On vacation this year, I knew I wanted to take along a sketchbook, drawing tools and watercolors. I went shopping and saw many different varieties of sketchbooks. I settled on this small wirebound Strathmore " Visual Journal" because it was on sale and I liked the smoothness and weight of the paper. One journal I almost bought had journaling lines opposite each sheet of paper. I loved the idea and decided to use a journaling stamp customize my journals in this way:I customized other pages in a different way, segmenting them into smaller spaces because I often like to sketch small:I was inspired to make the smaller segments by this post at Nodljus using the Moleskin Storyboard art journal for some travel pages. I'm counting this as my "monthly make" for the challenge at Felt Fairy. I'd be interested to hear of others who use a sketchbook that is different than simply blank pages.
Well, I did it! I buckled down and completed the journaling and embellishments to finish my "Week in the Life" photo journaling project. You can see the blank book at this link; the cover is above, and the completed book looks like this:A typical day looks like this:In the top photo, there's a full 6x6 red page on the left, followed by two dark brown 6x2 inch flaps, to which I added pictures, matted with light brown paper. The second picture shows the page created using the two flaps, and the third picture shows a full 6x6 red page on the right and a flap page on the left (with the photo added). This gave me plenty of room to add pictures and journaling. Here's two other pages I liked:I kept the embellishments very simple. I mainly used two different Close to My Heart stamp sets. One had the date journaling stamp that I used on my cover and for each day (you can see the Monday and Tuesday ones above). The other had a variety of stamps (the "time to" one; a "life is good" and "good day" ticket; the phrase "follow your dreams"' and a swirl). I used these throughout the album. I also supplemented with the "memoir" and "write your own story" stamps you can see on the cover.Overall, I'm really happy with the album. It really chronicles a week in my life and covers my work, family and creative pursuits pretty well. I've noticed that I've taken many fewer pictures this year, so I'm really glad to have this album to really record the nitty gritty of our lives. Plus, I'm going to count this as my monthly make for May (just in the nick of time)!Did you do Week in the Life? Did you complete your album?
I have a whole bag of projects from Club Scrap that I am working my way through this year, with a little help from the Felt Fairy's "Monthly Make" prompt. For April, I created this travel journal for our trip to Ireland and Barcelona this summer. It uses a hand made journal kit from Club Scrap's Destination Collection. The pages are light green, white, dark blue and light blue.The front inside cover (left) has a large pocket decorated with stamps. The interior pages have journaling blocks from Club scrap and the cool tags I made, inspired by this month's Counterfeit Kit.There are more tags and another pocket on the inside back cover, too!Once we get our itinerary set, I'll start filling it with information. And then I'll add more while we're on the road. It feels great to complete another little project! Have you had the nice feeling of completion for anything lately?
I'm trying to work my way through a variety of project kits I have purchased over the years, so I joined the Felt Fairy's Monthly Make Project. For March, I decided to make a cute little mini-album from Club Scrap.You start with one piece of 12x12 printed paper, which you fold, cut, and fold again until it turns into an accordion album. The paper had a garden theme, in purple and greens.The project kit left the cover design up to the artist, so I decided to make some mosaic butterflies using this fabulous technique featured on Tim Holtz's blog.While I was playing, I made two extras. I'm keeping this red one:But I'm sending this purple one to Deb for her Butterfly Project (read more here). While you're at it, you might want to check out my cousin Irene's wonderful post about the Project, her visit to the Houston Museum and her fabulous stained glass butterflies (click here to read it).In making the butterflies, I followed Tim's instructions pretty closely, although I just traced the butterflies onto grungeboard because I don't have any of the dies. I then cut a piece of wonder tape around the right size, attached it to the grungeboard and trimmed. I used liquid platinum embossing powder instead of cement. I also used highly textured pieces of paper for my mosaic (most of them were extra backgrounds made in technique classes). I love how they turned out.Have you tried Tim's technique yet? Made any butterflies? Doing the Monthly Make? If so, feel free to add a link, and I'll be sure and stop by.
Yesterday, I posted some altered blocks I made using vintage heritage photographs from my collection. After I made those, I made a few more using the Graphic 45 "On the Boardwalk" paper collection. The block above has a fun bathing beauty theme. I also made a set of three alphabet blocks using the same paper line:They were fun and fast to make, but I wish I would have made them spell out a word. Oh well, I have lots more blocks to play with!Tomorrow is the first of the month, which means it's time for my monthly 24-hour stamp give-away. See you then!
When I was cleaning and organizing my craft space, I came across a good selection of wooden blocks. After seeing some of the cool blocks which Deb made, I decided to use my January counterfeit kit to make some altered blocks. I know it's now the end of February, but I finally used my January counterfeit kit to make a block with a vintage friendship theme:After getting the hang of it, I made this one with some more heritage photos from my collection:I like this one better than the first one which I made. Partly because I love the quote which I put on it (you can read it in the photo at the top of the post), but mostly because it just came together and seemed to flow. I really like having a single block which conveys a certain message. Tomorrow I'll feature a few more blocks, including one that is a set.*******************************************************************I made this as part of the "Monthly Make" challenge organized by the Felt Fairy. To see a list of participants and their projects, check out this link.
I've had this Bazzill "Memory Mug" gathering dust on my desk for, um, maybe two years! This weekend, I decided to complete the project, spurred on by the current Stampotique challenge to produce an altered item. I kept it really simple - I started with a fun piece of patterned paper from Club Scrap and lined up my favorite Stampotique girls:I love it! I don't know if I'm more happy about having the completed mug available to use or about completing another project and getting it off my desk - LOL!I really do love the entire line of stamps offered by Stampotique, and, once I pulled them out for this project, I found myself making a few other things. You can look for them on my blog this week. **************************************************************Edited to add this as my Monthly Make for January. Check out other projects at this link.
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