Oregon's only 4~H Court / 2015

Today, a celebration of youth !! Our family enjoys the 4H program, volunteering and learning. 4H has so much to offer in ANY subject area.  If you can find someone willing to lead and kids interested in the subject, you've got a club!!
Our Wallowa County hosts the only 4H Court in Oregon and in 2014/2015 my daughter Georgia earned her place on it.  What a busy and exciting year it was. So I finally put together the cover page layout for the book the girls made.  I thought I would share a few of the fun things I did with it.

I started with a pale blue paper and made a 4 leaf clover stencil using heart shapes; carefully pounced green, turquoise and blue ink within the clover shapes ~ 2 sizes randomly scattered. 

When I was satisfied with the results I carefully splashed water over them and let it thoroughly dry (in the oven on super low ~ I was in a hurry!!) I also rubbed the page edges with the blue ink to give them some extra depth.  I decided this was not enough so I took my white NUVO Crystal Drops and and put dozens of dots as randomly as possible.  I wanted it to have a spattered look but I wanted the spatter to be super white ~ I think it worked !!

I had the idea of a belt buckle on the page since each girl received one to commemorate her year.  I used a buckle shaped die, dry embossed it, rubbed the high spots with watermark ink and heat embossed that with silver.  You can guess how I made the 4 leaf clover(?) that in the end decided not to use!! Its enameled with clear heat embossing.

My favorite part was figuring out how to include the 4 pictures I wanted to use without crowding the page and also introducing the girls individually. I came up with the idea of flaps, hinged with gross grain ribbon.  I asked each for a quote and found some great alphabet stickers to add in their names. 

I reflected the layered ribbon shapes from the first page to make the lift flaps adding their name to the flap to be lifted to see their individual photos with each quote!

Originally the papers were plain, it was a very dull look ~ adding background stamps in a monochromatic color & accenting with "stitching" perked up the page a bunch without making it too busy.

🗱Click on the photos to browse close up

Here are some close ups just for fun!  All of the silver pieces were cut & embossed from silver papers - high spots were heat embossed with silver powder. It is a great effect in person, gold is also stunning this way :) 

Another detail that is hard to see is the curve of the belt buckle.  Using the same technique as with the Jar Labels I curved the "buckle" then while attaching it, added 2 layers of dimensional tape to the central vertical axis and glued the ends down tight to the page.  Even with this heavy book closed, it will retain its dimension.

 some open space was for journaling depending on what the girls decided, but I also think it looks great without anything.