It's a Creative World

A little Fabric Notebook

Hiya Claire here with a really easy fabric notebook... I made this for a friend at work as the little character on the front reminded me of her.

I've been using my Stampotique stamps again, I stamped the image onto some calico & put her to one side whilst the ink dried

I used 5inx3in index cards for the pages & punched 2 holes in one side of them, then I measued the fabric for the cover by laying the index cards in the middle of the fabric...

and wrapping it around them so it overlapped & left enough to sew the seams...

I then ironed some Wondaweb to the back of each piece of fabric... including the stamped image, to make it a bit more sturdy, them trimmed the edges so they were nice & neat....

Next I set up the sewing machine & attached the stamped image ...

Then I stitched the front & back covers with right side together (remember to leave an opening at the bottom ofthe cover to turn the right way out again) I also attached a cord to tie the book closed with...

 
 The cord should look like this when stitched...

Then turn the right way out, press with an iron and tuck the open bit at the bottom under & iron it you can then sew this together, I used blue material on top & white underneath, so when sewing I changed the top thread to blue but kept white on the spool underneath so the stitching doesn't show...

then using the index cards as a guide, I punched holes in the cover & used eyelets to stop the fabric fraying, the index cards are held in the cover with book rings...

& thats it, a really cute touchy feely notebook made in about 40 minutes...

I hope you like this & will see you again soon, thanks for stopping by

Claire

xx
 
  
 
 

Recipe for a day when you can't think of what else to do ...

Hello! Alexa here, thinking about scrapbooking simply. Ever had one of those days when you need an idea for a design, or an angle for some journalling? This page from a free supermarket magazine caught my eye:

The big photo, the space for writing and the ideas for type, as well as the concept of recording an event as a recipe really appealed. This weekend, my DS is camping in Scotland, and here's the page I've made to record his preparations. The 'ingredients' and 'method' format of the recipe shaped the journalling very quickly and made it fun to do! Here's how it turned out ...

 

Quick, simple to make, and easy on the eye - now, that's my kind of recipe! What stories are you scrapping at the moment which would suit the 'recipe' format? Any designs in a magazine caught your eye recently? Do let us know if you try this, and leave us a link so we can visit and go 'ooh' and 'ahhh'!

Thank-you for popping by today!

Don't Throw It away!

OK I admit it. My name is Dolly and I am a hoarder. I HATE throwing things away.

Nij was about to throw this plastic paper clip box out the other day and I said …. OK shouted …. ‘NO! I want it!’

He is reasonably used to my oddities, but even he was a little surprised that I wanted such a piece of rubbish. I set out to show him why.

The box measures 2 ¼ ” x 3 ¾ “ and is ½” deep

I peeled all the labels off it and used a sharp knife to slice off the piece of plastic used to hang it on the store display stand.

I then cut a strip of card and made it into an accordion fold base.

As it was for Nigel I decided to make it about one of our favourite places in the world … Las Vegas.

I selected and printed the photos and, as it was so small I knew there would be little or no room for embellishment and that I didn’t have any that small. So I googled suitable images and added them to the photo sheet before printing. In this case it was lots of poker chips, dice and playing cards.

 

There was no real room for journaling so it was a case of letting the pictures speak for themselves on most of the pages. I stitched the front cover to make it a bit different.

I was planning on covering the box but actually, I liked the look of it when it was in the case that you could see through, so in the end I didn’t cover it.

Once printed, it was a question of lots of cutting out, appropriate scraps of paper and the book was assembled.

 

 

It was a great way to use up scraps, cost just a bit of time, half a sheet of card and a sheet of photo paper, and it proved a point!

 

DON’T THROW USEFUL THINGS AWAY!

 

OK so my version of useful may not be everyone’s but you get the idea. Give it a go – think before you throw out packaging!

Wax and Paint.

 

 

A PAINTED TAG .

 

YOU WILL NEED.

 

 card stock

patterned paper

alphabet stickers

clear stamp-or mounted stamp

 ink pad

 paint

candle

glue

kitchen paper/baby wipe

paper to work on

 

Technique.

 

Protect your work surface with scrap paper.

 

Cut the kraft card to a tag shape.

Glue  paper to the kraft tag.

 

 

Dab the tag with the  ink pad-and wipe this around with kitchen paper.

Dab the tag with the  paint and then wipe this around with kitchen paper.

Ink up the rubber stamp 

.

Light the candle and carefully drip wax into the top right corner of the tag-quickly and carefully press the stamp fully into the wax-leave to set for five minutes.

 

Carefully peel the stamp out of the wax.

 

 

 

Re ink the stamp

 

Repeat twice more in the middle and bottom right of the tag-inking the stamp well.

 

Relight the candle and carefully drip wax all around the edge of the tag leave to set

 

dab paint all over the wax and rub around with kitchen towel.

 

 

Repeat using the  ink pad.

 

Place the alphabet stickers onto the tag and distress with ink and paint.

 

Make your own cog moulds.

I was lucky enough to find some old cogs and clock parts from DH's Grandfather who used to mend clocks. I love the detail in them however realised making my own moulds would not be as straightforward as other items.

I used gel flex (blue) or you can used vinamould (red) to make the moulds, and silicone cupcake cases to pour the gel flex into. As the cogs have a very long spindle I needed to cropodile a hole in the middle of the silicone cases to make a suitable mould.

The silicone cupcase then had to be supported (I used small boxes and two small pieces of MDF to make sure the silicone case was flat and would make a perfect mould.

Once you have covered the cog you need to let the mould set and take the cog out. Then you need to cover the hole and pour more gel flex over the mould to finish it off.

I am still trying to make a suitable mould for the cogs with much finer detail, if anyone has any tips they would be greatly appreciated.

Debbie x

FLAG TAG BOOK

Last month, Kelly showed us her journal cards  which I loved the idea of, so I set out to make some in tag form.

First of all I painted the manila base tags with different acrylic paints, some matt, some glossy, and a few pearly iridescent, then stapled on some calico strips, before stamping some favourite images.

Whilst they were drying, ready for the next stage, I pondered how I would eventually display them, whether on a book ring, in a box, or maybe a tagbook. I recalled once making a flag book and that was what I settled on.

I used chipboard for the covers, painted with matt white gesso, and stamped various images in brown.

The inside covers have co-ordinating paper on them, and ribbon is trapped on the flat end of each piece, to wrap around and tie at the shaped end.

The tags are held inside a concertina piece of manila card, (made from value file folders from Staples) but are removable for completion and later reading, and as soon as I have printed some weeny photos, I will finish them off and journal on the reverse.

So many projects these days seem to start in one direction and continue in another.

I will finish the tags, though, and might even try making some of those little inchies I've been seeing around and about to embellish them.

Bye for now,

Eleanor

x

Ruby in Lola Land

Hi everyone, Carmen here :)

This project was inspired by the Copy+Paste birthday celebrations over on their blog. One of the challenges was to download some fabulous free printable sheets designed by Kirsty Neale & Julie Kirk and to come up with any project, using any medium and any of the images. Well, one look at the gorgeous sheets and my first thought was Charlie and Lola. I'm a huge fan of Lauren Child and luckily my youngest daughter Ruby is too. Her favorite doll, Lola, goes everywhere with her.

I browsed the internet and found the perfect image featuring Charlie and Lola around a sofa. There was even an empty seat like they were just waiting for Ruby to come and play.

I found a good photo of Ruby on my PC, it needed to be of her sitting and have no bits of head or legs chopped off. After a couple of attempts at resizing both the cartoon image and the Ruby image I found a scale I was happy with. I am no techie expert and just did this by inserting the two pictures into a Word doc and resizing them up and down till I was happy. I then printed them both onto photo paper making sure I selected the best quality option in my printer settings.

I cut out the picture of Ruby and attached her to the sofa with a couple of small dabs of Glossy Accent. The balloons, speech bubbles (which I turned into balloons), the party hat and the presents all came from the C+P download sheet. I arranged them on the scene until I was happy and attached those with small dabs of Glossy Accent too. I then went around the photo of Ruby and the other elements I had added with a sparkly black gel pen, not forgetting to add strings to the balloons and ribbons to Ruby's hair so that she fitted right into Lola's cartoon world.

Finally I covered the whole thing in a couple of layers of Glossy Accents.
I am so pleased with the end result. I'm thinking of making similar pictures as Christmas presents for my young nieces and nephews. I can see it being easily adapted to suit anyone's favorite character. In fact my two older girls have already demanded their own picture starring themselves too. This one, once spotted by Ruby was nearly squashed in a cuddle and kiss fest. Safe to say I am now looking for a frame so she can hang it in her room.

The copy+paste printable sheets are still available for download here.

Thank you so much for looking :)

Painted records.

Did you know you can paint on records? I found a couple of old records in a charity shop and decided I had nothing to lose. I used a cake decorating template for the flowers and white and pink acrylic paint.

You can use acrylic stamps too, as long as you dont over load the stamp and clean it straight away you can get some amazing detail on your records.

I have decorated my record so it is double sided, two layouts in one. I am wondering what else you could use to decorate records, any ideas very welcome.

Debbie x

Grungy Scrapping with Texture.

I love the grungy, inky style of crafting. I find this style is great for scrapping teenagers and it lends itself to the Goth/Emo look really well! 

 

Here I was scrapping black and white photos of one of my nieces (who was trying to avoid me taking photos Mwahahaha!). I upped the contrast of the photos to give a more arty look and I rubbed the edges of them with a sanding block for a distressed look. I continued the distressed look by roughing up the edges of the photo mats.

I kept with a black and white palate for the layout to give it a smart, funky look.

The papers are a mix of Theresa Collins, 7gypsies and October Afternoon.I ripped the papers and crumpled them, then over laid them and stitched them onto the base paper with my sewing machine.

 

I pleated a 1.5" strip of paper and stitched this along one edge for texture.

 

I used lots of different types of embellishments: I used several Tim Holtz journal tickets which I stamped on and inked with Distress Inks. I used Stampotique stamps and Stamper's Anonymous.

 

I used some stickers but added some dimension by sticking a Tim Holtz Fragment over the top.

 

I used the new Sizzix Alterations dies to cut some tags which I painted and then journalled on- I also cut some large flowers from Grungepaper and sheet music paper which I inked and added a decorative brad for the centre. I used the wonderful flying heart die- I cut the pieces from chipboard which I covered in some patterned paper. The top of the heart I covered with black embossing powder for a really deep, shiny black finish.

 

So that's my layout- I hope my Niece likes it although she might kill me for taking the photos!!

Happy Crafting!

Glittery Katie xxXxx

SIMPLE THINGS MAY *CREATE/CREATION*

It's Simple Things time again, and we've been working on the latest prompt, how the word inspires us, and what it sends us off to our craft spaces to produce.

Hiya Claire here, with my interpretation of Create.

This is my favourite page that I have made so far in this project,

I stamped this Stampotique image onto some Canvas (the stamp is called The Crafter)

I also found a Tim Holtz stamp that I did not know I owned that says.... Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. So that also got stamped onto some fabric. I also came across some KI memories stamps all related to creating, that I had forgotten I owned (I'm noticing a theme here)

I used a Sassafrass Lass stamp to create the border & Thickers for the title. I have ripped up the dictionary definition for this one & attached it to the bottom corner of the page with a brad... why? because I like Tim's definition better :D

Have fun Creating...

Claire

xx

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Hi, Debbie here with my interpretation of the word create. I couldnt find any quotes that I personally liked so I decided to make this page one which shows the things I like to use in scrapbooking at the moment.

I started off by using a mask to paint some white acrylic butterflies, and then when dry I lightly brayered over lime green and pale blue ink.

I decided that this was too pale so carried on stamping using butterfly theme stamps and brilliance ink pads.

I cut the butterfly front from black shiny paper and the back using photographic paper. I alcohol inked the photo paper using citrus green and stream.

The bird was cut out in cardstock and inked and stamped. The embellies (wings and butterflies) were made from utee, using my own moulds.

I added tiny adhesive letters to spell create and inked around the edge of the page using distress inks.

Debbie x

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Dolly here with my Create page.

I am sticking witht he theme of flowers and nature for my album and to some extent this month was the easiest and most obvious. The flower I chose this month has to be one of the most outrageous.

I couldn't get the phrase 'creation' out of my mind for this word and so began to search for a quote that said what I wanted.

I used bright papers to echo the showiness of the Psssion flower

Although it is a digital page, now it is printed out it looks very very dimensional.

I have to say I am loving this year long project and am staggered by the different ways everyone is takling it and interpreting it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Our reader, Cal, from Clearing the Brambles, continues with her loo roll tag book.

Last month her pages for Honesty looked like this:

and she said

" I opted for all journalling again on the tag - to remind me of a valuable lesson I learned about being honest. For my cover I used a green shimmer mist over paint. The photo doesn't pick up the shimmer well, but it's there! That combined with the glitzy Thickers shows how I think honesty is precious."

And then this month, when she saw the word CREATE, she said:

"Wow! There is an amazing amount of depth and meaning behind that one little word. I felt a little restricted by my chosen project format this month (the loo roll tag book) BUT decided to embrace the whole point of this project and get down what meaning I could in my words, colours, paper etc. I am continuing to LOVE this wonderful project!"

Thanks Cal, we love that you are joining in with us all!

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Hello, Eleanor here, with my favourite formal outfit for a smart occasion (I just love that red top-stitching on the black trousers):

I've always liked dressmaking, and made many outfits for my children as they were growing up. I still make myself new skirts each summer, aprons and bags too.

Combine that with my 45 year love affair with dress up dolls, and the word of the month, CREATE, and I came up with my quilt square this month. It's a stitched doll with a collection of clothes of printed cotton and felt, and wigs too. Girl or boy, long hair or short, and I can add to them as I have time, and more scraps of material.

(I'll have to make an extra quilt square as a wardrobe, or maybe a backpack, or a suitcase, watch this space...)

I used the basic doll shape from a cricut cartridge, (but I think I would design my own next time. Next time? teehee) outlined in back stitch, and the clothes are all backed with felt (either co-ordinating or contrasting) and topstitched so they can be used on the reverse as well.  

My creation this month shows my love of creating clothing, and is part of my art quilt creation, and fits the theme of CREATE. 

And it was great fun to make.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi from Caz!

I am once again humbled by the abolutely awesome work of my teamies. Aren't they a talented bunch :)

My CREATE page.

 

I loved creating a background of text, and plan to use this technique on scrapping pages too. You know one thing i've learnt while learning to art journal, is that this is a great format to try out new things. I think if I have tried a stamped 12x12 background I would have been totally overwhelmed by the size.

Thanks for visitng :)

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Hi, Mandy here...

This month I got inky & messy in the spirit of 'creating'....

 
 
 I wanted this page of my fabric book to have loads of texture, so I began by gathering together bits and pieces to glue onto a square piece of interfacing which was my 'base'...

 

I needed to use lots of watered down PVA glue, applied with a big brush...

 

I really enjoyed ripping the dressmakers tissue and pieces of medical tape, layering up lots of texture.  I found that I really needed to be liberal with the glue as it soaked into the interfacing base like a sponge!

 
  

Once totally dry I applied a coat of Gesso...

This is how the page looked once dry...

  

Then I got to work with Glimmer Mist & Cosmic Shimmer spray...

 
 

I used small dominoes (drilled with a 2mm teeny drill bit) for the title 'Create'.  I inked them with Alcohol Ink...

 

Then used rub-ons ...

I strung the dominoes with beads onto copper wire and sewed the wire to the page. 

 
  

 I also sewed a vertical row of beads down the left hand side of the page too ontop of the row of felt triangles.  Again using copper wire.

This fabric book has a famous quote for each monthly word and the quote I chose for this month said...

"Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual."

 By Arthur Koestler (novelist). 

This sums up how I feel at the moment about getting more messy with the things I'm creating.

I printed my quote onto canvas and sprayed it with Glimmer Mist & inked the edges.  I hung the tag, and finally attatched the base page into the actual fabric book with staples.

 

I enjoyed making this page for my SIMPLE THINGS fabric book.. however I didn't like all the waiting for stuff to dry!

Bye,

Mandy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi all Michelle here with my take on the word CREATE to add to my little treasure chest of Simple Things.

 Whenever I get 'stuck' with my creativity I look to my books, of which I have quite a few!!! As this is so often my point to spark creativity I thought about how I could condense this idea enough to fit inside my treasure chest of goodies and came up with a flash card idea. I use angel cards sometimes to answer questions and this is simply a pack of cards with messages on them and that seemed the perfect way to house my 'create' flash cards.

I made a card box and decorated it with an altered playing card and bits and pieces including a quote stamp from my pack of 'art quotes' invoke art stamps .... perfect for this project!

I then set about altering some more playing cards using my trusty mail file and alcohol inks. I added the music paper to continue the theme of the front of the card box.

On some of the cards I have used more of my art quote stamps.

And on others I have used black and white portraits of some of the artists that inspire me and added a coloured transparency of a piece of their work over the top, creating a layered collage. I then cold laminated each card to protect them and also to disguise them so I really don't know which card I am picking!

The result a pack of cards that I can turn to to kick off my creativity in the moments when the mojo won't play :)

I love seeing how all the creative girls have interpreted this months word and love seeing how this project is growing for all of us ... why not play along and show us what you CREATE!

Love M x

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This coming month we will be working on our new word

GRACIOUSNESS

See you soon.

x