Scanned painted paper, tweaked

I have been playing with my scanned papers and tweaking them to create slight variations.

The original looks like this:

And here are some collections of variations:

For some of them the differences between them won’t come thru – I can see a stark difference between the top trio and the bottom set, and both are different from the original but the differences between those in the two groups are not as clear as you see them here than I see them in my editing program. I love the last one of the trio, the slightly purple tones are great, and I like the intense bottom left of the quad, I think either one would work for my next Daily journal, and that would be May.

I have been working in my February journal and this is the one with the lined pages. I find I am liking that, better than the heavier unlined pages from the January one. But do I like them more than the Amazon recycled paper pages of all of 2023? I’m not sure. Unlined pages do give me the option to write bigger if I have less to say, while the lines help keep me on track with my messy handwriting! 

Just for fun, I had a simple play with the other photo of the paper I like less. Interestingly, I actually quite like the tweaked version of THAT more than expected! Just amping up the brightness and the contrast makes it all just POP so much more.

I may find a use for that – I think I feel another art journal page coming on….

Not quite managed any physical art

but I have added a few digital designs to Creative Fabrica. They had a great sale, it might still be going on, so if you newly subscribed to this resource, all my stuff is free over there. I’ve not added it to my Ko-Fi shop yet but will eventually.

I love some of these kits so much. The Typewriter Patents were so much fun to make and the vintage Money one was very interesting – who knew that railways issued their own money? Or linen companies? I didn’t! And I am thinking a couple of these might make nice Daily Journal covers as well – the Ledger Library one in particular, but maybe the coffee one too.

Now, I had not planned on adding any more haul stuff, but I did have a few more things so I might as well. I found a couple of things at the Dollar Tree – if only The Works worked the same and offered similar for £1!

I have yet to assemble the brush organizer but I think it will be handy. I also grabbed a couple of things at office supply stores:

Love those massive letter stencils and my stash of metal edged tags is running low. The Adding machine paper is great for snippet rolls.

Last thing, promise, are a couple of books. My Dad gave me his copy of Killers of the Flower Moon and the knitting book was a gift from my MIL for my birthday.

Now, as my weekend was completely consumed with a late Thanksgiving feast and a veritable MOUNTAIN of laundry, it was really all I could do to get this posted. But I have high hopes I will now be able to do something arty for tomorrow. I was really happy to have had all my posts for the time I was away sorted in advance but now I am back to daily blogging (well M-F anyway) so better get cracking. I am now WAY behind with Fodder School, the Roben’s Nest, a couple of freebie classes… Oh dear. And Christmas is just around the corner…

More printables – Women Set Sail!

I found a real treasure trove of photos – loads of super quirky shots of what seems to be a group of circus performers setting off on a cruise! There are a ton of them. I picked out my favourite ones to make a printable sheet. I have it up over on Ko-Fi if this sort of thing appeals to you. And how can it not? Check out the tattoos on this lady:

Some of them give a clear indication of what their talent is:

I’m guessing the lady on the swing is a trapeze artist? Maye a couple of acrobats or dancers? Anyway this is a small selection of the women, because the post-processing of the originals takes a bit of time, and Fodder School is also taking up a bit of time. There is a bit of one of the classes that makes use of this sort of photo that I am eager to do, so, as ever, I make things *I* need and if they are helpful to someone else, well that’s great too. But back to Fodder School classes for now…

Not totally ignoring digital designing…

…but it kinda took a back seat. Until *I* needed something lol! Funny how that works. One of the Fodder School classes was making little clusters. And I needed some photos to use for them. The class itself included a few in a printable pack, but of course I wanted to use something more unique. I had a meander thru a few public domain sites and collected a ton of fun photos. Then spend a day cropping and editing them to where I wanted them. I thought I would try something a bit different and just put them up of Ko-fi and see what happens. I recently decided to pay for some additional storage on my blog (bet you wondered why I went back to adding loads of photos…) and I’d like it to at least be…self-sufficient I guess.

The clusters were detailed in the class, a great one, so I won’t share any details (sorry, but thems the rules) but I can show the finished items.

And a close up of a few of the photos themselves:

No idea what exactly is happening in photo one – clearly some sort of ocean explorer and his wife – or in photo two, with that thing on her head. And the last photo is one of a ton of cruise ship send off photos, and many are at least slightly quirky!

Here is a peek at just one sheet:

I opted not to print the sepia version but now kinda wish I had. Any way I did pop them up on Ko-fi and I’ll see what happens. Probably not a lot, but it’ll be interesting as an experiment at the very least.

Cat ephemera and thoughts…

{sigh} This is getting to be a habit. I troll happily thru all manner of interesting resources I find, some actual physical things (books or papers) but more digital resources housed in many wide and varied collections but available online, then all of a sudden BAM! I am hit with crazy racist images or statements or misogyny in full flower or just shocking and unexpected whatevers.

I am not going to include them here, you will just have to trust me on this.

I was quite happily converting some posters advertising a defunct short story collection magazine when I saw something that made me gasp. Not the worst I’ve seen but so darn unexpected. You can imagine why I was keen on these images…

Poppy is actually a Tuxedo Cat, I’m told, as she has a white chest and paws and a few white markings on her face, but still….

I was enjoying the work, cleaning up all the extra text and had an eye towards using a bit of one somehow in a Christmas card – cause ain’t she festive? And regal! LOL!

Kinda took the wind out of my sails for a moment. I know that times have moved on, but then I think of current real life happenings that also take my breath away, and I think maybe we haven’t progressed as humans quite as much as we might like to think.

Whoa. Too deep for a Monday morning? Perhaps.

To lighten things up a bit. while looking at those images, I also found these wacky ones. They made me smile – wish there were more cause I think they are so stinkin’ cute!

Although, I sense the high-wire gal juggling knives shares my feelings today…

Working on a fun journal addition…

…or is it? I get these ideas, spend far too much time working on them, then in the end I sometimes totally abandon them if I think they were not really so great. I am on the fence about this one.

These little foldable structures are meant to get added to a journal. Lots of uses, I think. I like to create a small stack of lined or grid papers then make that into a small booklet.

It kinda hides the pretty butterfly, although I only stick the booklet at the top edge, so you can flip it up to see that if you care to. Fold it all back into a closed square and…

I have a kit al ready to go, with four different printable squares, four backing papers to coordinate, and four coordinating grid papers. and yet I hesitate.

Thoughts?

To be fair I might just go ahead and add them, cause they are cute, and really, I feel like someone will like them. But then I thought that about the pretty Lichen-dye swatch ones and they are still totally unloved. OK, well one WOYWW friend did say she liked them but still, no one adores them like I do. I am just waiting for the old set to get removed so I can add the new ones. Sneaky peek, anyone?

A sweet little birdie freebie…

I was working on a set of journal cards, based on an old library check-out card, but trimmed with digital lace. Not sure when it will appear on Creative Fabrica, but when it does it will be here. Here is a preview:

Editing the original file took a bit of time, and it was interesting – not sure what I did or why it affected the file, but Inpainting simple did not work on some of the lines. I had to go back to the clone stamp, which felt slow and cumbersome by comparison. Anyway, another thing I was working on at the same time, swapping mentally between them, because I could not decide which one to focus on, was a set with tiny little birdies. They came from one of the printer’s sample books, from a sheet like this:

all those tiny little sweet images! Anyway, I was working on them and as the images are mostly transparent (due to previous editing, not from the original!) I found I needed to edit the lines on the cards in order to make them look right. I am sure you will have seen these exact little guys before, as stamps or printed on papers. Public domain so free for anyone (who can find them) to use them!

I was struggling with what to bundle them with, but I realized it has been a while since I added a freebie. I mean, for CF subscribers, all the stuff I have been adding is technically free, but for my blog readers it’s different. I am still hovering on the edge of being out of space, so I will add the actual download on Ko-fi here. Also still not worked out how best to add stuff there, and link it here so both the blog post and the download are live simultaneously! So if you go there and it is not live, just go back and it will be later in the day. I’ll pop them in to Creative Fabrica as a freebie as well.

I think they are very cute and I like that there are lines – my writing goes super wonky if I am not concentrating super hard as I write LOL! I like the 5 x 3.5 size, fits even fairly small journals, and the colour is quite vintage-y.

An interesting point. I felt like I could position the birds so it looked like they were sitting on one of the lines, but when I did, it looked more like they were floating. Leaving the existing line (wire?) hovering just over the line on the cards really makes it look like they are sitting on something. Optical illusion? Don’t know, but I know what I like…and I hope you like them too!

Why are blend modes such a challenge?

IS it blend modes, tho’, or is it my indecision??

I have been working on a set pf journal signature printable pages that will work nicely with a previous design,and when it came to the final edging, I spent far too much time working thru the long list of blend modes and struggling to identify which one I liked best. Some of them are so close, you can barely pick between them, and some are really different but still appealing in some way. I tried to work out the best way to capture them and this is what I came up with.

So Negation and Add (at least on my monitors) look very similar. There is also not a ton of difference between Pin Light and Hard Light (and that I find to be true for most things, but not all)while Difference is much more on the grey scale and Colour-dodge much more on the brown. Linear Light is warmer and Glow is more … beige? Arrgghh! I mean, how do you decide? and as I probably too casually mentioned, this is MY monitors, with it’s own colour sync and settings. I wonder what it looks like on your monitors?

I feel like I have narrowed it down to Linear Light, Glow, and Add. To be fair, some of that decision is based on the bits of the piece you can’t see, cause I’m not done with the set yet. In fact, even now I think I am mentally discarding Glow. I feel like Add ties in nicely with the already blended damask colour-wise, while Linear Light offers a bit of warmth, which could easily be amped up with some inked edges in a darker sepia tone. Although maybe the warmth is the problem cause the background is cooler maybe?

Arrgghh!

I will share a page, as I am confident I will have finished and added the set before this publishes. I love it, overall, and think it will work so well with the other colour-wheel set. So much so I may have to make a journal with it myself.

It happened again!

{sigh} Times change, and what was once ok sometimes is not ok anymore. Sometimes it’s more of a perception thing, and sure as anything, if there is offense to be taken, someone will be offended. Why leave yourself open to that sort of thing if you don’t have to, right?

What is she on about? you wonder. well. I was looking at some old kids books, Primers and Readers, and the like, looking for something to make into cards. I found a book that had some kinda cute alphabet pages, that I thought could be made into something cute. I liked the fact that the letters were all associate with name – A is for Albert (which was my Grandfather’s name) B is for Bertha, etc etc. They were all kinda old fashioned names, but some of them are making a comeback (maybe not Zerlina, but…) so they could have been fun. Two of them stood out. Gave me pause.

OK so Q is a queer looking boy isn’t inherently bad, just an old-fashioned use of the word. In fact in the olden times they would never have used it the way some people do today – some who embrace it, some who use it as a slur. It could have easily been Quincy a boy in the snow, right?

And saying X is a cross little daughter kinda peeved me. Why couldn’t it have been a cross little son? The X could have been a cross little cat FFS. I have one so I know! LOL! I guess the point is the both of them just felt like not what I wanted to make. Not sure my skills are up to editing the text in a seamless way IYKWIM. I moved on.

And of course, further hunting produced something that ended up being a lot better!

I ended up making these into two useful items. The 3×4 cards are made from the book pages, which have a 4-patch of letters in a block. The sheet above is each of the letters carefully extracted as a small 1.25×1.75 inch block. I think they are super cure and very useful indeed. The small blocks could be mounted on a scallop-edged block to make a kind of postage stamp or layered in a cluster. They are charming and old-fashioned and vintage without being unrelentingly brown. The original book was made from linen so there is a bit of the fabric texture in the images. All in all a better choice, right?

I may not give up on the whole book, yet, as there are some bits in it that might be worth working on. Not sure. And there are 100s of other Primers/Readers thru the ages that might end up being better choices. Even looking at a few, the colourful ones from the alphabet set are definitely the exception. B&W is the norm, so I should have plenty of choices!

I need to be looking towards my June journal too, so I might have to drag out the old gel plate and do a PMAS colour challenge sometime soon…

A kit and a project

I am attempting to make some fun things that are (I hope) a little out of the ordinary. I had a folder of collage ephemera, old advertising items, mostly colourful ones, that I wanted to do something with. I was thinking about the folders I made and created a kit that includes a printable circle template for a folder. But it is more than that!

The circles when printed can be folded in a couple of ways. They can make a simple folder if scored in the middle of the cut-out slice, or they can be folded with a spine.

The backing papers can be printed on, well, the back, obviously, and line the folder. If you print a couple, or even three, maybe more, you can create a small booklet.

And the kit comes with a sheet of the ephemera bits to print, which you can then store inside this “keeper” – while it does have a spine, I think it is thin enough it could go inside a journal, maybe stuck to the back cover? And many little bits can be stored inside.

I think it is really sweet and useful, but I kinda doubt my assessment of stuff lately LOL!

Hoping for a nice weekend and a lovely walk in a garden. IF I have my ATCs closer to finished…