Family Memories

Today over at Calico Craft Parts I am sharing how I made this little box to house three special family ATCs I made last year.

Hop on over and join me at Calico Craft Parts blog for more details!

Jennie x

How Can You Resist!

Hello Everyone! and welcome.

Our new challenge at A Vintage Journey is 

HOW CAN YOU RESIST

and the lovely Amanda is our host this month and the idea behind our theme is to use at least one resist technique in your project. There are many different products in mixed media that can be used - gesso, distress glaze, wax, embossing powder just to name a few. 

We hope this inspires you to get out your products and create - how can you resist?!

I seem to be a little obsessed with making mini books at the moment - so apologies that here is another one. Despite this being a real mini (3" x 3") I have managed to use quite a few resist techniques.

I started with a gesso resist on this small Tando Creatives Mini Book. 

The gesso was added haphazardly so that the inks would resist it in different ways.

Texture Paste used as a resist - after spraying with Distress Spray Inks I sanded the text to lighten and open up the lettering.

Embossing powder ...... hmmmm ....now you can see what a messy stamper I am! It didn't look too bad but the close up photograph shows me up!

And finally I used an embossing folder for the inside cover pages which again acted as a resist in the same way as the texture paste, but this time lightly brushed gesso over the raised areas.

We do hope that you will join us in our challenge this month and get out those wonderful resist products or check out all those wonderful techniques on Pinterest. If you are still in need of inspiration then DO hop on over to A Vintage Journey for all the details of our challenge and some amazing projects from my Creative Guide teamies. 

As always thank you for joining me and happy crafting!

Jennie x

Canvas and Lace Wrapped Vintage Journal

Hello and welcome to the first day of the month .... 

..... and of course another new month at Mini Album Makers Challenge where the Design Team inspire you with fabulous mini book makes. Our sponsor this month is Eileen Hull and what better way than to acknowledge this amazing designer by using her latest Wrapped Journal die. 

But before I get into the details and the (rather long) tutorial can I please urge you to hop on over to our Challenge blog post where you an find all the details of this month's challenge and of course the wonderful and amazing mini books created by my fellow designers on this fabulous team.

Just click the link HERE.

I have wanted a journal for a while that I could keep a track of my handspun wool and what I have knitted with it (tension, needle size, etc.) and so decided to make a tactile textile journal that can sit in my knitting basket.

Here are a few closeups of the finished journal:

I have used canvas for the cover, tea dyed lace and ribbons and some favourite vintage papers for the inside.

I used tea dyed papers for the inside signatures.

Where possible I have machine stitched everything in place before adhering the 

canvas to the covers.

I will now take you through the steps of how I made the cover and fitted it and also how the inside signatures came together.

TUTORIAL:

 I cut my canvas to size leaving a 1/2" wide turnover all the way around. 

I marked where the edges of the front cover were lightly in pencil and played around with a design.

I then took everything back to the first layer and started stitching pieces here and there to anchor them down. The canvas got very frayed during my journeys to the sewing machine (in another room!) and I wished I had left more than 1/2" around the edges!

Finally I sewed on my metal embellishments and the buttons as I knew I wouldn't be able to do this once it was stuck down.

I did some experiments with some spare board and canvas using glue and red tape and decided that the red tape did a superb job and was infinitely cleaner to work with! I placed tape on the sides of all the main pieces.

I was struggling to hold the canvas in the right place so decided to stick down front cover edge. This did give me a base to work from as my sewing had made the cover slightly squint!

I could then start bending the board on the creases of the journal as I applied the canvas.

The corners were mitred but don't cut them too close to the board as the canvas started to fray as I was sticking it down.

Everything worked out neatly but I did put some PVAglue on the mitred corners to secure the fraying edges.

Top edge done, starting on the bottom edge.

A piece of 12 x 12 scrapbook paper doesn't quite meet edge to edge so I used my die to line it up centrally and then mark where the creases were and used my scoring board to make the creases. I just knew if I tried to cut it in the die it would all go squint!

I also stuck this piece down with the red tape making sure I bent each side of the journal as I stuck it down so it would lie flat but also close.

I glued some lace down the side edges to fill in where the paper hadn't reached to the edge.

I made four signatures from tea stained paper and adhered a lovely tag to the front of each signature.

I had some of the paper left so made a pockets for the middle of two of the signatures.

There are also a few pockets here and there made from left over tea stained papers.

I had inserted the signatures with elastic which didn't look too great on the outside so again used some lace and ribbon to cover these up. I can still remove the signatures from the inside of the journal when I want to write up my notes.

If you are still with me well done! I really do love this new die from Eileen and just know it will be very popular (as are the others in the series!).

As always thank you for joining me and happy crafting!

Jennie x

Such a Gentleman

Hello and welcome to this little tease of my project over at PaperArtsy this evening. It was certainly a challenge to create a male vintage piece using the colours Sage, Mint, Claret and Gold!

Do join me over on the PaperArtsy blog for all the details.

Jennie x

A Little Girl's Dream

Hello and welcome to my second project this month for Calico Craft Parts.

If you would like to see more of how this came together and why it is a Little Girl's Dream, then please do join me over at Calico Craft Parts for all the details!

Jennie x

Make A Wish ATC

After a four week absence from my crafting table I decided to "ease" myself in gently for my first project for Calico Craft Parts this month. 

I had no idea where this was going ...... just as the muse took me and what was lying around on my desk after a not very particular tidy up before I went away!

Do join me over on the Calico Craft Parts blog if you would like to see more.

Jennie x

A Little Bit of Inspiration

Hello and welcome to another new month and another new project for the Mini Album Makers Challenge.  We would love you to share your albums or handmade books with us and the Design Team have put together some amazing inspiration for you to get started! So do hop on over to our challenge blog post where I am sure you will not be disappointed.

I have made a small concertina style book this month which houses some of my tea stained textiles and embellishmets. It also uses some of fellow team mate Alison Bomber's sentiments from her her selection of music and silence stamp set (PaperArtsy EAB03) which I love.

This is going to be a long post! So grab a cuppa and I'll show you some pictures first of the mini book and then the instructions for making it. 

I love small inspirational mini books which you can just pick up at any time and browse through to either pick up some arty inspiration or more importantly some life inspiriation in the form of quotes.

This is quite a basic mini book and I just made it up as I went along in terms of size and the number of pages, making the cover once I had finished my pages so I knew what size to make it.

TUTORIAL

I started with the pages and took an A4 sheet of cardstock (not sure world wide what this would translate to but on it's long side it measures 11 5/8" long). I cut a strip which measured 2 3/4" and then I scored at 3", 6" and 9". This gave me 3 x 3" pages and a smaller page at the end.

I cut two strips in total and these were joined so that the small strip was inside the join. 

I love small pages like this but don't like stamping or collaging directly onto the page. So ....... I always make some smaller pages which I then decorate and stick down on to the base. Not really cheating ...... just adds more layers!

These are my six pages. I wanted to decorate them with bits and pieces from my recent tea bath. No not me but I made a whopper of a pot of tea and poured it quite strongly into a bowl and put in bits of lace, ribbon, paper and wooden embellishments.  I let it soak for a few hours and then dried it off. I now have some wonderful bits and pieces to decorate with and which are all beautifully coloured in the same soft brown tones.  I just LoVE brown tones!

Once I had cut the cream cardstock to size I used a single stencil to decorate it here and there with Vintage Photo Distress Ink and added some background text - again here and there as I had no idea where the embelllishments were going to go.  I particularly wanted to use Alison's wonderful music and silence sentiments and so added these where I had space.

Once I had these all stuck down onto the cardstock I could measure for the cover. The critical measurement is the spine, but I managed to keep within a 1/2" so that made things easier. But if you try this and add thicker embellishments you might need to increase the size of the spine.

The cover was cut from a piece of cardstock measuring 9 1/2" x 2 3/4" which I then scored at 3", 3 1/2", 6 1/2" and 7" in order to create two spines.

I wasn't quite sure whether the cardstock would take all the crackle product I proposed, but I was very surprised that it did! The cover got a coat of brown chalk paint and then a "sleistering" (Shetland word- no other equivalent!) of DecoArt Crackle paint which I adhered with a palette knife.

This is the reverse side which got a bit messy! I re-painted the right hand side piece and spine as this was going to show once the papers were stuck in. X marks the spot where you need to stick your prepared pages. You will see that I have added a magnet here for the closure. Sadly it got stuck behind the lovely page with the photograph which was just too thick for it to really close well so I had to resort to some ribbon. 

Hopefully you can see from this picture how the two side pages stick on to the cover with the rest "floating" free within the spine.

I then started looking for embellishments for the cover. A mixture of some of the tea stained pieces (lace and wood), a handmade flower (tutorial on my blog HERE if you would like to know more), a bamboo button, some muslin and some stained old book paper. A tiny little bit of stamping on some old book paper was lying in my desk box so I grabbed that as well.

I bought some MDF  bookplates recently and they look really good painted with a pot of Vintage paint which has "gone off".  It sort of covers here and there and gives a wonderful rusty look! The piece from the middle of the bookplate was too wide for the spine so I trimmed it a bit and added a word from one of Alison's stamps stamped onto old book paper.

The finished book!

It really is quite a cute little mini book and I plan to make more with other quotes. I imagine a little box or basket housing some of these little mini's on my kitchen dresser for when I need them.

Thank you so much for joining me and I hope this may have inspired you to join our challenge this month.

Jennie x