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Five pocket Ephemera

It's a beautiful springtime, my crafty friends. Are you inspired by all the blooms and greenery surrounding you? I certainly enjoy pressing a few flowers to incorporate into my papercrafts and am loving the energy of growth and renewal that's surrounding us in this season. 

Today's item is a quick project and one that you can complete with mostly scraps of paper. If you're like most paper crafters, you have a hard time parting with any usable paper, no matter how big or small. So this piece would be a great item to use all those bits and bobs on. Why not make several at a time while you're at it? 

This project starts out with a large book page. What's on the page doesn't necessarily need to be of importance unless you want it to be the focal point of your piece. What really matters is that it's sturdy. You don't want to use a page that's so old it's brittle and cracks at the folds. Make sure whatever you use, it's heavy enough to withstand a bit of wear and tear. Glossy book pages are a good choice. The book page I used was somewhere around ten inches wide by 12 inches tall. You can experiment with different sizes of pages and see what works best for you. 

Score your paper at two inches from the top and fold it over for a flap. Fold your in half, horizontally starting under the flap. You'll want to leave a gap between the bottom of your flap, so don't fold directly into the crease, instead leave a quarter to three-eights of an inch gap. Next fold and score across the width of your page, in half, so you end up with a square. Unfold your paper and trim your flap slightly on the ends and at the middle fold, so it's angled. I only trimmed about a quarter-inch off. You end up with two separate flaps. One flap, you'll end up gluing down. 

Now it's time to collage. You'll want to decide where your front is going to be, and whether it will open to the right or left. Collage the front cover of your piece first and the flap you'll use to close it. Once you have those collaged, insert a brad through the front cover for a closure, if that's how you decide to close it. I used a cardstock circle and fastened it with a brad to the front cover and fastened the top flap under the circle. I also went inside the pocket on the back and covered the back of the brad with packing tape to make the whole operation a bit stronger. 

My piece has five pockets, but you can make as many or as few as you choose. One pocket is on the top on the left side made from the folding of the page and another I added to the front of the inside panel. There is a pocket on the right side from folding the page and then two pockets that have been glued onto the very back. Pockets are up to you, maybe you only want the two created by folding the book page, or maybe you want to make lots of tucks and pockets. The choice is yours. 

I chose to sew around my pocket. It's not necessary for this project, but I like the way it looks. This pocket was made for a swap-bot swap in my favorite group called "youtube paper crafters". We fashioned our pockets after this youtube video. 

I hope you enjoyed today's post. Thanks for taking a peek. If you want to see more of my content, join me on IG @craftinbish.   Make some beautiful things today!! :)

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