From Trash to Treasure

From Trash to Treasure...I found a broken journal at one of my local Michael's and couldn't resist buying it.  I had to see what I could do.  Looking at it the only thing wrong was that the elastic closure was pulled out from where it should have been tucked into the book. That's a slightly easy fix if things go the way they should. 

I brought the journal home, repaired the elastic (thankfully everything did go the way it should,) and got to work on painting. I painted and painted and painstakingly painted with the tiniest brush I had. 

All in all it took me about four to five days of painting on and off.  The intricacy and the tiny details made my eyes go buggy.  I had to do it in sections and at intervals to give my eyes a break. 
Looking at the brown and the gold I immediately thought that this book was screaming to be a steampunk book. I set off to find a digital steampunk stamp that would be a perfect fit for this book.

I came across that stamp on StitchyBearStamps by a creator known as BB Kakes.

Steampunk - 3 pc set

I purchased it, read the TOU to make sure it I was within the right to use it for this project, and printed it out a few time on some Copic marker friendly paper.

Why a few times you might, well it's so I can use one test colors and play with, one to lay out my colors, figure out shading and how I'm going to finish it, and the last one to do my final colors on.

Here's my second one with my colors listed so I know which markers to use where on the final.

And here is the final all colored and fussy cut out.

 On the final image I used Tim Holtz's Distress Stains and Paints for the gears and metal. I used some Ranger Glossy Accents on the glasses and the face of the pocket watch after shading in the gray color to give them the glass look.

Then it was off to the book....

I used some Prima Marketing Engraver Collection "Cesello" (845315) paper as the back ground.  Glued my stamp just off center.  I placed the "Jouranl" sticker from Prima's Engraver collection (563479) so that the end of the sticker lined up with the edge of her shoulder.
I used some Prima flowers for embellishment (Black rose -552619, Small maroon roses - 553302.)  On one of the small roses I pulled out the center of the rose and added a button (550776.) The key paper clip (564681) I cut the clip part off of to make it look like just a key.  I then added miscellaneous mechanicals, gears from Tim Holtz and Bead Landing along with some clock hands and key hole from Bead Landing.

Here's the journal all finished:

 


 

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...

 

My Comic Book Book - Lady Mechanika

My Comic Book Book.....This book took me a bit of luck to make.   When I found out that my husband was going to set up a Hartford Comic Con I decided I was going to make a book for it.  I  wanted to make the book from one of my favorite comics out there, Lady Mechanika.  I did not want to use one of my many copies of the comic so I had to find a book that was a duplicate to one that I already owned.  (Yes, I am one of those people who collects the many different covers.)  That was not an easy feat.  The book is very hard to come by now, so it took some calling, driving to different shops but I finally found one about an hour from me.

The book started out looking just like any other comic book. I was a little worried to take the comic apart and use it, afraid I would mess it up some how, either gluing or cutting it.  One mistake would lead to a very frustrated and mad me.  Needless to say with all the worry I took my time with it.

Over all the book took me just over a week start to finish including the pressing and drying times.  The front cover of the book is the front cover of the comic.  The signatures are surround by the cut interior pages of the comic (I wish I could have kept them full size.)  I kept them in order so you can at least read the first pages of the signatures in order. The interior pages are the Toned Gray Strathmore sketch paper.  The back cover of the book I took the Recollections Clocks paper and water colored it with some Tim Holtz Distress Stains.  I Coptic stitch bound the book with some variegated brown and beige cotton thread that I waxed with local bees wax.

My Lady Mechanika comic book book!

Back and Front Covers.

Inside the Front Cover.

Inside Pages.

I brought the comic book turned sketch book to the Con with me.  Joe Benitez, creator and artist for Lady Mechanika, was set up there as well.  I was very lucky to be able to get him to do the very first sketch in the book.  <3

So now the book will be traveling with me to shows and cons, when ever I can get to them, to have others do sketches in it as well. I'm thinking a steampunk theme is in order but that was apparent from the start.

Recollections Washi Crafting Tape - Review

I have to say right off the bat that this is one product I am seriously disappointed in.  I found a couple of the tapes that I liked and had some wonderful ideas for them but now they just sit all sad on my craft table.

Those are the two tapes I bought.  I had some really great ideas of ways to use them.  The back of the package say that the tapes are "repositionable" and "ink-friendly."  This is unfortunately not true.  The butterfly one was going to be inked and used on the edges of a book.  However this did not go as planed.

 Below is the corner of the book that I had to scrap because as you can see the tape is not re-positionable.  It peeled away a layer of the colored cardstock when I went to go move it.

Thinking that maybe it was just the cardstock paper - mind you it was a double sided piece, so it was not a cheap piece of paper to loose out on - I decided to test a different piece of paper.  This is just a scrap piece of paper I had laying on my desk.  I laid the small piece of tape on it, gave it a gently run over with my finger and then tried to gently peal it off.   As you can see that did not succeed with out peeling off some of the paper.  So this tape is far from re-positionable.

Okay so it's not re-positionable. You say you can live with that as long as you are careful when you place it.  Inking it still gives you plenty of options.

So lets try inking this tape.  I laid down a small piece of tape on a piece of scrap paper.  Brought out my Tim Holtz Distress Stains and multiple ink pads.  The results are the same no matter what you use, the ink beads up and none to very very little color is absorbed.  "Ink-friendly" it is not.

I am very disappointed in these tapes. I really liked the designs on these tapes and had such hopes for them, but they let me down.  They advertise to be re-positionable and ink-friendly neither of which is true. I kind of feel like I wasted my money. :( Here's to hoping I'll find a use for these the way they are.

   

Make it Crafty Coloring Challenge #8

I'm running so far behind this month it's not even funny.  I actually managed to create something earlier in the month but just have not gotten around to actually writing in my blog.  So here it is.

This months Make it Colourful challenge:  Easy - Purple and Turquoise and Hard - Color on something other than your standard white papers.

While I love the color purple and it is by far one of my favorites I just couldn't come up with anything that I would have liked in that color scheme quickly.  (I'm sure I could have come up with something if I could squeeze an extra hour out of a day and an extra arm out of my body. Yeah, it's been one of those months.)   Anyway, I decided to forgo the easy challenge and create for the hard challenge. 

I love steampunk so I went and chose the Metal Flowers digi stamp from Make it Crafty.

Metal Flowers Digi Stamp

I wanted to use in the creation a mixed media altered Molekine cahier journal.  It took me a few print outs to figure out the size and placement of the image.  Once I figured that all out I cut a piece of Recollecions Clocks paper and ran it though the printer.  With all the text and images on the paper I had to often refer back to one of my scrap print outs to know where to color.  It definately was not easy but I am happy with the end result.

To color the paper I used:  Tim Holtz Distress Stain - Antique Linen,  Prismacolor Colored Pencils, Twinkling H2Os - Ginger Peach, Golden Fluid Acrylic - Iridescent Silver, Tim Holtz Stampers Anonymous "Artist" Stamp, and Judi Kins Gold Detail Embossing Powder. 



  

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. :)

Make it Crafty Coloring Challenge #6

I love coloring, ever have since I was little. My husband being an artist means that I have a wide variety of media to play with; markers, paints, inks and all of my crafting goodies.  Armed with all of these at my disposal I still don't have a lot to color or practice with.  

I recently found, and I do not quite remember how, Make it Colourful coloring challenge from Make it Crafty.  Each month they have a new coloring challenge.  I found this to close to the end of the last challenge so I figured I would wait.  Well this months challenge was just that a BIG challenge. 

Browns.  Easy right...not so much.  They have two different challenges with in the theme, Easy and Hard. Easy challenge is to incorporate brown into your image. Hard challenge all brown, no other colors allowed.  Well I just could not resit that challenge, use nothing but brown on a picture.  I've never colored a picture before in monochrome. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be.

I set off to decide on my image.  Rule is that one image must be from Make it Crafty.  It took me forever to decide just what image from them to pick.  All of the images are wonderful and detailed. 
I ended up deciding on something that I could frame and put in my kids hang out room if it came out good once I colored it.  So the image I chose was their "Alice with Cards Digi Stamp".

 

And so I set out to color it.....

All done in brown watercolor and inks.

Here's what I used:

Derwent watercolor pencils - Bronze and Raw Umber.
Windsor Newton watercolor pan - Burnt Umber
Tim Holtz Distress Stains - Vintage Photo and Antique Linen (shading and background)
Pebeo Drawing Gum (used to mask off edges of image to color the background)

Let me know what you think.

 

Mini Pocket Page Book

I think I've mentioned before that over the Christmas season Prima Marketing ran a wonderful warehouse box sale.  I picked up a couple of them and discovered my love of their products, thick papers, cute embellishments, and lovely flowers. 

I used their Londonerry line of papers to make this cute mini pocket book:

There are 8 pockets in total.  Each pocket has a tag, frame, note card or other piece of paper to journal on.  Add pictures to these cute pages and pockets to customize it. 

Here's my list of what I used for this project....
The book is made form the Londonerry sheet of paper "Finick Finack" #843113
The cards, tags and insert pieces were from Londonerry Papers "Manor House" #843144 and "Bradshaw" #843151
The front embellishments are from a variety of sets.  The orange, yellow and black flower, along with the leaves and vine are from "Gracie Vine Doodle-Deux" #555825.  The blue rose with the gold tipped petals is "Coventry Rose Romantique" #553302.  The large brown flow is  form the "Brown Floral Embellishments" #713546.  In the middle of it all is the Finick Finack "Londondary Chipboard Sticker" #551230.

To help finish off the edges of the pockets, the seams of the pages and the spine of the book, I used a Nami Nami tape from Jet Pens.

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.

Lots of New This New Year!!

 

First; I'd like to thank everyone who supported Crafty Day Dreams, your support means so much to me!

Second; I want to wish everyone a very happy and healthy new year. I decided not to partake in the New Year's resolutions this year for a few reasons, the biggest one being that I normal do not succeed very well at them. I have decided to take on some goals for myself instead. One of these goals is to try to blog more and show maybe more in progress stuff. I'd like to maybe do some videos too. Second goal is to get everything that I have made photographed and listed in my stores. Surprisingly I have a ton of items made that I just have not found the time to photograph and list.


Third; Be on the look out for some great new items coming your way this new year. There will be a wide variety of new items appearing in my stores.  Booklaces will be making a appearance after a some good feedback from the lucky person to receive the prototype.  Adjustments have been made and the original improved upon. Start looking for these in the up and coming weeks.  Be sure to keep checking back to see what's been added to the store. :)