So much going on. Printables to begin.

Been a bit since I did some of these, but I did promise so ….

I created a sheet for myself of words that I would use as pairs. Any combo – I could pick them, to accompany a piece already created, or I could draw two at random, which could be fun and surprising, to work towards. Mediocre Scream? Ruthless Self-Portrait? Phenomenal Boredom? Zesty Madness?? I mean any combo could produce a sense of something expected or something odd. I always like a nice typewriter font in lower case and I also did an all upper case one. These are the ones I gravitate towards. Hope you find them usable too.

I used words from some previous printables, just things I had already printed and were lying around on my desk, to make the text on those tags from last week and that exercise prompted me to make these.

You can download the three-page set here and print them all or select only the page you want in your printer dialog box.

Grab them here!

Junk journal labels – an experiment and some thoughts

I am hoping to start with some sort of brief daily journaling in 2023. This might be the year I manage to follow thru LOL! I have been watching so many videos about Junk Journals. As you know I have made these before, and even started to work in they, managing a few months of very sporadic entries before abandoning it. I have been considering what I need to do to succeed. There are a few things.

1. I need to have a journal I like and that is portable.
2. I need to make it fuss-free
3. I need to do it in a way that reflects my own style

One of the big issues is the style I see most often. It is all very vintage and botanical based, with lots of butterflies and the like. Not me at ALL. I keep forgetting this. I even spent WAY too much time playing about with a set of printables, labels, that I thought would be nice added to the embellishments. Just playing about really, but I do like how they turned out. Link to download via Dropbox.

Larger set, full page

So then I cut them and I thought maybe they needed to be a bit smaller, or at least have smaller options. I usually suggest you print the sheet 2 x per page but in this case I went ahead and just made an additional PDF of the smaller version.

Smaller set, 2x per page

And then, as I was cutting them out, I’m thinking Why? Theses are def. in the vintage arena, and that is not really me. I mean I can DO vintage, pretty well, I think, but it isn’t what I gravitate towards. So I feel like I really need to re-think this and consider making the sorts of embellishments that I will be inclined to use. I feel like I have given myself enough lead time that I can also come up with a reasonable storage solution and enough bits for a month or even two. I have ideas for the journal itself, maybe journals is a better description for how I plan it, and that needs doing too. So I expect between all the holiday stuff upcoming, and the adjustments of Dear Son+Cat, and just a crazy busy schedule, much crafting time is going to be consumed by this pre-new year project. Now off to watch a few more JJ videos and try to find some that are NOT vintage or shabby chic or floral or…not me. I wish I could think of a word that IS me, so I could increase my odds of success!

If you do grab the label sets, let me know what you think of them and if they are useful. Or not! always happy to have feedback…

Beautiful and EASY paper orbs

These are honestly so much fun and so easy to make. There is a template here from Creative In Chicago, and a really helpful video here

You can use your own papers (and that can be gel prints or scrapbook paper or anything) but in my experience a slightly heavier paper, 170gsm to 230gsm, really works well. The score lines really hold better than on thinner paper.

You can use the template for a ball all of the same paper, like these. The first one is from a couple of gloss spray pieces

and this green one is from a gel print. Both are very pretty and use the template printed two to a page on an A4 sheet. I believe you should be able to see it rotating here.

The template is bigger (full A4) so the orb is bigger. All you need to do is print, score and assemble.

I like to edge the curves in gold paint, either with a pen or my fingertip. So pretty!

I am trying something new – as this is quite a large file, I am adding it via Dropbox. Here is a printable sheet that you can use. Just click the DOWNLOAD button and you should have it. I’ve cleaned up a lot of old stuff but still not got much space available so … 🙂

I do have another idea I am keen to try – if it works I think it’ll be cute. I’ll share tomorrow if all goes according to plan.

Just a heads up – deleting Project Life printables and old calendars

I am getting close to the limit of my images allowance for WordPress, and in looking over older posts, I know in the past, when my blog was young, I took high-quality photos and posted them. People could look at the photo on the screen, but f they clicked it, they could see a much larger and more detailed image. More recently, as that limit creeps close and closer, I have been taking a big-enough-to-see photo and posting that, more kilo- than mega-bytes, IYKWIM. In order to claw back some space and knowing that there is little use nowadays for Project Life Cards or pre-2023 calendars, I will be removing the IMAGES for sure and in some cases the posts as well.

I know it is super annoying to follow some Pinterest link out there and not end up on the image or page, but I have not monetized my blog so keeping all that stuff hanging about and taking up space is just not doing me any good.

I have no real grasp on how many people actually still DO project life nor how many of those people currently download the PL resources I have added. I am making the assumption that what I might have designed in the past is going to be hopelessly out of date style-wise anyway so I am hoping this is not going to even be noticed.

So yeah, if you come across a post with no images, I hope you will have seen this as well. I might add a line explaining to any posts I decide to keep, just so eventually people will catch on, but frankly it depends on how much work that is 🙂

TODAY I am still sorting and organizing my stencils and other Gel printing tools. It’s a shocker for sure.

I need to replace the contact paper cover on my desk, as mentioned yesterday so I am ready for a nice clean tidy WOYWW. Wish me luck!

Oh and yeas, we all tested negative for Covid Saturday and Sunday, so it was only Darling Daughter who caught it. What a freakin’ miracle that was. Phew. Thanks for the well wishes.

Thought I would add some printables…

I am working on a project that is taking more time than I would like. Typical. Also, as the window replacement inches ever closer the thought of having to clear my window area is bone chilling. As part of the project, I collected a sheet full of what I am calling ACTIVE AFFIRMATIONS. Lots of lists are (to me) seemingly random words. These are ones that I see as ACTIONS. Single DO words and BE phrases, all in a simple typewriter font, east to cut and use. Download via the link as the image is very low resolution!

I used some of them, you may recall, in the little collage boards I made from last week.

I am still considering where to mount these, although for the moment they sit above my main desk, precariously perched and likely to tumble down on my head as I work. LOL!

Anyway, I have been dithering about adding them to the box o’cards I have shared but then I recalled another project that I had in the back of my head and thought that might be better. I have been hunting for a tutorial and for once, YouTube has failed me. I’ve seen the odd thumbnail of what I want but never instructions. It’s taking me a little while to settle on the best method. Watch this space!

WOYWW tomorrow and oh but my space is a catastrophe at the moment. Time for a quick tidy up, I think…. Don’t worry, I’ll share both the messy and the clean. Full disclosure, always!

Just a quick one while the house is in chaos

I was working on Easter cards for the family and as I made them, I figured I might as well share them, as the painting and minor repair etc. will mean the house is chaotic and getting to do actual crafting is tricky.

eastercardDownload

I am also experimenting with a new way to add the PDFs. Not sure how much I like it but we will see when it publishes how it looks! Sometimes, “improvements” are not!

Anyway, easy peasy. Print and cut the quadrants then pop them on a cardfront. These fit an A5 card but should be easily trimmed to fit a 1/4 US letter size or perhaps even a few others.

Darling daughter is mad keen on anime, and she has been missing her annual trip to HyperJapan for the last few pandemic years. They did hold it online in 2021, but it’s just not the same. Anyway, kawaii cute cards are perfect for here, and these bunnies made me smile. Hope you find them useful if you need a quick card!

I’m curious – is it better to do a card with the front arranged so all you have to do is print and fold on plain printer paper? I always cut the high-quality printed PDF images then stick them to the front of an actual card base, either a commercial one of one made from quality cardstock leftovers. But I always wonder if more people would prefer the easiest and most basic option. LMK!

More words for Art Journals (or ATCs) – not overwhelmingly positive

Hands up if you work in your art journal to help you process things in your life that aren’t all fluffy bunnies and rainbows…. Yeah. Me too. In exploring all the pages I see here there and everywhere, I am struck by how many times I see a page with what appears to be a totally random word plunked down on it. I’ve done it too, plenty of times. Not so much recently but I have been guilty. Well, maybe not, actually. Scrolling back thru my pages I am hard pressed to find single word pages. The only one I found was this one, in all of my finished pages:

I do find some ATCs with things like ART and CREATE and BELIEVE. But positive words are not always the thing you need. Sometimes, I make a page and maybe the right word is PAIN or SCREAM or BOREDOM. And it is both a waste of time and a hassle to create a single word to print and add, or grab my stamps and stamp it out. Since I have been on a bit of kick, making words for my art journaling that I can draw from randomly, I decided to make a couple of pages of not very positive quotes and words. No up-lifting, not artistic really, some have a slight positive spin, but most are depicting ambivalence in the best case, or real anguish in the worst. You might find them useful, unless your art journal is more about the pretty and the positive. Print ant cut, but grab the actual 2-page PDF not this image!

I did them in two styles, the ones I generally prefer, which is blackout or typewriter. I hope you find a use for them.

As a side note, if you recall I mentioned some fab paper that I use for printing.

When printing my words to cut, I grabbed the wrong paper. As I had both, I thought the side-by-side comparison might interest you all.

I know which I prefer! I’ll add it to the AJJ more for the download than the page. The custom cut stencil is very much part of my style so I guess that works!

Printable quotes for Art Journals

I’ve been tidying and sorting, both physical desk stuff (like sorting my mark-making stamps into a more usable system:

^{dragging out that art journal too, for a play}

but also digital files. I decided to challenge myself on my next art journal pages. I guess it is a bit of a take on the old Journal Jars. I weeded thru some lists of quotes, found the one ones that were speaking to me NOW, and created some sheets to print. Simple typewrite style font, not too big, not too small.

I made them into a two-page pdf and printed them on reasonably heavy cardstock, cut them out and stuck them in a tube.

When I am planning a page, I will select the quote, consider it, then make the page and add it. I’ll see how that goes.

Just in case the quotes speak to you you can download the PDF here.

First attempt, tomorrow!

Tidying up my blog, bad news and printable ATC backs

I am getting close to the limit for storage on my blog. Back in the good old days, when it seemed like I had nothing but space, I tended to upload quite large images. Now, after blogging since 2009(!) I find I am nearing the limit. Because I have never monetized my blog, it is not something I am keen to start now paying for. So I am going back and deleting stuff – mostly it’s old calendar PDFs. The thing is I don’t trust what I see when I click to see “unattached” images. I can’t figure out a clear way to know if they are actually attached to something or not. So there might be things (links) that no longer work, especially for old (2020 and earlier) Calendars. I have left the images of those things but I feel like I might need to delete them as well. I am also considering deleting all the Project Life printables. I feel like the style of the ones I did years ago are no longer in fashion, and for the very very occasional hit they might get, it isn’t worth keeping a big PDF file and a large image. Sorting that.

The bad news is my knitting mate has tested positive. Almost 100% caught it from her daughter and her daughter from school. Not good at all. I did a test and so far I’m negative – it was almost a full week between when last we met and her testing positive, and while we met inside cause of the crap weather, we did keep distance between us and no hugging hello. Not sure having the 3rd jab yesterday will help but you never know. Have now had to tell the potential birthday guests the timeline and test status, and will test again (and maybe again) and update them on the day for a final decision. It’s only three guests in total and if need be I can just stay well away (on a different level I think) while guests are in the house, if they do choose to come. Bah!

So now I am going to ADD stuff LOL! I have been printing and attaching backs to some of the ATCs and Coins I have made recently. I have my standard image that I tend to alter with colour so all my backs don’t look exactly the same.

It’s simple to do and keeps things fresh. So I made a set of Halloween/Creepy ones to download (see the bloody drips above for a closer look) and they look like this:

And the other set is a trio of three cards in three different patterns to download as well:

Hopefully that will be helpful.

I have quite a lot of behind the scenes stuff I need to do

Can you resolve a blurry art journal page? Printables for you

{sigh} Yeah, I had an idea but it went badly awry. I planned to do a fairly simple art journal page in my very small Roben-Marie journal and decided to begin by stamping a large-ish Dina Wakley figure on it. I thought I had worked out a way to use my stamp positioner so I could get a dark impression on the heavily coloured base page. It did not go to plan.

The page shifted, which I should have expected, and I got a bit of a double image, as you can see. There went my plan, out the window. I won’t share the original plan, cause I am not giving up hope I can use it some time in the future. I will share how I … fixed it is not right, but how I resolved it, I guess. I added some mark-making and some watercolour and stamping to complete the background and focal point image

I decided I would embrace the blur, and find a quote that said something about the blur to complete a page. After a short hunt and a bit of reading to winnow down the choices, I came up with a small handful of quotes that I thought could all work. I began working on the text, readying it for printing and while doing so I ended up making a full sheet that I thought might be useful to others who find themselves in this predicament. Only a handful of quotes, but in different sizes, fonts, spacings, etc.

I printed the sheet and cut out some to test them. You can grab a PDF copy here. I liked the ones I tried and had kinda settled on this one:

But then I saw that the final line on the page was blurry as well! I think I pulled it out of the printed before it had finished printing! It was perfect for the page:

And there you go. The longer quote bears sharing – it is from a BBC interview with J.R.R. Tolkien:

J.R.R. Tolkien: I suppose … I was about three and a half. Pretty poignant of course, because one of the things why people say they don’t remember is, it’s like constantly photographing the same thing on the same plate. Slight changes simply make a blur.

And over the last 18 months it has all been slight changes, hasn’t it, after the massive changes the pandemic brought? Glimpses of freedom, slight easing of restrictions (some self-imposed, some mandated) and really the whole thing just feels vague and unclear. There are no defined and sharp edges. Just a slight blur to everything.

Will the world ever resolve into clarity again? We can but hope.