Making your own decorative tissue paper!

That's right you can make you own decorative tissue paper and it's easy!

All you need to start is an old sewing patter, some Tim Holtz Distress ink, or any ink would probably do, some stamps and an acrylic block for your stamps if needed.

Your patterns don't have to be new. I bought my sewing patterns at my local flea market, they were three for a dollar.  Take out a piece of the pattern big enough for your project and lay it on your crafting surface face down.

Next get out your inks and start stamping... That's it! Easy peasy.

Make sure as you stamp you rotate the direction of your stamp so the images are not uniform, unless that is what you are going for.

Here's a video of me making some for a canvas I'm planning:

In this video I wanted a sort of vintage color to it so I used some Distress Ink in the Walnut Stain color.  And because my canvas is going to be a floral piece I used the floral stamps I had; Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous - Flights of Fancy, Stampin' Up - Bloomin' Beautiful, and Prima Marketing - Hello Pastel - #563004.

Things are changing...

Things come and go, and things change in the world.  That's just the way things are. I'm not one who really likes change but I think this change is welcomed.

It all started about a month ago.  ArtFire, who I've been with for a long time, has decided to make some business changes.  They decided to put ads on product listings. It's not just one ad or two small ads it's a bombardment of ads.  Ads at the bottom of the pictures and ads just below the shop categories make it hard to tell if the links are for my product or someone else.  This is their business and it's their decision to make.  They feel they need the income revenue from the ads.  It's a decision I don't like. Personally I don't like having ads all over product pages that I am looking at. I don't like feeling bombarded by them and I do not like the placement of the ads.  This and more has lead me to step away from ArtFire. March 31 will by my final day there and I have to say I don't think it's going to be a bad thing. I have moved on to, hopefully, bigger and better things.

I opened a Zibbet shop that will now house supplies. The tons of supplies I have been sitting on for some reason or another will now be making there way into that shop. There will be beads, toggles, charms, book binding supplies and more.  It's going to take me a bit to get everything in there but I'm determined to do it.

So what's going to happen to everything that's in my ArtFire store...Well, that's getting moved to my Etsy shop.  This will become my main shop where all my goodies can be found.  New photo's will be taken of some older products from when my photographing skills were severely lacking.  I'm hoping to expand upon things there in the future as well.  Keeping my fingers crossed that when they change things around there they will be gracious enough to give us a few more shop sections.  I am doing my best right now to try to make things as easy as possible for everyone to find and once the shop gets really full I will add some special links to help sort my products in my announcement there.

I'm really excited about how this and have a really good feeling about it all. So for now I'll leave you with a new product. An altered composition notebook.  All signs of it being a composition notebook have been erased. It is completely covered outside with a crinkled blue paper and a black velvet paper on the spine.  The interiors of the covers have a decorative light blue paper with white marks covering them up.  On the front cover are a few fabric flowers with some white and blue feathers.  All this leaves you with beautiful notebook with lined pages inside to write whatever you'd like.

Altered Blue Composition Notebook

Make it Crafty Coloring Challenge #10

Cutting it close with this one. Last day of the month posting....It's been a crazy month with the kiddos last few days of school just last week. I managed to squeeze in some time to do some coloring for the new Make-it-Crafty's  coloring challenge.  In case, you missed my posts for a few months you these coloring challenges are a fun way to challenge or work on your coloring skills.

So there are two different challenges, a hard and an easy one.  This month the hard is coloring curly hair and the easy is coloring with pink and brown.  Because I was on such a time crunch this month I opted for the easy one.

Lets see....I started with two different digital stamps from Make-it-Crafty.

Here's the first: 

 

Daffodil Swing Digi Stamp

And the second was:

Sitting Annalise Digi Stamp

I chose these two images because it was also "something girly" (the challenge's title, and the Facebook group challenge.)  As a little girl I loved to swing, and so do my daughters, so I thought this would be perfect to do as something girly.




To make the final image I took the two into Photoshop; flipped Annalise, rotated her a little to line her up with the swing and removed some of the daffodils to come up with my final image.  I held off coloring until my new favorite color pencils arrived, Faber-Castell Polychromos pencils. This was the first image I colored with them and I'm in love.  They blend beautifully and lay down easily, by far the best pencils I've used.  To top it off all of Faber-Castell's lines match so you can use markers, pencils and watercolors with ease. So excited to do more with their products.

Any who....I used my finial colored image to alter a medium sized Moleskin lined journal.  Added some new Prima Marketing Inc. flowers to it.  Throw in some papers, Tim Holtz Distress Stickles, glitter, metal frame, Silks paints, leaves and a fun inspiring saying and you get the finished journal.  By the way the cute little saying is "In a sky full of stars it's amazing to find that each is one-of-a-kind."

I hope you like it...

 

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.  

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.  

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. :)

Booklaces

What is a booklace?

Well simply it's a book necklace.  It is also far more than that......

These have started making an appearance in my stores and I wanted to share just exactly what they are.  They were designed to be a fun and fashionable way to always have paper with you to take notes, jot down lists or simply pass off a note or number to someone else.  They are all handmade and unique.

Lets start off by talking about the chains.  The chains are long to extra long in length.  The lengths of the chains vary but the average is 32"- 36" long.  I wanted something that if I'm heading out the door I can just slip on and not have to fuss with clasps and what not.  Some chains will still come with clasps but should not have to be used unless you want to. These should easily slip over your head and will come in a wide variety to match the books that come with them.  Each end of the chain will have a ring that simply slides on to the binder rings of the book to attach the book to the chain.

Moving on to the books.  The books measure 2" wide by 2.5" tall.  The start off with book board and a selected cover paper.  As with all my books a pH neutral PVA book binders glue is used. The covers of the book are punched and fitted with eyelets to help prevent any wear from the rings.  The book just grow from there based on my inspirations.  There will be some steampunk and tons of floral. I bought a ton of gorgeous Prima Marketing embellishments and flower so those will definitely be seen on books.  You'll just have to keep checking to see the new ones that appear.

The paper inside - To start the booklaces come with 50 plain white pages of 28 lb paper, heavier than you standard printer paper.  If you don't want the plain, 50 sheets of standard lined paper can be put in instead simply by making a note and letting me know at check out.  Other options might develop such as colored paper, which I have a ton of so just ask if you are looking for some, along the way. 

Pencils.  Well with every notebook a writing utensil is needed or how else would you write in it.  Instead of fumbling for a pen or pencil in your bag, purse or pocket the pencil is chained to the necklace.  No worries about forgetting it or losing it.  The pencils are attached to the chain via a swivel clasp.  The swivel allows for the pencil to be used with out the chain tangling up.  The clasp allows you to remove the pencil and place it on the dominate side of the chain or just take it off completely.  You might even prefer it attached to something else, maybe a key chain or zipper or something entirely different the option is yours.  These will also be available separately so if you need a replacement, mix and match or just want the pencil, they will be there.  ***NOTE: Because these pencils are hand wrapped with a matching paper then sealed the best way to sharpen them is with a knife or razor.***

The over all book itself....It's unique feature is that it is total replaceable, interchangeable and customizable.  Simply open the binder rings and a whole other world awaits.  The chains are the first to come off, simply slide the rings of the chains off and slide another one on.  Next take a cover off or both covers off. You need to take one off to replace the paper but if you want you can mix and match your covers. One the cover is off switch out the old paper for the new, replace the cover, the chain and close the binder rings. All parts are replaceable and interchangeable so have fun and be sure to check out ArtFire or Etsy for your booklaces.

Stampin Sketch Book pt 2

To continue on with my little Bloom Mae stamp, that I had colored in the previous post, I decided to use her on a book cover. I wanted something cute to go along with her. I chose out a section of paper from BoBunny's Back To Backs 12" Sophie Cut Outs.  The section that I chose was the section that says "Beautiful Inside & Out."  I figured that with this the book would have to be coptic stitched because the cut out that I chose would loose to much if I wrapped it around the book board.

I took my book board, cut to 6" x 6", and glued a glue piece of coordinating blue scrapbook paper down to it for both the back and the front covers, inside and out.  I waxed up some cotton hot pink thread with some locally sourced bees wax and placed a few stitches on the BoBunny cut out, one in the upper right and two in the lower left corners.  Then I glued this one down to one the now blue book board that will become the front cover.  I wanted to give the covers a sort of aged look so I took some really fine grit sand paper and sanded all around the edges.  Then I used some Distress Stain, antique linen, to give it an aged look.

Once that was all done I worked on the signatures. For the signatures, or sections of folded paper that make up the book, I used  Canson 90lb drawing paper.  To dress up the book a little bit more I decided to use a bright pink card stock to go over the spine edge of the signatures.  The sewing thread is the same hot pink cotton one that I used to stitch in the cut out.   I decided where my holes were going to be for stitching and drilled/punched those in the cover and signatures. Then I stitched the book together and finally attached Mae to the cover with some double sided sticky foam.

Here is the finished book:

Garden Flowers

The garden is finally in full swing. Some crops are doing better than other. Spinach, onions and eggplant just are not going to be happening this year. I think all of 4 spinach plants are there and getting eaten by bugs and I have 2 onions growing. The rest of the garden seems to be doing good.

I was out weeding around the corn today, I couldn't tell were the corn ended and weeds began, and I noticed all these lovely flowers. I don't think people realize just how lovely vegetable and fruit flowers in the garden can be. I decided to take some pictures of my lovely garden flowers.

First up is my strawberry plant. I bought this as a plant from the plant clearance rack at Lowes. Let me tell you this was the saddest little plant I had ever seen. I wasn't even sure if the plant would live. It was only fifty cents so I figured I'd give it a chance. Now look at it. It grew a shoot and formed another plant so now I have two plants and it's got this love pink flower on the top. Not bad for fifty cents.

While weeding I was scanning the garden and noticed something that seemed odd to me, a color that I have not seen on anything other than eggplant flowers, purple. Now my eggplant isn't flowering so it took me a second to think about what exactly had the purple flower, it's my heirloom beans. I've never seen bean plants with purple flowers before, only white. I thought they were so pretty.

Lastly my peas are taking off. I also got heirloom peas this year. It still amazes me just how tall and how well they grow. I have to go get another piece of trellis for them to climb on. They seem to do so well in the garden. I love the white flowers that they have and trying to hunt to see which ones are going to give way to a yummy pod. Here is six peas in a pod that still have the white flower attached to the bottom: