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.