Another Album and Another Album!

Jeez. Where is the summer?  It hasn't stopped raining for days, and I put the central heating on again today because it is SO COLD.  This is JULY for heavens sake,  it's been a horrible weekend, but that gave me the excuse to spend it crafting.  

I used to make quite a few mini albums, but then got sidetracked into altering things.  But I was recently asked to make a book by someone who commissioned me to make one about 3 years ago, and that has started me off making them again.  I have LOADS of paper collections in my stash, either left over from other books I made or bought and never used, so I have decided to bite the bullet and actually use them. As opposed to occasionally taking them out of the drawer and stroking them LOL...

So, the first album is a 6x6 made up using one sheet of 12x12 cardstock cut and folded to make each multi pocket (or multi flap) page.  I used the 7 Gypsies Postale papers and ephemera along with some Tim Holtz ideaology items.

I used Tim Holtz Bracket die to cut the flap shape and the Tiny Tabs and Tags die for the tab.  I also did some stamping, which is unusual for me as I'm never very confident with stamps. They are all Tim Holtz stamps from Stampers Anonymous, using Walnut Stain distress ink.

The other book I made uses DCWV papers, mostly Tattered Time collection but with some Timeless Type thrown in.  This is 9x7 and is based on the same pattern as the birthday book I posted about k last week, with a few changes.  I think this works really well. 

..

I have not decorated this one too much, to retain a masculine feel, using only some Tim Holtz metal pieces on the cover (foliage, gears and a watchface).

I'm going to put these up on eBay soon,  and hope to make a small profit to give me an excuse to buy more papers to fill my drawer again. I see G45 have reissued Steampunk Debutante in a special edition pack. Yum.

 

2 books

I I've been busy working on a commission, a book for a colleague's mum's 65th birthday, and was asked to make this because of another commissioned book for another colleague who's brother was leaving the army.  Must be doing alright, word is getting round,

This is the first commiision, an army themed book, which TBH I wasn't that enthused by.  Army paper is not the most inspiring, and I could decorate it as it had to stay masculine.  Client was happy though.

Cover

Spine with copper saucepans from eBay  (he was an army cook)

I stupidly forgot to take pictures of the finished inside pages, but only got some loose ones before fixing in the 'hidden hing' binding

And here the birthday book, agin forgot to photo the finishes pages. duh.

,,

I was lucky to find these papers in TXMaxx, for £7.99 for a book of 48 12x12 pages. what a bargain.  The colours are lovely and some pages are glittered.

I can't take credit for the design of this as I followed a YouTube tutorial which is here.  It's long but worth it. 😀

http://youtu.be/5pj3eyi1mGw

June Tag.

A quick post, as I'm busy with a book commission. Whoop.

A different take on Tim's tag as I didn't have most of the supplies.  

I liked the striped/plaid effect on the tag Tim made, but didn't have that stencil, or the ink pad to customise.  After spritzing the tag with a drop of vintage photo reinker and water using a mister bottle, I used distress pens and a ruler to get the stripes, using a variety of pressures to get the different width lines, and added Wobblieness.

Not having the coffee cup die, I decided to use one of the Artfull Dwellings houses as the centrepiece, and cut a cloud from old packaging using the movers and shapers die, backed with white distress paint.  I wasn't really sure where the tag was going, but searching through my stash for something shiny to replace the star Tim used, I found the little deer charm so that, with the 'live gently' small talk quote (on a Tattered Banner die cut) sort of gave it a theme.  I made the trees from jute threads pulled out of the fabric and a bit of dried moss. 

I gave my jute fabrics an extra long fringe at the top so it sort of looks like grass. 😄

Better late than never. Tim's Tag for March

Well, I finally got around to doing a tag based on the March tutorial. i wasn't inspired by it at the time, and didn't have the big butterfly stamp that he used, but the empty peg on my tag board was annoying me 

so I thought I'd better get on and do it.  I followed the first steps to colour the tag with distress paint dabblers.  He used several colours, and so did I. But whilst he ended up with a nicely defined brightly coloured tag, mine ended up all muddy and yuck.  I used the brightest colours I had (picked raspberry, mowed lawn, salty ocean, wild honey and dusty Concorde) but... Just mush. Don't know what I'm doing wrong. :-(

I dried it off, but still wasn't happy so gave it a couple of squirts with Dylusions ink sprays which helped brighten things up somewhat.  I then used a dragonfly stamp to emboss the tag and made a mask so I could add the texture paste but it all went horribly wrong when I added the gold embossing powder though. I only had Pirate gold' gold powder, but it's very dull gold so just made a dull tag even worse.  So I gave up on it at that point.

Dull, dull, dull.

Okay, so what to do? I liked the brightness of the Dylusions spay, so sprayed 4 colours on my craft sheet and dragged a new tag through them. Hurrah! fresh lime, after midnight, vibrant turquoise and bubblegum pink are VERY zingy colours and looked fabulous.  I tried embossing a compass on the tag in using a compass mini mask, but it was a bit messy so I cut and embossed a movers and shapers globe die cut using distress pens (mermaid lagoon, mowed lawn and black soot) and placed this over the compass, raised up on foam tape. I used a map mask to add texture paste, and used metallic green embossing powder over the top of this.  The charms I used were the little airplane, a loop pin, a '3' for March and a word band tied on with string that I stained to match the theme.  It needed something to contrast all the deep colours so I found s travel related 'small talk' phrase and stuck that on.  

I'm quite chuffed with the end result. I like the way the plane looks like it is flying high over 'fields' below.

I put the globe off to one side for interest and raised it on foam tape for depth.

That's better..!

Tim's Tag for May

I think Tim's tag this month is the best one so far this year.  Not particularly technique ridden, but just a nice tag.

As usual, I didn't have many of the items he used, like photobooth photo or flower dies, nor the burlap surface so just did my own thing.

I have some burlap (sack cloth in other words) so cut out a piece using a tag as a patern.  I did the same with some double sided tape sheet and used that to stick the burlap to the tag.

I went through my ephemera trying to decide what to use, and came across a card that was originally the backing for a mock school badge.  It had a 'school report' so that, along with an old school photo of my son that I came across in a recent tidy up, was the starting point for my tag.

I used Tim's cargo stencil with the texture paste, and coloured it with ink from a cracked pistachio distress pen.  I tried the photo inking technique that tim used, but it didn't work.  I think my photo has a different coating and it didn't take well to ink as it became sticky.  But live and learn.  I used it anyway!

I used a flower from my stash, which went with the pistachio colour, and used a pen nib instead of an arrow to go with the student theme.  The 'stitching' is from a rubon sheet by 7 Gypsies.  The 18 I cut from an ephemera ticket. Tom was 18 in his final school year.  The picture of him is in his prefect blazer with yards and yards of gold binding lovingly sewn on by yours truly.  He's 24 now, been through university, got his Honors degree and is now a graduate building surveyor. :-). So the Small Talk I used relate to his future. (I LOVE these stickers).

All done.

Bank Holiday Band Box

So, bank holiday weekend and it's cold and raining of course. Staying indoors with the central heating, thank you.

I bought a small bandbox in a charity shop, not a thing of beauty but you will have to take my word for that as I forgot to take a fotie of the unadulterated item. It's been sitting on a shelf staring at me in all its ugliness for a while now, and this weekend seemed the time to get on with it.  

I had intended to cover it in either Graphic 45 or Tim Holz papers but then I realised that it would take 3 sheets to go around the sides (30 inch circumference), and most of the papers I had come in sets of 2 so that would not work. Problem solved when I remembered the world map napkins that I've been shuffling about in my pantry for at least a year. Game on.

Taking it back to bare wood and stripping off the bands and hardware, the covering was canvas backed something or other.

Covering with a layer of gesso

Modpodge and delaminated napkins (you only use 1 layer of napkin, and these were 3 ply so had to be split apart before glueing)

Sorry, didn't take photos of laying on the napkins.  Basically what you do is paint a thick layer of mod podge on the part you want to cover, then carefully lay your layer of napkin on the mod podge  and VERY GENTLY smooth out any big air bubbles.  Leave to set for about 10 minutes then cover with another layer of modpodge. It will look a bit bubbly but will flatten out.  Then leave it to dry. This one is mat mod podged but you could use gloss I expect. There's very little strength in a one ply tissue so you have to be sure about correct placing before you lay the tissue on, and use hardly any pressure to smooth it down.  I made a mistake first time and had to scrape it all off with a knife.  Luckily I realised my mistake before it was dry or I would have been stuck with a wonky map 😮.  It's best to work in smallish sections if the pattern allows but I had to go with large sections because of the map size.

I had  intended to put back the original bands, but they were so obviously plastic and looked rather cheap and tacky so I made new ones from cream coloured leather.  I have a 'book' of different coloured leather sheets (originally from a DFS sofa shop!) so chose a nice cream colour to go with the maps.  Cut into strips and reattached using the original hardwear and strong glue, I think it looks much classier.

Cheap, plastic and tacky

Cream leather cut into 3/4 inch strips

Another thing I did was give the decorative pins and other hardwear a slight going over with some Treasure Gold metalic wax in sapphire colour.  Although I see the lid in the picture says emerald, which must mean I didn't put the right lid on last time I used it 😄.  Anyway, this just gives a very subtle blue tinge to the metal, which I like.

You can see before and after the wax rub, using a cotton bud.

I didn't do anything to the inside of the box.  It is covered in quite inoffensive brown 'velvet' which would have been a pain to rip out and replace. It did need a good hoover and going over with sticky tape though, having suffered a red glitter explosion at some point. It was everywhere.

After hammering the pins back in and replacing the hinges and clasp (note to self, next time take note of where the screw holes are before covering them up!) the job was done.

Spring has a Sprung

Wow! What a fabulous Easter weekend it has been with wall to wall sunshine and soaring temperatures. I can't believe that on Tuesday it was snowing, and absolutely Baltic, but 4 days later it was so hot in my garden at 5.30 pm that I had to go indoors to cool off.  The down side is that I'm working this week and I chose NEXT week to take a holiday, but the weather is due to change.  Pah.

I have a tip to share.  I hate having to shake my half empty glue bottles to get glue to the nozzle, such a pain and doesn't help my dodgy shoulder. But, during a kitchen clearout last weekend I came across a couple of egg cups that are made from coiled wire.  I think they actually came out of Xmas crackers a couple of years ago but have never been used.  I had a eureka moment, gave them a tug to stretch them out, and now they hold my upturned glue and glossy accent bottles perfectly.  No more shaking the bottle.  You often see these eggcups in charity shops, so have a look for them next time you are browsing.

So, Time for Tim's April tag.  I've skipped the March tag as I didn't have what I needed to complete it,  will get back to it shortly, but Aprils tag was something I could tackle despite not having the stamps he used.  I had to hand draw the flowers, and didn't have the word dies, so improvised.  I also drew in the stitching as my cheap and cheerful mini sewing machine will be in the bucket soon if it doesn't shape up and behave itself.  I have a wheeled tool that puts holes in the paper as it turns, (have no idea what it is called but I guess it is for piercing stitch holes in leather) so my 'stitches' are nice and regular.

I drew bluebells on my tag, rather than the rose and daisy that tim has used.  To me, Bluebells are so Scottish, and just coming into season.  I like how my tag turned out.

Oops