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}

Tag booklet done.

Very happy with this. I raided my stash of ribbons to make quite a lush tie for the booklet and used that paper to cover the front and back – thee was JUST enough!

and I went to my stash of tags to fill it. Not all of them are finished, and not all of them will stay in the book, but some of the less wonderful ones may get added to. I expect I will keep the two-word theme going, because I do like those ones best so far.

I am toying with making another one, with some changes, but I am just not sure if that is something I really need to do. I have been playing with some Brushos and I will just have to see where it leads. I am also still deep in the weeds of digital papers, so honestly, just no clue where I will land at this point. But I like this booklet a lot, think it is really pretty, and just have to decide if I want to add some more words to it, add some sort of focal point to the cover, IDK.

Indecision is my downfall….

Last week was a black hole!

Yikes. Been saying that a LOT recently. I don’t know how life got so out of control, but honestly, had I not scheduled a bunch of posts before all the medical stuff began this place would have been a black hole as well LOL!

OK so back at it, and I swear by April things have GOT to slow down.

One of the things I was working on in my spare few moments the week before was this little folded tag book. It was shown in the PMAS YouTube streams. I try to watch them all but honestly at nearly 2 hours every time I can just about manage it on 2x speed. They sound like chipmunks but I can always slow it down it there is something I really need to see. I know I miss a lot, but crikey, it is just too much time with three streams a week NOT to speed it up.

Anyway. I think this was the stream, but I think they showed bits over a few of them.

They used US letter paper, and of course I have A4 so mine is a bit different size-wise. You basically fold the sheet in half width-wise, cut the bottom fold-up flap from the back side – which I did NOT bother to do, I just folded it over and stuck the flaps together, then to the front to make the pocket.

You then rip a bit from the top side to make a pocket opening

then join the four sheets into (what is supposed to be) a bi-folded book. Mine ended up being an accordion because I stuck one of the top sheets used to decorate it to the wrong side. So very me.

I had quite a lot of roll-off/clean-up sheets from the Teal & Purple challenge, and that is a fave colour combo anyway, so I used it mostly for the base paper bits.

Of course the light changed before I got to take the final photos of the inside, so this is not a great one.

I will hope for better light before the final shots of the front, and the ties, and maybe even the inside full of tags. We’ll see. Oh, I almost forgot to mention the silver edging on the flaps…

I have never been a fan of gold in jewelry but I do prefer it on art – it just glistens so. Anyway, for this, the silver seemed more logical choice, but is not as shiny as I hoped. I need a better paint!

I do have one really pretty sheet from the colour combo to use to decorate the fronts. Typical, it is adorned with gold, but there you go…also so like me.

April daily journal DONE

Now the collage project is completely done. I’ve already plunked down the bits for my April daily journal. As I said, if I let myself get into March before making the next one, that is just the sort of thing that could derail the whole project. It’s a simple process and I have been thru it now four times so not expecting any surprises…famous last words, you say? I hope not!

Not super exciting but I really like this one. The gel print is from one of the first colour combo challenges, Pink and Van Dyke Brown, and I love it. I decided to add the little trimmed off strip to the inside and the right hand part of the mop-up/roll off print was a bit boring.

I went back to my collection of letter/number stickers and miracle of miracles, I actually had all the letters I needed, all in the same case, no weird all-next-to-each-other colours, in a bright a spring-y green. When does THAT ever happen?? AND they fit!

I cannot help but mention AGAIN how happy I am that I added the image of the 5-hole pamphlet stitch to the side of my homemade bookbinding cradle. I probably will mention it again the next time I make one, as it is the rare occasion of me not only thinking things thru, doing the thing and it actually making my life easier months later.

So there we go. I am all ready to leap into the March journal, secure in the knowledge that April is ready and waiting.

This week is going to be brutal so I may not be super inspiring in my posts. I’ll try. Wish me luck, but forgive me if I don’t manage it.

Slip knot binding and the covers of my collage book

The final bits!

First, let me share again the slip-know binding video that prompted this

Really, there is no need to re-invent the wheel here. Lisbeth did a great job explaining, visually. I did what she did. Well, a few tiny alterations. I used some very thick baker’s twine to bind and you can see how chunky it makes the slip knots. I wrapped the two ends with some tape to make threading thru the small binding holes easier.

From there it was just following the video, easy peasy

The other variation is I began at the front, ending at the back. This left me with the hanging fibers at the back of the book. I prefer that. OK so I didn’t watch the video again, but I am pretty sure Lisbeth ended with the binding fiber ends at the top. Doesn’t matter. Begin where you like and leave the ends top or bottom as you prefer. Here is the cover – I decided to make use of that perfectly placed C on the cover to add COLLAGE and the year.

Funny, in neither picture is it clear the binding ends at the back. I say again, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is I am really really happy with it. And I can move one, hopefully retaining what I learned. If not, I can look back and remind myself of those elements I liked. One more little task before the manic week begins…

PM Artists Studio printable papers – made a book

Like I mentioned yesterday, I did a crap job of capturing the process but I will try to add some nuggets to help you (and your friend Google) find the info you need.

This spine of the book is a variation on a Piano Hinge book. There was a challenge to use STICKS, and my stick was a Chopstick. There are a couple of videos still on YT from Club Scrap (remember them?) for making piano hinge books. This variation is just one stick, that makes a folded spine, and the pages are attached to that, rather than the stick linking each page.

The covers are decorated with elements from the kits and some of the bits of prints that weren’t perfect (laser printer issues mentioned yesterday)

And the pages also have pockets and tags and bits from the kit, or just pages cut in a useful way.

I have a couple more pages left to decorate, but don’t want to exactly duplicate the existing pages and I only have so many resources in the kit, so it’ll take some thought

You can see the papers (not all, but most) and they are deep and rich and lovely – and on sale. I also have a selection of stencils on the way too, now they offer free international shipping (over a reasonable amount for the order, if you only plan on doing one order a year LOL!) I am most anxious to get a set of stencils that are tomatoes. No idea why, I just really love them!

More on them when they hit my mailbox!

In praise of mini-gel plates and fixing mistakes…

So I shared progress on the mini flag book, which I am mostly pretty happy with. But in the end I was kinda annoyed by the fact I had two serious lapses in judgement.

First, I neglected to do any decoration on the backs of all of those little flags. Would have been super easy to do before I put the whole thing together.

The second but related lapse was that even when I looked at them and thought hummm… I carried on and added the covers. I mean, clearly the universe was trying to warn me and I totally ignored it. So then I had to think of WTF I was going to do. I did try just using a dauber to add colour but it looked… not right

Tiny gel plate to the rescue!

I was MUCH happier with the effect there, and it was just by using one of the minis that I could sneak the plate in to the opening between the layers of flags. Phew. I slapped a tiny bit of nano tape onto a water bottle lid and added a tiny star. Also small enough to sneak between the layers of flags to stamp a coordinating image.

Very happy. It is not meant to add a lot, just make the backs of the flags a lot less…bare looking. Which it does.

So still left with a decision o the cover. I have an idea or two that should work. Let me play. Hum. Play or tidy… what will it be…

90% done but not quite.

So the thing I have been trying to make is something called a double flag book. There are very few photos of them (most annoying that there are some on Pinterest that lead nowhere – grrr) and no real tutorial. I don’t recall seeing one in any of my bookmaking books abut from the photos I have seen I thought I had an idea of how to make one. The elements are the slotted together accordions for the spine, then lots and lots of little flags. I’ve show how to make the slotted spine a few times before and I didn’t bother to photo those steps again. But basically you just need to add the flags on both sides of the accordion.

From there, you add the covers, as you would imagine. The only issue is the cover needs to be big enough to cover the width of both sets of flags when the book is collapsed/closed.

As you can see I used the little set of active affirmations from a few days ago to make an uplifting little book full of good advice. I wish I had thought to print on the back of the flags as well, because unless fully opened you can see more of the backs than I realized at first. Might have to go back and consider how best to solve that little problem!

Now, what next? Can I really let that small card box sit unloved for much longer? The affirmations would have worked equally as well with that, but now I’ve used them twice I am not sure my psyche can handle that much positivity LOL! I will consider and see what inspiration hits me. If it doesn’t, well, it will sit, accusing me of neglect, for a bit longer.

{sigh}

Project progress! Gel printed with tissue resist

SO. I have moved on from the first stage of my project, with those tabs of cardstock covered in my tissue resist gel prints.

And each one has had some stamping, some stenciling, some spattering, and some edging in gold done to them.

A bit of a close up for you:

And this is likely to give the whole thing away! Or maybe not. I did say that I was struggling to find the instructions for something where I saw only a finished project when I checked online. I think I cracked it but it’ll have to wait till I’m done to be sure. It could all go pear-shaped even at this late stage…

My version of a Fodder Keeper

Although I enjoyed the Fodder Challenge, I let time get away from me and missed the discount days. Knowing my struggle with completing classes that isn’t an altogether bad thing, I guess. I saw a few versions of a fodder keeper book (perhaps from a class, maybe even from last year? Not sure) and decided it would suit my needs so I decided to figure one out. I THINK the original is constructed from chipboard, or the like, but I had an old book that has been kicking around for YEARS that was JUST the right size. I am on a mission to use things I have so…

I grabber the stack of papers I dyed … last year maybe? and some old US letter-sized page protectors. Useless, and yet I hold on to them. No more

After trimming off the strip with the holes and trimming the overhang, I used my Stabilo All pencil to mark where I wanted to sew to create some pockets. I folded and arranged each sheet

and cut a curve in some where I wanted the page split into stacked pockets, just for easy access

and trundled over to my sewing machine. After sewing all the pockets with the thread in my machine (grey – and I think I like it better than I would have black)

I cut the guts out of the book and covered it with some gel prints from a week or so ago. Just random play.

And when it came to the spine, and adding in the pages, I had a bit of a brainstorm. I have this box of name-tag/badge holders and I thought I could use them in a couple of ways. First, I used the elastic to make a sort of Traveller’s Journal style arrangement, where the folded sheets would slip under the elastic. I like that as it would mean they were removable.

I wasnot keen on the messy spine, so I threaded both ends thru some large-hole beads. Not perfect, but OK and decorative, I guess.

The length of the elastic from the badges was pretty long, and the little metal tips made threading them super easy. They went from inside out of the top and bottom holes, then came in from the outside (bottom thru top, top thru bottom) then both out the middle holes in the centre of the page protector and the middle of the book spine! This presented me with a great extra place to add something unexpected. TWO somethings, actually, but that will have to wait for tomorrow. I have to sort out the best what to photograph it so it makes sense.