Playing card book DONE!

Yippee!

The theme is all around a difficult decision I have to make on adding a rather nasty medication to my list, to try to keep my condition under control. I am still (perhaps foolishly) hoping that when I do my August bloodwork it will show that the upped dose of a medication I am already taking is working, but not massively optimistic. I have been considering this for a couple of months now and it’s coming down to crunch time. For now, till the test results, Indecision IS a decision, of sorts. I really like the way the book has an almost circular effect. Opening the cover and pulling on the right to open out each page reveals one side, with all the worry and confusion and emotions

And then, flipping to the back, it all circles around to the cover again, and the indecision decision cover that ends the book where it began.

Kinda fitting, I guess. Look back to yesterday for both the construction info and the link to download the no-so-positive words for printing and cutting to use yourself.

I am hoping for some play time over the weekend, but as Darling Daughter is now out of education, I suspect we will be doing a LOT of Mommy/Daughter time till September. Then it will be the replacement of the windows and that is going to require a LOT of prep work and a few weeks of chaos. Not sure at this point if I will try to blog on a reduced schedule or just skip a month. Time will tell….

Progress on my little playing card book

I made a lot of progress on my little book, and it was a lot of fun to make. Let me do the construction, then when I finish it I can talk a bit more about the theme. I used a set of printables from Roben Marie, as I mentioned yesterday, and a method for making “washi tape” (i.e. not really) using Scor-tape from Robyn McClendon. The process is exactly as you would expect, just reading those words LOL!

The printables

fit two widths of tape perfectly

and cut in strips

The tape really has none of the properties of actual washi tape that make it so appealing but it is decorated and sticky, so it works. I covered the playing cards with some of my gel prints

and kinda ignored the little rounded corners. Each corner was covered with tape, in my version, so it didn’t matter. Also my cards were smaller than the decommissioned Vegas cards Robyn used and I had no reason to make them even smaller by cutting anything off! From there I only had to lay them out, decide on the tapes to us, and stick them together.

I did every join (rather than every other, like the original) and also the first and last pages so when the book was closed you can see the colourful tape on every edge.

I really love it – it’s so tiny and cute, and should be quick to decorate. I am delving into my pot of not-so-positive words (I shared these to download and print a while back) and I think they will be perfect for my planned theme.

With luck, finished book tomorrow!

WOYWW 686 – serendipity rules!

Happy WOYWW day. I am having a break this week from my knitting mates because so much else is going on. But I am still keeping busy in an arty way, just not with yarn for a day.

I should begin with my horrifying desk. There is just a ton of stuff all over it – lots that you might recall from my AJJ prompt page, with the weird stenciling tip using packaging debris. Page back a day and see.

Yeah. I work in chaos most of the time. Luckily I have the other desk. And this is where the serendipity comes in. Forgive me for all of the upcoming links (or maybe you will appreciate them?) I have a few things laid out, ready to begin a project birthed from such a wide variety of things I feel like the trail is interesting at least.

The gel printed papers are from a couple of days of playtime, trying to mimic a technique by Robyn McClendon that she calls Venetian Plaster. She uses a weird product called Stainz to get the effect, and these were from some of my attempts to get similar with none of that. The deck of cards was from a box of card decks I found while having a tidy before the in-laws visit and set aside in my craft room. While walking on the treadmill, up popped a 6-year-old video about making a little accordion book from playing cards and that included just a hint about making “washi tape” using Scor-tape. Which I have. Hearing that was enough, no need to watch. I had signed up for a small class (also by Roben Marie) called Urban Journal Remix. THAT came with a load of really lovely printables (you can see a sheet of what she calls washi strips there) that I thought went nicely with the papers. I have something like 23 pages of those and while not all go with my papers, a lot of them do. So there you go. All of those breadcrumbs led me to a creative trail I plan on following to the end.

But before I do, I have some desk hopping to do! Happy WOYWW once more!

My little Collage Fodder book

The Fodder Challenge freebie taster session is still going on, but not for much longer. This little pocket fodder book was one of the lessons and quite easy to make. I went off piste, as is my way, and sorted out a slightly different way to make it, to be able to use a full A4 gel plate pull (from the Quad of Collages lesson) and some bits, rather than the larger piece required from the class. This is your basic flutter book, with a fold-over that makes a pocket. I have seen this before, which is why I didn’t feel the need to follow the class precisely, to understand the process.

What is in it at the moment are some bits of text snipped from a magazine. I often see interesting bits in various places and I really like to save them. More often than not they get thrown in a pot with sentiments or printed and cut words and phrases, but now I have the perfect place to stash them and keep them nice. You won’t believe where I found them!

Yep. One of the freebie Waitrose mags had 4 or 5 pages of interesting phrases, mantras by “famous people” that I thought could be used in my Journal Petite or on another art journal page.

Not all of them fit perfectly, but they can all be trimmed into words or shorter phrases to fit. Cute, humm? I plan on making a larger version and if I can streamline the process and make it work (easily) for a variety of sizes I’ll share. I think a larger version would be handy for keeping little bits in one place. And I have some ideas for using some mop up sheets or making a collage of gel plate pulls that might be interesting. We’ll see. It’ll alllll depend on Mr. Sun and the temp in my room!

Pleated Tag book finished!

Happy with how this turned out, even without taking the class. I may have missed some detail, and no doubt it would be nicer with larger tags, but yeah, I enjoyed the making process, and it was better than sitting in front of the computer with my thumping headache.

I began where I left off, after a bit of a tidy up:

I was addressing the little tiny elements that slip into the pleated tags, adding some word stickers to each one. Here are the pages:

And the little elements from the pockets (each one is two-sided):

Thoughts: all the elements make use of the most rubbish scraps. Just all kinds of bits from other projects, the kind of thing you normally would throw away. My challenge to myself was if I pick it up, I must strive to use it in the best way possible and to do that, working on multiple elements at the same time was a must. Also, I really love using the surrounds – so if I punched a heart, using the leftover outline became a kind of go-to element, and ditto with circles. I had a sheet of quotes I wanted to use, and getting them all to hang together in a coherent (kinda) way was also a challenge. I thought it might be helpful to see it written out as text:

• My brain hums with scraps of poetry and madness (Virginia Woolf)
• Life can be grating. (all the rest is Charles Butkowski)
• The tigers have found me and I do not care.
• We don’t even ask happiness, just a little less pain like roses that never bothered to bloom
• Some people never go crazy.
• Having nothing to struggle against they have nothing to struggle for.
• We must bring our own light to the darkness
• I want so much that is not here.
• Forget my brother, I am my own keeper.
• What matters most is how well we walk through the fire
• and to and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us

Some artistic license taken, occasional words omitted or added to make the quotes hand together a little better. The added single words might make little sense to anyone but me, but they link to my thoughts as I created the project.

I’d maybe do another at some point and maybe try to refine the structure a little – adding the pleated tags so they don’t all fall in the same place on the spine would keep the book a bit flatter but as my tags a small (2 1/2 x 5 1/4 inches rather than the 5 1/8 x 10 1/2 inches of the original ones!) I feel like I did pretty well with about half the surface area LOL! I would consider cutting tags from heavy cardstock if I did.

I love using up scraps and making something from them. And these scraps called to mind the specific projects I used them on, so that was a nice throwback.

I have another medical thing next week so posts might be a bit thin on the ground after Monday. Fair warning….

Tag book without the class

If it is humanly possible my desk is in even more of a state than yesterday. I had a thumping headache and a sore arm and throat after my 4th full dose of the vaccine and didn’t do much yesterday at my computer. I had a long lovely chat with my sister and that was about it. But I do have progress to share on the “pleated tag book” that I saw – there is a class, which I did not take, cause I am rubbish at following classes, so mine probably deviates from the actual book in many ways. I dragged out my box of collage scraps to try to make a dent in them:

As I was sifting thru the scraps I began setting aside a few things I thought would be good for the cover.

I ended up using pretty much all of it – maybe not the leaves, although I did use them elsewhere. I sewed the pleats in the tags – my tags are tiny, nothing like the large Ranger luggage tags that I think formed the base of the original book, so my accordion spine was kraft cardstock:

The book came together pretty much as I sketched (seen yesterday) after seeing a couple of sample others had made.

and I managed to get the cover tag sorted and began planning the inner tags:

The cover quote is Virginia Woolf, but all the rest are Charles Bukowski. I decides to use my Lynne Perrella stamps too:

and in the end my desk was super chaotic and my head was thumping so I just ignored it all…. Maybe tomorrow I will work on it, after my WOYWW visits and dealing with the electrician for a radiator and dodgy plug repair. Another shocking week. Doh!

I must tell Julia – I have four scissors on show and there are three more pairs you can’t see as this shot is framed. Note the pair that say MOM ONLY on them LOL! Had to try to stop the boys in the family from running off with them somehow. {wink}

Last two UFOs to share

OK, full disclosure, there are a few more things that are unfinished in the bin, but they are SO unfinished as to be more an IDEA then a project. So I will end with these couple Holiday-themed items.

First, the one I will 100% finish. Not this week, maybe not even this year, dare I say not this decade (!) but I WILL finish it. My son asks about recipes from holiday meals sometimes, and I always planned to do for him what my MIL did for me. She gave me a wooden recipe box, full of handwritten recipes that were The Hubster’s favourites. I’ve made a lot of them over the years and a couple are so well worn I need to recopy them for myself!

BUT, in 2010 I began a mini-book made to house cards with holiday favourites:

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The recipe cards slip inside mini brown paper bags and there is plenty of room for someone to add their own, as I have to my MILs gift. I think for this one I will wait for a wedding before gifting it to my son. I’ve never been 100% happy with the placement and how the title reads – should be Thanksgiving To Do List for the Domestic Goddess but I’ve never felt that was as clear as it could be. Maybe I can fix that now!

Now a Christmas project. I am also inclined to finish this one cause I do really like it and I can think of just the right place to put it up when we do our holiday decorating. I blogged about the Rosette Words printables a few times but this wreath is here. The printables work if you hand-score the lines OR if tyou carefully position the Tim Holtz rosette die. I think it makes a cute wreath (indoor only, of course)

It is SO CLOSE to being finished, although the glue that stuck the rosettes has come unstuck in some places, so I just need to re-stick them and the wreath will be DONE. Problem is that I am never keen on holiday projects when it isn’t actually Christmas-time, and when it IS Christmas I have far too much to do to take time out for this kind of thing. So maybe, if I can remember, in the autumn I will drag this out and get it done.

Yeah. right. Who am I kidding?

A couple more unfinished minis

This one I actually describe how to make on an old blog post here. It’s from 2013 so not as old as the ones from yesterday. I still really like to construction and it is a great structure for many small photos or to display a poem pr something like that. Might make a more substantial Wedding card, perhaps. Anyway, here is is, still bare as the day I made it…

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I obviously planned to finish it, so kept it in a bag with all the other bits I had selected. I kinda think this might have been about when my beloved HiTi dye-sub printer died and printing photos at home became impossible. I loved the way it looks from the top, a bit like an arrow!

Pretty papers, too. The next one was SUCH a good idea and would make a lovely book for future generations to look over. I want to say this was destined for a Scrapbook Inspirations article but can’t be sure. Makes sense, tho’ cause I can’t find a place I shared it on my blog. I called it The Story Behind The Bad Photos and I wish I had captured those stories before time ate away my memory. I do remember some of them, but not all. I need to see if that missing S is in the bag someplace!

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You can see the journaling spots that sit in the pocket behind the photo pages. I also have a handful of small photos that I planned to add to future pages.

Yep. That’s my daughter, always mugging for the camera.

A couple more things tomorrow.

OK so I lied about taking the weekend off, sort of

I am still taking the weekend to TRY to have some family time – which, sadly, might involve upgrading to WiFi 6 and installing and testing a bunch of WiFi extenders, rather than a lovely walk outside, but who knows? Anyway, as I was dragging out all of the boxes and bins of paper and card, to try to begin getting them worted out, I came across a bin that was not just paper. It was what I like to call my “Project Graveyard.” These are things that I began and then, for whatever reason, stopped before finishing. I might have lost my mojo, it might have been a class that I did not complete during the class, I might have encountered a problem of some sort…. I thought I would share them. I probably should share them after finishing them, but to be honest if they have sat for 5+ years unfinished, they might very well sit for five more.

Surely on of the oldest is a class from the 2005 Scrap Wars Star Wars themed Cybercrop. Called Death Star, it is a lovely star book. and yes, if you click the link there you can download the class and make one yourself!

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My plan had been to add a bottom to some of the layers so I could slip in more photos. Maybe you can kinda see that where I punched out the divots. It would have been a cute gift, but as the kids are quite grown now, it all seems a bit pointless. Maybe I will re-purpose it somehow.

The next is ALSO a class, from Scrap Fever 2009, a Willow Tree Crafts crop. I ALSO found the class by Venessa but that one I had left as the basic elements and has since been scattered. This is a class by Donna Downey. It was going well, but time was a factor.

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Honestly, both projects are good ones, it’s just I already have about 100 mini-albums of my kids from this period in time when I was a mad scrapper. I don’t need another. Might be best at this point to save them for some potential Grandkid far in the future. We’ll see.

More tomorrow!

Finally done with that double accordion book

I finished it and I am really happy with it! It was a hard fought battle, getting it where I wanted it, and it took me about three days to get from this:

To this:

And a little closer on the covers – that lady with the binoculars stamp is one I made with a stamp-making kit, 10+ years ago and it still works beautifully. All the rest of them, save the text circles, are Teesha Moore stamps.

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Interesting to note that the cover quote is NOT by Gandhi, as is often claimed. He did say

“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.”

which The Quote Investigator says in thematically similar – it has an interesting bit of info of where the quote might have come from, if you are interested.

Phew. Day 80 is in sight. This is day 78: