Thursday, January 3, 2008

Make your own swatch book

Here are photos of a swatch book I made. It's a great way to try colors together without pulling out whole sheets of cardstock. For the cover, I used 2 chipboard coasters that I covered with designer paper. The coasters are 4 inches square. I used glue stick to adhere the paper and then coated them with matte Mod Podge.

For the inside, I cut 3 3/4 inch squares of all 48 colors of cardstock and cut each square into 3 strips; each strip is 1 1/4 inches. (That math degree comes in handy sometimes!) My Tonic paper cutter from SU really made this job easier! I used my Crop-a-dile to punch holes in the cardstock. I was able to punch 10 sheets at a time, and I set the gauge for 3/8" so all of the holes were the same depth. No guessing!

The cardstock is organized the same way my cardstock is filed. It's alphabetical within each color family, and the color families go Soft Subtles, Rich Regals, Bold Brights, Earth Elements.

I punched the first hole in the cover at 2 inches then to get the other holes, I laid the cardstock pieces onto the cover and used them as my guide. It's held together by 1 inch notebook rings.

Thanks for visiting!

2 comments:

Lorien Clark said...

That is great Jana! Want to make one for me? You should make that a blog candy give away...

Crystal said...

I LOVE this too Jana! I agree with Lorien..Blog candy...I think my stamp club ladies would love this!