Flower Journal #2 for CVC

You may remember the covers I made for this journal at the beginning of the 'Flower Power' challenge at Country View Challenges and I promised to show you the finished journal for my second sample. So here it is.

Before you move on I need to tell  you -

Yes really this is a very long post - so grab a cuppa if you want all the details or just scroll through to get all the visuals.

I wanted to make a more flexible cover than the mountboard ones I have been making so I die-cut two out of 300gm card knowing that it would get very worn if this journal is handled a lot. I used extra strong red line tape to overlap the edge pieces of the spine to put the journal together.

Then I cut a complete piece using 12 x 12 core'dinations paper 10 1/8 inches wide and 8 3/4 inches in length and scored at 4 1/2, 4 7/8, 5 1/4 and 5 5/8 on the longest side.

I needed to choose the way of securing the two together and decided on double sided tapes rather than a wet glue which would make it crumple and distort if it got too damp, glue sticks are great for smaller jobs but I didn't think it would hold these together for very long. I even thought about spray adhesive and maybe that would have worked, but good strong tape on the edges and double sided sellotape in the middle was the way I went.

Now things often don't work the way I hoped they would and I ended up with the covers not quite meeting ......

...  - no use worrying about it, I just trimmed the edges and re-rounded the corners 

Rather than have elastic showing on the outside for this journal I thought I would try a spine insert - again I had to think about strength so that the elastic wouldn't tear the holes as they were being stretched for the insert booklets and pages to be slid in and out.

I had just bought some tyvek papers and fabric to experiment with because they are very strong and non tearable and though this would be a good substrate to use. It took me a bit of thinking time to work out how I wanted the spine to look and how it would be secured into the journal, I decided to incorporate it into an inside page that would have pockets in it for keeping bits and bobs like ephemera from outings etc.

Taking a piece of A4 card I cut it to the same length as the outer cover but the width will be narrower at 8 1/4 inches. Score it this time at 3 1/2, 3 7/8, 4 1/4 and 4 5/8 inches. Before creasing the scores adhere a piece of tyvek (or maybe fabric?) at the back to cover the spine area. I made mine 1 1/2 wide and 8 1/4 inches long.- remember this is to strengthen the spine and stop the holes from tearing (once we have punched them). This time I used decou-page glue and put it under a box to dry.

Whilst I was waiting I cut two inside covers and adhered those on .....

.... and when the tyvek was dry I scored a half inch away from the last score line on both sides to create the space for sticking this insert to the journal cover ....

.... and made a couple of pockets and started a couple of thin Midori tags (I'm calling them that because they are long and thin lol).

I tied in three pieces of elastic to hold the inserts, they need to be tied so that they are taut enough to hold the papers in, you can see here that they pull at the card and see how it looks crumpled. Glad I used the tyvek paper to strengthen it all, there's no tearing at the holes at all.

I used super strong double sided tape up to the furthest score lines we made and in fact after I took this photo I added more to cover the elastic and whole of the spine. Once in and a ruler rubbed along the creases and it left to flatten under a very heavy box it adhered beautifully flat.

Here you can see the flaps.

Front covers on.

These are some Midori style notebooks I have made simply with good quality photocopy paper, grey card and some patterned papers. Usually I use a long armed stapler to create booklets but I decided not to bind these pages together but to left them unattached and just held in place with the elastic. This serves my purpose better because I will be able to add and take out pages and be so much more flexible in the way this journal goes together.  To see more inspiration for Midori notebooks see my Pinterest page here, and to see more junk journals see my page here. I've learned not to add too many pages because a) they take a long time to fill!!!! and b) the journals can then become too fat by the time you've added all your ephemera and bits and pieces.

I used oxides on some media paper to create additional pages for interest.

I also searched out some patterned papers - again for interest.

Here's one of the oxide pages with a folded envelope and the midori style notebook.

The folded envelope creates two pockets for putting memorabilia etc in. I will indeed be making my own pockets for things when I start filling it.

 This shows two additional pages bound together with elastic which allows me to get five inserts.

I made the elastic into a band to bind them together.

So let's look at how the inserts went in and see if you can see how I got five of them with only three elastics.
Midori notebook with folded envelope and oxides page on the left hand elastic.

The same again on the right hand elastic.

Next come the pages that have been bound together with the additional elastic band. They are the ones with the patterned papers inside and have been inserted under the middle band.

I've pulled them apart here so you can see what the elastics look like.

To finish off I added the final notebook under the middle elastic.

It's really simple when you know how so here's a link to follow to see how you can do it.

http://blog.gouletpens.com/2013/03/midori-travelers-notebook-arrangements.html

Lastly came something to wrap around the journal to keep it closed when not in use or being read.  This was a piece of torn fabric and I sewed some seam binding onto it and then coloured it with the worn lipstick and iced spruce oxides.

Now this is what I gathered first of all decorate the front of the journal. They'd all been inked or painted to bring them into similar colour tones - the lighting when taking the photo made them look strikingly different but I thought they'd be fine when added to the journal itself. THEY DIDN'T!

So then I played with the Tim Holtz flower garden stamps - trying several ways to stamp and colour .........

.... I even had three ready to go with little pink glass cabochons in the centre.

But no I still wasn't happy and cut out the flowers I used from a very old piece of 12 x 12 paper. Oh yes! I loved the contrast and the much more vintage appeal - yay - sold!!!  I sprayed the covers with spray sealer first before playing with the decoupage pieces. 

I even cut a piece for the back too.

Very simple embellishing as the striking flowers say it all for me ......

.... but there was a little bee stamp on the paper and I had to use that now didn't I?

There's lots of decorating still to be done but I like to do that as I am filling up the journal then the embellishing and decoration fits to whatever I am adding. I have made a little start just to get it going ...

 .... but the basics are all in place and it feels gorgeous to hold in the hands. I've always got the flowers I discarded to use inside, in fact I've punched flowers from the paper left of the 12 x 12 and with the other bits and pieces I have a little embellishment pack ready to go.

 Phew. I can tell you this journal took me FAR longer than it should just because of all the phaffing with the embellishments - but that's me, yes I over think things, yes I walk away and come back to it later, yes I um and err but at the end of the day it's just gotta look right or I'm not happy. But I had great fun along the way lol.

Thanks for getting here and staying with me and if you have time for a comment - even if it's only one word (a nice word please!xx) I thank you in advance.

Have a lovely end to the week and a great weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

Cards and watercolour oxides

I have a post over on the Country View Project Blog today showing how I made this set of small 4 x 4 cards using the distress oxides again. I just love using these and the colour combinations you can get.

This set will be going into the Packhouse to sell.

If you would like more details please pop over to the CVC blog and thanks for stopping by here today.

hugs Brenda xxx

Acrylic Stack and Use a Quote

I have been playing with my first acrylic stack from That's Crafty for my AVJ sample this month. Our challenge is all about adding a quote and the lovely Jenny is our host and says -

"Take a quote ! Any quote ! Whether it be on a stamp, a sticker, handwritten or sourced from the internet and make it the focal point of your vintage; shabby; mixed media; art journaling; industrial, timeworn or steampunk project."

Laura from That's Crafty very kindly sent us all a substrate to work with but I had already bought this stack and had started it for another challenge (and like you do - I changed my mind) and picked it up to finish it for this one.

So I began by stamping the girls and my quote on the top of the first layer of acrylic and on the second layer of acrylic I stamped the building - for both of them I used black stazon. You can still see the plastic protection on the underneath layers.

When these were dry I turned them over and painted the images only on the back. (Apologies for the photos - they were taken in a light tent but there was so much light that caused reflections that even manipulating them in PSE didn't work). This is the top side once painted - a note to remember - when painting on acrylic keep the colours more opaque, lighter in colour and thinner. I used media fluid acrylics some of which were opaque, some semi-translucent and some translucent so you can see through them.

Here's what it looked like on the underside - quite a mess but that's no problem as you can see by the photo above.

I laid this top piece over the second and decided to take the next step ........

 ..... which was to block the coloured paints with a layer of gesso so you can't see through the translucent ones.

For the second piece of acrylic I painted the buildings using a watery wash and that's how it continued for all the next steps, I painted on some watery translucent white paints to look a bit like clouds (you can't really see them here with a white background underneath) and gently heat dried it and then some dirty greeny brown colours at the bottom to ground the buildings.

 

For the third and last layer of the acrylics I just gently dabbled on some watery blue paints  in layers drying between each to give me a sky background.

I wanted to stamp the chipboard backing but I thought that might be a bit of overkill so I just dabbled on some watery brown paint.

This was a great lesson in perspective and layers .....

..... but I think I would approach it very differently next time in terms of the stamps I choose, it would benefit from images that are much more open - but then that's part of the making isn't it - learning what goes right and what you learn from what goes wrong?

Here's the stack put together straight as the layers were finished ......

.... and here after I had embellished it a bit using quinacridone gold to make all the added bits look a bit rusty and hanging in my hallway.  

I used DecoArt media acrylic paints, the paperboy set of stamps by Artistic Outpost and black stazon ink.

I hope we will see you over at the AVJ challenge during May (oh my gosh we are a third of the way through the year already) and thanks for stopping by here today.

Have a great weekend.

hugs Brenda xxx

It's Flowers #1 at CVC

Ok so it's the first of May and we are moving rapidly through Spring and hopefully soon into Summer and to keep us all in the outdoor mood the lovely Monika has chosen 'Flower Power' as our challenge theme this month at Country View Challenges.
To begin with I thought about making my own flowers but do you know what? I suck at it so I thought I would go back to the beautiful distress oxides and make some journal panels to add to my eagerly awaited HeARTfelt journal die designed by the amazing Eileen Hull.

1. Cut 2 sets of panels from white card measuring 11 x 21.7 cms. Take the front covers for both journals and on the first apply worn lipstick and iced spruce through Tim's floral stencil. When finished spritz the inks on the stencil with water and apply to the second cover. Repeat this process to fill the spaces which will give you quite a random design. You'll notice that the design of the second cover is the reverse of the first one.

2. Take the stencil and apply the same two inks randomly to the underneath of it. spritz with water and apply to cover #1. Then wash the stencil lay it over #2 lining up the design, drop watery washes of the two oxides into it the stencil spaces, some of it will seep a little, dry it and then take a small detail paint brush and paint in some more wash detail to create a watercolouring look. I think you'll see the differences between the two in the photograph below.

3. Repeat the same steps with the back covers and you'll end up with two sets to make two journals - great as presents especially if you make simple notebook inserts rather than the fussy junk journal style ones.

So I'm waiting for my journal die to arrive and when it does I'll finish the two journals and hopefully at least one will be ready for my next Flower Power installment on the 11th May.

We hope we will see you playing along this month.

Don't forget -

Ne'er cast a clout till May be out.

The earliest written version is that of Dr Thomas Fuller in 1732. But the argument has never been settled. Does it refer to the month of May? Should we not leave off an item of winter clothing until June arrives, or does it refer to the 'may flower' on the hawthorn which blooms along the 200,000 miles of English hedgerow from late April?

English Stack Exchange

Well I 'cast a clout' a couple of weeks ago when we had a couple of days of glorious weather here in the UK but it didn't last for long especially as some areas had snow this week and we're due rain today for our Bank Holiday Monday, but hey ho it gives me more crafting time lol.

Enjoy Your day.

hugs Brenda xxx