Friends of the Forest Notebook

Welcome back to Stamping with Buffy! I hope you had a wonderful weekend. We spent Saturday morning watching and cheering on Amelia at a jiu jitsu tournament. She’s still very new at it, but she’s having fun, and that’s what’s important, I think. She’s learning things and discovered areas she needs to work on. But right now, she’s not really in “competitive mode,” and that’s ok. She is, after all, still a little girl. It was fun, although I’m not sure I want to watch when she’s older. Those kids were bent like pretzels, and my heart was in my throat a lot of the time.

In personal news – my Christmas preparations are actually coming along! I have baked several loaves of zucchini and banana bread (not the two together; separate loaves of each), but they’re all gone. I gave some to my mom, some to a neighbor, some to one of Amelia’s friend who always tells Amelia mine is the best she’s ever had (well, of course, she’ll get some of it!), and the rest Mike & I had to sample. Our garden yielded a lot of zucchini this past summer, so I’ll probably bake quite a few more loaves before the winter is over. My tree is up and trimmed, and I have almost all my shopping done.

One of the things on Amelia’s Christmas list was a notebook. Or several notebooks. She loves to draw and write her thoughts in her journals, so I had to get a notebook for her. She also loves bunnies and her favorite colors are black and blue. Since I had already bought her several other presents, I decided to make a custom notebook for her. I found some composition books I had bought years ago for some craft project or another, so I did this.

It’s very simple. I covered the front with Starry Sky and Basic Black Cardstock. There was no math involved; I simply marked where I needed to cut and glued the card stock to the notebook with Multipurpose Liquid Glue (in case I needed to move it a bit).

I used the new Alphabet a la Mode Dies from the January-April Mini Catalog to die-cut her name from Basic Black Cardstock. I always hesitate to buy more alphabet dies, because I have several sets, but these are so fun! The letters are very skinny, so you can fit more in less space.

The Friends of the Forest Stamp Set was perfect for this project, although I was tempted to use some new ones that I have from the upcoming mini. I’ll save those for the next book! I stamped the tree and bunny in Versamark Ink, then embossed with White Stampin’ Emboss Powder, Next, I colored over the embossing with Watercolor Pencils. The nice thing about the pencils is they color over the embossing, so the tree was so easy to color with the Granny Apple Green pencil. I colored the tree trunk and branches with Early Espresso, and the bunny with Melon Mambo, White, and Early Espresso. Inside, I stamped random pages with the bird, mushroom/flower strip, and the bunny. I didn’t color them, because I thought Amelia might like to. She’s more likely to draw her own, though. Her art skills are amazing.

I think she’ll like this. Like me, she’s a journal junkie!

Thanks for stopping by Stamping with Buffy. Have a lovely day!

Product List (note: The Alphabet a la Mode Dies will be available January 5. 2023)