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. :)