ICADs Six and Seven

True to my word!

Card Six – I had a thought about the Pearl-Ex that I used a lot for Image transfer with the gel plate. I went a slightly different way, and am happy it (mostly) worked.

I started Pearl-Ex covering my 3×5 gel plate. I then used an embossing folder and white paint (on the bumpy-out side) to press the design into the Pearl-Ex. Once dry (mostly – I rushed it a bit) I used gloss medium to pull the print on the index card, which was covered in that cheap Amazon packing paper.

Super grungy and very old-crumbling-walls, isn’t it? I had to add some words and when my eye fell on this little dude (Teesha) it seemed to fit – as did the words. Not Pushing the Envelope, but …

Card 7 – Wanted a simple one for this, but interesting enough and using a long forgotten supply, if possible. Yeah. Not as simple as I originally planned. Not difficult, just not a 5-minute card.

I began with a bit of embossed cardstock that was hanging around my desk. I remember doing something with Gloss Sprays and gloss medium, but the iridescent medium was closer to hand. Using a kind of combo of pressing the (deep) embossing into the gel plate and also running the brayer loaded with the medium over the top, I tried to coat just the top of the embossed areas. Not a total success but not awful either.

I went to my spray box and did the usual gloss spray thing – spray roll off with paper towel, spray more…

Then I wiped off the gloss spray from the areas coated with the medium and added a couple of altered phrases to finish it off. Stuck it to the index card.

Like this one a lot. I really need to figure out how to make the multiple-card posts not so long.

I am also still doing lots of digital designing but just finding it hard to fit that in as well so if that is what you like, maybe pop on to Creative Fabrica to see what I’ve been up to? Downloads are free if you happen to be a subscriber but there is a whole lot there I just haven’t been able to squeeze in here. If you DO want to subscribe and you do so from this link, I think maybe I get something from it? LOL! Not even sure about that. I am really fond of this kit, as it is not just flowers and butterflies but still nicely vintage – I always try to bring something a little different to my designs.

Well that got long …. AGAIN!

Maybe you will see me Sunday for a full catch up to where I should be on the ICADs. Fingers crossed.

I blame LLJ…

Only playfully. Lunch Lady Jan is a long time WOYWW participant, and a lovely lady in all ways. She is very committed to her charity sewing and I cannot imagine how much she has raised over the years. I mean, I try, but she produces! Over the years we have traded the occasional YT video or link for inspiring sewing and quilting, and again, while I fall off the quilting train more often than not, it is still something I enjoy. I always get tempted when I see her finished items, and always watch videos the algorithm serves up if it is quilt related. Even when I am not actively quilting.

We are letting Poppy (the cat) outside in a sort of playpen thing (see yesterday’s post) but as it is not claw proof if she were to make a concerted effort to escape, I prefer to sit outside with her when she wants to be outside. And that is, as you may expect, A LOT. Till the Catio gets built, I am forced to sit out in the sun. Poor me. LOL! Well, I am not one to sit idle and needed something to do. I am working on some socks from scrap yarn, but I don’t always feel like knitting. I was served a video on something called Kawandi quilting and it mesmerised me.

I didn’t find the time to do a deep dive, but what I have gleaned is it is a form of quilting, usually using scraps of old clothes, and originally done by Africans who fled Goa to escape slavery and landed in India. I think I have that right. The method is simplicity itself. You fold in the edges of a square, as big as you want your quilt to be. You fold two sides in, finger pressing them , then line up the corner to the first corner of your quilt. You sew a running stitch just close to the edge and around the perimeter, adding new pieces as you come to the end of the previous one. Working inward in a spiral, you fill the top with scraps. There are a few more detailed videos so if it appeals, dive in yourself.

While some people have embraced a machine piece/quilt version, I like the slow-stitch idea of doing it by hand. I grabbed a piece of small scraps, ones that would be destined for the bin if I didn’t use them soon, and had a go.

You can see how simple the process is. It is a lot of fun, and fast too. What you see was just a hour or so out in the sunshine. OK so it is not a massive piece, but it will make a small cushion or the like. I heard on woman mention she might make the base shaped like you would for a fabric basket/box and I really like that idea too. A great use for making something useful out of scraps!

The plank of wood that you see is my “bridge” for Pretty Poppy to get to the window ledge to look out. The tiny window gap gives me fresh air and is too small for her to escape from!

So yeah, just one MORE project to keep me busy! But fun for sure, so very simple, and I am enjoying the hell out of it.

Not forgetting the ICADs. Let’s see – today is the 8th and I have shared cards 1 to 5. Hummm. Card six should be today, really, and it is done, but I think I will wait and share Cards Six and Seven tomorrow. If I manage it I should be able to catch up maybe with an unusual Saturday post then make every effort to do one a day from there. The issue is there is always so much for me to share and my posts get too darn long!

I guess that is far better than having so little to share I am stretching things thinly over multiple days, right?

{wink}

WOYWW 731 – challenges and whatnot

Happy desk hopping day! Well, not quite!an odd night before post from Julia so…

All my trades have been received and my mailbox is a bit mournful there will not be pretty ATCs flooding in. Ah well.

My desk is in chaos, after doing so much that has been only digital, as I am doing (hands up if you are too) Index Card A Day for the first time. I have seen it for years, but never in the right head space to take on another challenge. This is the year!! I have shared the first four over the last couple of posts and five (actually Monday’s card) here, and will hope to catch up so I am always sharing the previous day’s card by Friday. My desk reflects the chaos of actual rather than digital art LOL!

Yikes

Poppy is a sweetie. She has been happy enough being an inside cat, but it is a bit unfair for us to be out enjoying the sunshine and keeping her in. While I would love to let her roam free our garden is in no way secure and it is just too dangerous around here. We are working on a proper Catio for her but for now, she adores this little pen. She goes in to it every time she wants to go out, we zip up the door, put it on it’s side, and she walks out like she is in a huge hamster wheel! She sits, she sniffs the air, listens to the birds, and sometimes lays down for a little snooze in the sun. I can slip in a bowl of water for her without letting her escape – not that she tries.

None of that “Cats need to be free to roam” please. I would let her if there was a way to keep her safe. This is temporary, and better than never letting her outside. Compromise the the word!

So, enough of that – on to the Monday ICAD. I stumbled across the stencil I made with “mark making” designs on it and wanted to use it. I had mopped up the DO inks when making the previous card so I thought I would make it easy on myself and use that one.

But I also realized what had been bothering me about the cards – no words! I mean they are really mini art journal pages, right? And I struggle to think of a page I ever did that did not have at least a single word on it! Ta da!

Happy now…and Happy WOYWW!

ICAD – days two to four

Card two- I have been chatting with Angela of Crafting with Jack, a WOYWW mate. We seem to share some interests an it’s been fun. We are both doing ICAD and I had mentioned something I did a long time ago, Looking back at the post gave me some ideas. I began with a bit of collage. Turns out I was wrong about my index cards, they are NOT blank on one side. DOH! Anyway I used a bit of paper that I had rolled some white paint on to build the base. Then I used my not-gelatos-but-like-them to outline the paper edges.

I had an idea to scribble some of the gel on my glass mat and use it thru a stencil. It worked great – I love the particular effect, so different to paint, more like a dried out ink pad.

I also tried scribbling on a stamp, and that worked too. Not with water, just rubbing the gel onto the stamp. Added some circles and done!

Card three – Wanted to try some recently bought washi tape and a deep embossing folder. Crikey it was tricky to get it to go thru the machine I had out. Tricky working out the sandwich. Anyway, it needs…something. Not sure what.

Card four – Really liked this one. Went back to those shiny Ikea paper rulers they have to tear off. The shiny part was what appealed. I did another collage using them the did the Distress Oxides over top

It ended up really nice – after I rubbed a bit of Vaseline over to bring the colours up a bit. Used this trick often, but usually with a stencil on photo paper or some other shiny paper. I liked how the various levels of the collage caught the DO but think maybe the black (paint this time!) might be too bold and stark. Still, interesting experiment.

Still running a day or two behind but I want to get WOYWW out of the way without needing to add multiple cards, and then I should catch up!

2024 Doily Calendar- 3×4 cards and Onesheet

Here is your heads up – 2024 is a LEAP YEAR. I meant to mention it when I posted the first one, but forgot.

I have been beavering away on my calendars, making little adjustments that I hope will be useful. I am trying to focus on the calendars that I know people want and not wasting a lot of time making…speculative ones that may or may NOT be embraced. I have already done the most popular, the Pretty Circle CD one (find it for free here) and am now adding the next most popular, the Doily calendar. This time I am adding both the 3×4 cards and the onesheet in a single post.

Hard to see in the small sample size, but I did add this is a leap year just under the 2024 on the onesheet. Nice that it ends up centered over February, the month effected!

The onesheet version is here

The 3×4 card version is here

I have also been beavering away on my ICADs. I’ve done the four between 1 June and today. Here is the first one, which I kinda envision as a “cover,” if you will.

Mixed success on that one. I wanted to go back to the neurographic art but incorporate the words, like I did here:

The index card is a LOT smaller than that piece, and I used a thicker Micron pen so the curved areas were tricky to keep small. AND the paper of the index cards is crappy, so the watercolour markers did not perform as well as they do on watercolour paper. Imagine that…. DOH! I got annoyed and then lazy and I think there is just too much pink. I might go over the pink in the circle maybe with orange and see if I can alter it. Maybe.

I will share the rest of them tomorrow as there is a bit to say about each one and I don’t want the posts to be massive. I expect I will catch up at some point soon, where I am sharing the previous day’s cards. I do like these sorts of challenges and am getting better at sticking to them. I always seem to add in an additional layer for myself and in this case, just not buying anything especially for the challenge, and trying to:

• revisit techniques I have not done in ages
• use products I own but have been underutilized

I am not insisting this apply to every card, just that it should be the overarching theme of it all for me.

Seems like it got long anyway.

Watch for the DIY calendar coming soon. I made a small improvement that I think those who love that decorate-it-yourself one will like!

Repairing my WRMK Envelope Punchboard and embossed envelopes

You will recall my WRMK board self-destructed a week or so ago.

Believe it or not, I glued my WRMK Envelope Punchboard back together with…Art Glitter Glue! I mean, man that stuff is tough. Honestly, I was waiting for the Gorilla Glue to come in the post, and got impatient. I thought Why not? and gave it a go. It was in three stages. Sadly, I neglected to take photos because I really wasn’t sure it would work LOL!

• Glue the little springs to the pegs on the metal plate
• Glue the other end of the springs into the holes in the metal plate
• Slip the plate into the board
• Glue the blue oval on to the metal pegs at the top of the metal plate
• Glue the open surround over the blue oval.put the glue just along the rim of the oval.

Give it plenty of time to dry and punch away. And of course I had to test it out. I decided to play with those 3D embossing folders I got. But first I had to work out how to emboss bigger than 5×5 inches. Oddly, my folder nearly lines up as a repeating pattern. Wish they all did.

I mean, you can just about see the line where i shifted the folder but it isn’t super obvious. I only did them side-by-side, but I thing you could emboss a whole A4 sheet if you have the patience and perfection is not required LOL!

I did both the 5×5 start and the 6.5 x 6.5 start and you can only see the one corner is the white one where the shifted embossing shows out of whack.

I think they are quite sweet. Not 100% sure you could mail them, as the deep embossing might mess up any automated mail sorted (not tested that, just an educated guess) but for a special hand-delivered item? It could be very nice.

It might be an idea to make the envelope first then emboss the various areas, although I suspect your might struggle to keep from over embossing an area as you try to fit just the right space in the folder. But then I guess this does not have to use the 3D ones. I have a few A4 size embossing folders that would allow me much more scope for envelopes! That one fits a 4×6 inch card.

The only extra step that may be useful is using a ruler to define the score lines. Getting the tip of the bone folder into the exact score line thru any embossing can result if a pretty wonky line. The ruler helps.

So I figure in my Punchboard can manage these envelopes and still stay together, then the AGG is strong enough for now. And of course my Gorilla Glue has now arrived do if it explodes again, I can give that a go.

First 2024 Calendar – the Pretty CD one

Ah, this might be my oldest calendar, the first one I made and still the one I get asked for so often. People use it to make gifts and there have been some lovely examples over the years. Sadly, most of them have been deleted, because I am always trying to claw back some space. I’ll be ruthlessly culling the 2000s (other than 2024) pretty darn soon so if you want them, better grab them while you can!

I quite like the font combo on this set. Pretty but not too OTT and readable. I try to never let the pretty part overshadow the readable part!

Perhaps slightly larger numbers this time? Here is a peek back at some of the previous ones:

Anyway, I am sharing this over on Ko-fi, where I am placing most of my downloads, but as this is really text only the PDF is not huge (like some of the ones that include graphics) so I will add it here too, just for ease of downloading.

Grab the 2024 Pretty CD Calendar here!

PS I have purchased some (flimsy!) index cards so hoping to have a go at the ICAD project, which I have admired from afar for many years, Sadly 1 June is a packed day so I might end up focusing on the first few on the weekend and hope to settle in to a regular daily session after that. Wish me luck, as anyone who reads here regularly knows how crap I am at making and sticking to a plan….

LOL!

WOYWW 730 – last of the ATCs

Happy WOYWW to all! The last few ATCs are here! Robyn’s from the USA (with the most perfect sentiment on it!) arrived in good time, and Spyder, my goodness she went all out, sending THREE! Sneaking in a last minute addition was from Susan in Australia! Whoop Whoop.

Lovin’ those cats. They perch on my desk at the moment, but they will soon reside in a binder, unless I make another display for them – where are those card sleeves?

My June (and July cover) daily journal is there, ready to move over on the 1st, and a little container of Watercolour Inks from Lidl. No idea why I bought them, they are just liquid watercolours, not water-proof or no run, not amazing colours, but mixable, and while they did come with a nice, quite fine waterbrush and a stack of paper, I am not sure I needed them. Maybe it was actually going shopping at a store with my Darling Daughter? She was all like “Mom, look, craft supplies! What are you gong to get…? Doh! My little enabler….

Poppy is still Poppy, and I have come to accept she just is not a cuddly cat. Weirdly, she is a lap cat if I let her. She will sit quite happily on me on the sofa, and even sometimes on DD, but very much when she wants to. She is never keen on being picked up. She allows it, but not for long.

That is one seriously unimpressed cat. Have you ever seen such a look of disdain? It’s withering! Ah well. We love her and are happy we can give her a good life – if only we could let her outside safely, her life would be enviable. Working on it.

Now I really must sort out my calendars for 2024. People will be asking and I want to be ready.

Have the happiest of WOYWW days and I will pop round as soon as I can.

Once again, just in the nick of time – June Daily Journal

I did so well in May with my everyday journaling, that my decision to only add 7 sheets to the signature came back to bite me in the butt!

I have a single leaf left so had to draw a line across the middle and limit my writing to make sure it fit. Having said that, I believe I did have a couple of days when I overshot and filled the side and then some. Overall, I think the seven folded sheets for 28 sides really is, most months, enough. Even if I do every day, I am sure I can limit myself to a half-page some days, or might end up skipping a day, thru intent or inattention.

SO. I quite liked the washi tape decor, but dd not want to deal with sewing thru the sticky again, so instead I grabbed some pretty tapes (gift from the Hubster and Darling Daughter for Mother’s Day, I think) and used it instead to edge the pages. Much better choice and very cute indeed. Especially all the tapes with Lucky Cats on them.

I grabbed my stash of papers and pulled out two that I had planned on using, but they really didn’t go at all with the washi tape and the feel of the pages I had already done!

Dear me. I went back and grabbed one of the gel print colour challenge sheets and I felt like it went perfectly. Love those cats!

The very first sheet from my stash of liner papers was perfect so I just went with it – the gold-y shimmer was perfect. Bonus? I went ahead and made the July cover from the papers I had wanted to use, so I am ahead of the game, for once. Whoo hoo!

My last few WOYWW Anniversary ATCs have arrived so will share them tomorrow and consider what neat trick I may come up with fer next year…

{wink}

WRMK Envelope Board Measurements, for us old folk…and the strangest book.

I have spoken to a few people, both IRL or email and via comments on my previous post about how mine literally self-destructed after only 20 or so envelopes, and what seems to unite us all is that the stupidest decision that they ever made was the choice of colours for the writing on the board. I mean jeez. What were they thinking?

I mean, ok, it’s blurry cause I tried to enlarge it a bit, but FFS. I who’s world is that white writing on blue legible? No one over about 50 I suspect! So yeah, I hunted around the internet looking for a more legible version of this to no avail. Seems like maybe some of the boards (I think mostly the larger one?) have better printing on them, and back in … I think it was 2013, you could order a replacement sticker because there was a typo in the originals. That link no longer works. I still need to super-glue mine together to try to extend its life (Thank you Lyn(Spyder) for your experiences with this) but in the meantime I also took the image online and altered it to make it way more readable.

I have the small one, so the chart is for that only. Maybe it will be helpful for someone else? I hope so!

Now, just for a bit of fun. I stumbled on this really odd little book. It really intrigued me. It is by Marina Abramović, a Serbian conceptual and performance artist. Her work explores body art, endurance art, feminist art, the relationship between the performer and audience, the limits of the body, and the possibilities of the mind. The book is called 100 Letters and she describes it like this:

Since I was very young, until my early thirties, I had serious problems in opening and reading any letters
I received. Letters would stay on my table for weeks before I found the courage to open them, and during this time my sense of guilt would grow and grow.…

When finished, I was astonished to see how it was possible to trace all my life just by reading the text created by all these first lines.

I love that last bit – I wonder if first lines of 100 emails would be anywhere near as telling, even if you deleted all the spam first…

Everything is fine now. We have heard from you and that is quite enough.

Well,
Send me an empty envelope with your address.

Who are you to give orders to me ?

and, perhaps strangest of all:

Respected Comrade,
We kindly ask you to make it possible for us to re-record your birds for our needs.

Huh?
😀