How I Work: The Raven

Blogger is being a brat today for some peculiar reason of its own. So bear with me.

Today, I thought I'd discuss how I usually work when I start to design a page or a project. First, I think about it for a while. Generally, I have an idea before I ever sign up for a swap what I'd eventually like to do. I work best to deadlines which is why I do many, many times more work for swaps than I do for myself. I make some sketches in one of my many sketchbooks (usually one of them is the main one of the moment so I usually know which book it is in when I'm looking for it later). As I get down to the deadline, I start looking for materials.

I nearly always design to some degree in CorelDraw. I've been using it since version 1 (which worked with Windows 1.0 back in 1990!) so I'm pretty familiar with it. And there is plenty to learn about it if I ever have the time. I've just ordered Corel X4, so I'm looking forward to even more bells and whistles. The blue photo on the left (it seems to be blue because that's how Blogger insists on showing it - Corel, File Manager, and ACDSee all show it properly!) shows the basic layout as planned for 12" x 12" scrapbook card stock. I can print this on my Epson R1800 wide format printer, which is a really cool plus to that printer. Be sure to put the paper in the printer with the long grain of the paper against the paper guide on the side of the printer, so that the folds are oriented the proper way when the page is finished.

Three different backgrounds are used, all from one Halloween ATC set from Shabby Cottage, where I purchase most of my digital collage sheets. Gail provides excellent service and you can download the sheets nearly immediately. You get them via a link in an email from a download service Gail uses. You can see the actual colors in the photo of the finished front of the page on the left.

I cut out the backgrounds I wanted to use and saved them each with a slightly different name. I made them the size I wanted to use in PhotoShop Elements and made sure that they were cropped as I wanted. The one on the right with the birds also had the house that is on the first sheet but I erased it with PSE and used the spot healing and clone stamp features to heal the spots I'd erased. Then I imported each of them to CorelDraw and placed them where I wanted them.

I did my "signature" of the name of the piece, my name, my email address, and my blog address in the 'Chiller' font that I'd used for the word for the front, chose a color for it and turned it upside down. It had to be upside down because when the flap was folded up to make the pocket, it would be flipped upside down.

Bratty Blogger refuses to show the photo of the jig I made for the fence. I laid it down on my glass work surface and put the pre-cut coffee stirrers down on it, dotted The Ultimate craft glue in place with a stainless steel dental spatula and pressed the uprights into place. A jig makes short work of making so many items the same. It might have been even faster if I had thought to make a jig that actually held the sticks in place.

I printed out a whole sheet of the word 'Nevermore' from Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "The Raven", on orange paper. I cut the sheet into three columns the right width (2") then ran each column through my 2 1/2" Xyron, cut them to size and put them onto strips of purple card stock. I used a circle punch to cut the moons out of a sparkly yellow-orange scrapbook cardstock by The Paper Company. (I love their paper!)

The raven was one I found on the internet and photoshopped until I was happy with it. Once it was sized properly, I used my regular ink jet printer to print a few sheets of it on white card stock. I cut them out while I watched TV which took a couple of hours. My Tim Holtz Tonic scissors are comfy but that was pretty tiring for my hands! I do love all of my Tonic tools. They're lots easier on my fingers and hands than other tools. This project let me use lots of my tools, which I love.

Finally, I was ready to print the main pages. I double checked my instructions and it was a good thing I did! I'd figured everything for pages that were 4" wide and 6" tall, but when I checked, it said 5" wide by 7 1/2" tall! I was able to resize everything without problem. Sometimes the resolution isn't great enough to print a good image when it is resized larger than it was intended to be printed. I was not going to be able to fit multiple pages on one piece of cardstock, but then I realized that it did solve my pocket problem. I could add a flap in the piece that would otherwise be scrap that I could fold up to make my pocket. I'd been wondering how to put the tags I'd previously made on the back. By making a fold up pocket, this problem was solved. I thought I would have to go buy more white cardstock, but I found some more in the stash that I'm still working on organizing!

The layout for the actual page was pretty simple though it wasted a little paper. You can see the basic shape of it in the first photo, above. If you try this, be sure to think through where you want the fold to be. It can be helpful to make a small mock-up from scrap paper, mark which page is which with a bright colored marker and then open it out flat to see how what goes where. It's important to use whatever tool is available to make sure that the two sides line up evenly on the top and that the front and the flap line up on the left side. In Corel, this is the align and distribute tool, found in the Arrange menu. I made sure to put the sides even with a 1" margin to make it easy to trim later. Print one to make sure it's right and then print the remainder. I had to change one of my printer cartridges, so hopefully your printer stops when a cartridge is out as mine does.

Once printed on 12" x 12" white card stock, I trimmed the four sides with my big paper cutter in three batches. The 3" x 5" white piece that was left next to the flap and under the back of the page was trimmed out individually with my small Tonic paper cutter. By removing the orange guard that holds the paper you are cutting down as you cut, you can cut papers that are larger than the cutter bed. I often cut partial lines on this cutter, which is what this project entailed. The larger Tonic cutter is too loosely hinged to do this. It's the only cutter I have that won't stay open when you leave the arm up. It will drop so you have to take care when using it.

I used my large Score-It to score the folds, first the side fold then the bottom. Line it up carefully so that you score in the center for the main fold. I made sure to line it up just to the right of the bottom edge of the back of the page when I was scoring for the flap. That way, it doesn't pinch the bottom of the page. When you fold the pages, fold the page in half and then fold the flap up. I used Tombow Mono Adhesive to hold it together.

When you're doing an assembly line process for a book page swap project, I suggest doing small batches that let you feel that you're making progress. If I need 32 pages, I'll reduce it to four batches of eight (this was 33 so one batch had an extra). When I've done two, I am halfway done! This also helps to prevent repetitive motion injury by putting a small break in between your batches. You can take this further by making it a point to rotate your neck and shoulders and to stretch or get up to walk around between batches.

When I scored each page, I also cut under the tree branch with my X-Acto knife, pre-folded, then put on the adhesive and did the final fold/assembly. Next was dividing the set of 33 pages into three batches of 11 and adding the fence, then the raven, and finally, the word. I used The Ultimate glue on the two fence rails to attach the fence, a combination of double-sided adhesive foam squares (tiny ones!) and Perfect Paper Adhesive glue to adhere the raven, and more adhesive foam squares to adhere the framed word. Check the edges to be sure that they show up black. If not, use a black Magic Marker to make them look right or trim off any hangover with some scissors.

My fingers gave up so the tags got trimmed with the small Tonic cutter but I couldn't face cutting ribbons and putting them in each tag. So I tucked two in each pocket and called it completed!