The Creative Bucket List Club is a celebration of trying all the things, of saying yes to the flutter of excitement in your stomach when you see a new craft or imagine a wild idea. It's for the creative adventurers who want to make not just one kind of art, but all the kinds, simply for the wonder of it.
Last year, I made a tiny book of Big Magic that I gave to Elizabeth Gilbert when I met her during her tour in the UK.
I made it from scraps of brightly coloured handmade paper and oddments and craft supplies accumulated over years of creative adventures. It was messy and beautiful, with gold ribbon and lace as a fastening, butterfly buttons, little coloured jewels, tiny paper roses to embellish the cover, and pages of scrap paper folder over and stitched inside.
Little Moments of Big Magic
"I am going to spend as much time as I can creating delightful things out of my existence, because that's what brings me awake and that's what brings me alive." Elizabeth Gilbert.
I’ve wanted to make another for a while, and with two of my nieces getting married in May, I decided to make one for each of them as a handmade gift. That turned into four— two for my nieces, one for me, and one to give away to a Creative Adventurer with an annual paid subscription to While I Was Drawing.1
In this episode of the Creative Bucket List club, I show you how to make one of these little books yourself, so you can bring a bit of this handmade magic into your own creative world.
The list of materials, equipment and step by step method are at the end of this post, along with a downloadable PDF for paid subscribers2.
Creative Adventures in May
My beautiful birthday flowers started to wilt, and inspired by a lovely dried flower window hanging I saw while meandering around Bridport with my mum and auntie earlier in the month, I thought I’d try drying them. I carefully separated the blooms, patted down their soggy stems, and hung them from a clothes hanger in the studio.
The roses, eryngium, and astrantia have dried into delicate, papery beauties. The stock flowers, though, drop their petals like confetti if I even so much as glance in their direction… So I’ve been gathering the fallen petals, thinking they might be perfect for homemade paper.
In March, I went to an acrylic painting party at work. We all painted winter woodlands with foxes and fairy lights, and since then I’ve been longing to get my paints out again. So I bought myself a small canvas and attempted to paint a spring river scene.
Both these paintings (as well as the chance to receive one of the handmade notebooks) are available as a gift for new annual paid subscribers.3
This gorgeous original watercolour painted by the incredibly talented
arrived in the post, along with some tiny treasures Rebecca collected on the isle of Orkney. I love her very much and I named her Winifred (thank you for the suggestion ). I wanted to hang her above my desk but I didn’t want to hide her behind glass in a shop-bought frame. So I spent a joy filled afternoon decorating her with shells and beads and trinkets and the tiny treasures from Orkney.
Where have your creative adventures taken you in May? I’d love to know. If you craft a little notebook (or anything else) I’d love to see what you make. I’ll be opening up a Chat thread for Creative Adventurers later this week, where you can share photos of your own creative explorations.
With wishes for endless inspiration,
P.S. If you’ve enjoyed reading, please share a heart and leave a comment and reshare here on Substack or on another platform. It may only seem a little thing, but it means a very great deal to me and helps my words get seen by others as well. I genuinely appreciate everyone who takes the time and every single one lifts my heart.
Making tiny handmade notebooks
🌸 What You’ll Need:
Colourful handmade paper – thick but soft enough to sew. The paper I used was A4, which is about 21 x 29.7 cm (or 8.3 x 11.7 inches)
Six pages of A4 white hand made deckle edge paper
Thick card for the cover - I used the grey card from the back of an A4 watercolour pad that is roughly 1mm thick
A variety of embellishments and beads for the cover and beaded dangles
gold or silver thread to stitch words onto the cover and for the beaded dangles
Ribbon or lace for the tie
White cotton
Clear-drying glue (I used Bostik all purpose clear glue)
Pencil
Sewing needle
Ruler
Glue gun
Making the cover
Cut the grey card to measure 18 cm x 10.5 cm.
To create a 2.5 cm wide spine, place the card horizontally. Measure 7.75 cm from each end and draw a vertical line. Score along each line with a craft knife, being careful not to cut through the card.
Carefully bend the card along the score lines to form the shape of the book cover.
Cut your colourful handmade paper to measure 20 cm x 12.5 cm.
Lay the paper face side up. On the right-hand side, lightly pencil in the word(s) you plan to stitch onto the cover.
Using the metallic thread, carefully stitch over the pencil lines using back-stitch.
Turn the paper face side down and glue the grey card into the centre of the paper. Cut diagonally across the corners of the paper, then glue along the paper edges and fold them over the card to wrap it neatly.
To create the tie, cut two pieces of ribbon or lace, each about 32 cm long, and glue them to the centre of the inside of the front and back covers, overlapping by about 2 cm.
For the dangles, cut a piece of metallic thread about 70 cm long, fold it in half, and glue the looped end to the top inside of the spine (We’ll add the embellishments later.)
Making the pages
Take a sheet of deckle-edged handmade paper and fold it in half. Rip along the fold, then fold each piece in half again and rip once more to make four equally sized pieces.
Fold these in half to create a booklet of eight leaves.
Repeat this process with five more sheets of paper to make a total of six booklets, each with eight leaves.
Thread white cotton onto a sewing needle and sew down the spine of each booklet using a back-stitch.
When all the booklets are sewn, gather them together and carefully line them up. Stitch across the spines of all six to join them into a single thick booklet.
Making the book
Using a glue gun, glue the joined booklets into the spine of the cover.
Open the book fully and glue the first and last pages to the inside of the front and back covers.
Decorating your book
Using beads and other embellishments, decorate the cover and spine.
Thread beads and embellishments onto the metallic threads and tie off the ends.
With the book closed, gently tie the ribbon or lace into a bow to finish.
And that’s it! Some colourful paper, card, and embellishments transformed into a unique handmade keepsake for storing thoughts, memories, ideas, and inspiration.
What would you keep in yours?
I will draw a name at random from everyone with an annual paid subscription to While I Was Drawing on Sunday 8th June.
Send me a message after you upgrade to let me know which one you’d like and your postal address so that I can send it to you.
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