Gazelle fun

My hubby asked me the other day if I had a notepad or something he could use to help him keep track of the vehicle maintenance.  I pulled out a notepad from my office and as he reached for it, I slightly pulled it back and asked if he needed a "cover" for it.  Little did he know I didn't mean a plain 'ole cardstock cover.  I HAD to embellish it, of course.   Really, he should've known.  ;)

I had purchased a 10 pk of white notepads from Papertrey Ink over a year ago.  I thougth this would be good for him to use so I grabbed one and went to work.  Here's a pic of what I ended up creating for him...

I started by simply creating a cover out of Slate American Crafts cardstock.  Then I pulled out my trusty Gazelle to cut my title and little wrenches.  I found the wrench by Googling.  It was a simple jpeg file I imported and vectorized.  I used a metallic cardstock from my stash for the wrenches then created a mat for them with Black American Crafts Cardstock.  Next I set out to create my title.  I knew I wanted to do something a little different so I decided to make some DIY alpha stickers.  Yep, I sure did.  It was easy really.  First I chose a single stroke font then created each letter.  After resizing them, I removed the blade housing and stuck a pen in.  Loaded my light blue cardstock and let the Gazelle write the letters for me.  Then, I opened a tag from the image book, ungrouped and removed the hole, then resized it to fit over the letters and multiplied it so that I had enough to cover each letter.  I positioned each tag over each letter, replaced my blade housing then cut each letter out.  A little ink around the edged and viola!  Pretty cute huh?!  I finished it up by cutting the rest of the title and added a few brads in the corner.  Now I just have to hope it holds up in the glove box.  ;)