Tuesday, March 25, 2014

The making of a mixed media journal

I love being able to combine all different types if media when working on a project. This book was made over the course of a few days.

First I had a picture in my head of what I wanted the base cover to look like, so I gathered what I thought I would need for supplies. Tissue paper, inks, mists, glue, string and book board to work on.


Next came the layering... Starting with the twine. I glued the twine to the book board in the pattern/design I wanted.  Then layered on pieces of tissue paper.  Once dry, inks and shimmers were added until I like the way it looked.

After all that was dry I added embellishments.   Some fabric flowers, brass key and leaf, and a filigree button with black rhinestones.  
https://www.etsy.com/listing/183401566/vintage-steampunk-inspired-mixed-media?ref=pr_shop

Then it was a matter of assembling the final note book with lined pages and a black wire spiral.
It is currently available for purchase at my Etsy shop.  

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

Make It Crafty March Challenges

I've been working really hard on this months challenges and it has been loads of fun.  This months  Make it Colourful Challenge #7 is "Spring is in the Air."  The easy this month is to color flowers and trees, while the hard challenge is to color wood to look realistic.

While they do the site challenges Make it Craft also has a wonder Facebook group. Here there is tons of inspiration and wonderful crafty people.  I highly recommend checking it out.  Each month the Facebook group has it's own challenge.  This months challenge is to create a card in a box. Now I'm not much of a card person but this looked like loads of fun so I figured I'd give it a go.

The tutorial for this card in a box is found at My Many Passions blog.  This tutorial is in metrics and I did use a converter tool to approximate my measurements before someone pointed out Splitcoaststampers tutorial in inches.  Both have excellent videos and Splitcoaststampers has a great step by step written and picture part as well.

So now we have flowers and trees, wood and a card in a box....hmm....How to combine all of these? I know it can be done.

So here's the stamps from Make It Crafty I started with:

In the Garden Digi Stamp

Cynthia Digi Stamp

I broke out the cardstock piles and decided on a brown kraft box.  I made my box, which I found easy enough to do with the tutorials.  I then mixed some of the garden stamps in Photoshop.  Took all my the digital stamps I wanted to use into my Silhouette Cameo resized them, printed them, and cut them out.  I was shocked at just how tiny I needed these stamps to be to fit with my box 2.75" max either way.

Then it was time for the fun part....coloring!  I was not sure how to tackle coloring the tiny very detailed stamps I printed but I was determined.  I started out with Copic Markers B0000 for the sky,  and YG03, YG67, and YG63 for the stems on the sunflowers.  But I soon realized that I was going to have some trouble trying to color in such tiny lines with the markers so I switched over to watercolor paints and a #1 Round brush.  I just use whatever was already on my pallets, Windsor Newton, SoHo, Van Gogh and Koi among them.



This made it so much easier, at least for me, to color.  Once colored I attached the figures in my box to create a three dimensional scene.  I added some colored cardstock to the flaps of the box.  Embellished the closed box with some jolee's by you flowers, Prima Marketing pearls and a stamp that I made in Photoshop.






I also made a envelope out of complimenting paper that I  had.  I found that with the thickness of the card a 9" x 9" piece of paper was big enough to make the envelope.  After much trial and error, a few scrap pieces of scrapbook paper, I figured it out.  Using my score board and envelope triangle I scored the paper at 3" and 3.5" made the envelope so that the card would fit.

This was a fun little project and I hope you all like it. :)