what I've done is I've just die cut my initial so s and I'm just going to personalize mine we're just a really simple initial there in the middle which you can just about pick up but it is there you can see it so I'm just using a little bit of glue just to hold it in place you some people kind of you know sale you don't really need to stick anything down because it sticks once the the laminator goes through all the laminated laminated pouch does is just keep it in that place it's not obviously it doesn't actually stick it so I'm just putting a little bit of glue just on this just to keep it in place and then I'm just going to so you want to make sure that you're when you're decorating it this is so hold on a minute and make sure do this right so you flip it over because this is going to be the piece that comes over like so so this is going to be the one that is on the front so just burnish one so bearing in mind that that is going to come over like so if I just grab myself a pencil mark I'm just going to put a little pencil mark just there so I know that the area to stick this is going to be in the middle of this bit here I'm just going to lie that down flat and just pop that down so again if you don't want to put mum like I've done here you could do the initial and just make sure it's within this space here which is what I'm doing now it's all that is it's just really just kind of you know taking it in place so now I want to run that grab one of the pouches and again lying that down this isn't a corner pouch so it's only attached by one side so some of them will be a pocket so this one is just opens up and it's the same on both so it's got that kind of clouded effect some of them have got a clearer side if you have those ones you want to make sure that the clearer side is facing up and that's the piece that goes on top of the front of your whatever it is that you are laminating so but I said these are the same it doesn't matter so I'm just going to pop this through and I'm going to put it right down into the corner just so I've got a nice even like little border because it will not go right up to the end here you can see there's some where I can't get it right to the end so that just now I'm going to use that as the same border to have all the way around so like so I've got the same it's about one eighth of an inch so I've got one eighth of an inch all along here and then with my trimmer now people do this after they've laminated I prefer doing it before because then you don't waste you can read you can still use all this if you run all that through the laminator now you'd have to throw all this away so just seems a waste so I'm just going to grab my laminator and my trimmer sorry and just pop it in here again making sure I'm happy that that's all where I want it to be and then with again that same one eighth of an inch little border I'm just going to cut that so now I can reuse all of that piece there I'm not going to get any waste so I'm happy with all that and then again what I'm going to do is I'm going to I'm not going to do that one there just because it's you run the risk of cutting it crooked and stuff so I'm going to keep that piece on but I've certainly saved enough there with that piece so make sure your laminator is nice and hot most of them will have a little button here and little light that will say when it's ready when that flashes green it means it's ready to go so this one I'm just going to put straight through again make sure you're happy everything lays perfectly down and always put through the closed end first okay don't go in from this end where it's open you always want to do the close end first I'm just going to put that in okay so it's all gone through nicely but I'm going to run it through again I always run mine through twice don't just turn that one off it's great because the laminators these days are so easy to use and they're so portable I remember when I used to do a lot of laminating quite a long time ago and I used to make a lot of journals they're huge the great big like beige things I need to try and get up in the loft actually because I've got some really old laminated diaries I used to laminate my magazines and then roll them up and make them into like little folders and stuff so I should try and find some of those all I'm doing is just trimming that end bit there just to give me the same acetate acetate laminated border there so you can kind of just see that one eighth of an inch little frame there all the way around okay so that is now nice and strong all nice and sealed and then what I want to do is just with my little corner punch again so I'm just going to take off the corners there because the acetate can get really sharp so that just makes it nice and smooth you don't need to worry about that one because it's going to be hidden inside so now where we've got our score lines you can just go and fold that again it will fold nicely and stay in its shape and you'll see it becomes nice and strong like so and then you can see now that that is going to sit on the top there and show my little initial nicely so that's all done then you just need to grab I've got a hole punch here and it's the one eighth of an inch hole punch you do need a small hole punch if you don't have a small hole punch then I would say use your pokey tool to poke through these holes because you do need something small but I'll just do these two first just to show you so right at the very top and you just see there on that half inch spine right to the very very edge of where the paper is before it hits the clear laminated bit here I've just done those two holes together and then I want to do exactly the same again at the other end so you're doing that not on the spine where you've got this little flap your little kind of closure but on the opposite one there I've got a piece here this is the one mil elastic and this is coming in at 10 and a half inches okay so you can see it here it's just very very thin now if you're doing a bigger one like you see I used on my traveller's notebook that was really really thick elastic but it was such a big um obviously no case whereas this is so small you don't need that masses of amount but you could I guess it wouldn't hurt if you did have that it would just make it a little bit bulky that's all so all you want to do is basically we're going to create two elastic kind of um lines here which is what we're going to hook the paper onto so starting from the bottom just come under all right so you're coming up like so and then with the other end and like so okay so we're coming all the way up it should just meet but you're going to pull these really really taught so that's why you might think oh they're not going to it's not going to reach it will because you need to start pulling it so then you feed them back both back through there so you can see I've gone under so I'm coming both of them are coming out on the back here and they've both gone in you can see there on the outside so that is what you'll have on the outside okay on the bottom and then on the top they'll be both coming out so now you want to pull them really really tight so that it's almost like a guitar string okay turn it over and just tie it into a knot so it's nice and tight okay so that's now nice and secure you can just trim that right off like so now what I've done is I just left that kind of knot on the outside because I then covered it with some ribbon I thread some ribbon through and I added the little embellishment and just tied it in a bow so that hides it all because I'm not going to be doing that now this time all I'm going to do is just pull it through just so it comes down just to the top there that's now going to be hidden inside the middle part of this here so now just grab one of them pick up one of the elastic pieces and you want to just thread the book through it will just literally kind of rub against the ends but it's fine because once it gets to that middle section it will then fold over nicely okay so now that knot is hidden and again just grab that other one grab that other piece of elastic so I can't seem to pick it up with my nails there we go and again just thread the other piece through like so and there you have it so now you can see the two little books with just plain paper that's all I want I just want something to scribble in I don't have to stick to a line I can just literally just do door when you quickly think of something I just wanted to have something to write it down so now I can just add my Velcro if you are using the elastic then you would have to hole punch a hole here on this end and just follow what I do in the traveler's notebook which I will attach to this video and also at the end as well but I'm just using quick easy velcro and that does the job perfectly so I've just taken two of these off and you want to put them towards the outer edge of the little kind of fold over lip here and again do one down there and then just line it up so that this top bit here sits in the the most outer score line of the bind so the top score line there just kind of sit them together and then put the Velcro down so make sure everything's lined up like so and there you have it I mean that's just so quick and easy and that's now going to last forever it's laminated it's sealed nothing's going to get in it I want to have finished and filled up all these bits and pieces here I can just cut some more copy paper and feed it through so one other bit I forgot to add is the pocket but that's fine because I've done it at this point anyway so the pockets we've got these two pieces here and all you want to do so you've got your three and one eighth of an inch piece along the bottom and your two and three quarter on the side here I just cut one here that's the shape you want to cut so you're not cutting from corner to corner you're kind of coming up by about half an inch and then cutting across so you've got half an inch there so if you want to draw a pencil mark for that you can but then all I'm going to do is sit it on top of my other piece and then just roughly use that so it's just a rough way of cutting it there and then just with my red tape because the red tapes are really really strong again if you're going to sit there and pick it this will come off but I don't intend to do that so red tape will be enough and it's only to hold like I said just a little receipt or an important piece of paper that I've just screwed up in my pocket that I need to keep or this is just I just wanted a really practical little you know notebook nothing too bulky so this should work very well so this is the first one so because you stick the other one opposite so let me just take this one off first like so and then all you're going to do is just sit it in so you get a nice little equal kind of border running on the top and the bottom like so so now you've got a nice little pocket there so like I said put the papers in and then this one here is going to go on the back I think this might now by which just come off it's on the top so I can rub that off in a minute this one is going to go that way up so it's a little bit taller so so there's that pocket I've got that pocket there and then it all just velcro is up nicely so again if that gets bulky and I do need to fold other bits and pieces in there it will still last fine so there you have it so there's my personalised one and there are two another's day ones as well so perfect little handbag notebooks so I hope you enjoyed today's tutorial if you did please hit the like button and subscribe to this channel to see more thanks for watching bye