Thinking ahead

Well, actually, I started off this afternoon by thinking back ... to around this time last year when we had a class, at my local crop, where we produced a christmas mini-book.  But we only produced the basic book, plus some decorated pages.  Whilst the idea was that we finished it last year, I decided to save mine for this year and to complete it, a page per day, this December.  So I thought I'd better have a sort-out of where I was up to and what I'd need to complete it - it is 1st December this coming Thursday after all (where HAS this year gone?!)

The book has a decorated chipboard cover

The pages are a mix of envelopes (I'll be putting receipts, recipes and other bits and pieces inside the envelopes and more interesting memorabilia on the outside) and shaped cardstock, all with gold inked edges

All pages have been decorated to some extent but I will be adding extra embellishments, photos, journalling blocks or whatever else seems appropriate.  I aim to complete a record of christmas, and the lead-up to it, this year.

As for thinking ahead ... thinking even further ahead, I've also been preparing a book to record the whole of next year.  It is A4 sized and the plan is to complete a double page for each month.  I want to include everyday stuff - photos of the garden, the weather, new shoes, the biscuits I baked ... the sort of humdrum stuff we often forget about.  I also want to use up some of my ScrapaGogo kits, so I'm going to make myself pick one kit per month and try to use mostly (or even only) stuff from that kit to complete the month's entry.  I'm hoping to produce a book to remind us what everyday life is like, to look back at in the future.

The chipboard covers are covered with Tim Holtz resist paper which has been coloured with distress stains and perfect pearls mists.  The numbers are American Crafts "Thickers" and I've also added a clockface rub-on, some tissue-tape and some charms plus a keyhole embellishemnt I found lying about in my stash.

I'm looking forward to working on this and will share one or two of the entries in it on here as I go through the year ...

A new art form

I saw an article in a scrapbook magazine about glue books - see an example here - and immediately wanted to have a go.  I have loads of paper scraps (many of them are because I do a lot of scrapping in 8x8 size so have paper left over from 12x12 sheets) and other bits and pieces and, although I keep them , full of good intentions to use them, I rarely do use them.

Also, I have seen lots of examples of art journalling and, although this artform intrigues me, I know it is not the type of thing I want to do right now, but something about it attracts me ... so when I saw the article on gluebooks, it immediately struck me as a form of art journalling, just with less paint and more paper.

So today I had my first go at creating a gluebook page (I don't have a book to put it in right now, so it's just on a loose piece of paper, but I know the type of book I want to buy and made sure this was the right size to go in it ...).  I found a beautiful scrap of paper that I didn't even know I had and used that as the main accent, cutting out a small accent image from it and layering it over another part of the paper.  I also used some small scraps of co-ordinating, less patterned papers, some definition stickers I forgot I had (this is turning out to be a good way to use long-forgotten stash!), a small scrap of lace, and then added some journalling.

I'm pretty pleased with my first effort and I can see all sorts of possibilities in this artform.  Although this one has a vintage feel and is mainly paper based, I've seen examples which are much brighter and more modern and I've seen some that use stamped images or parts of photos.  I think I shall be experimenting in future weeks, but first I need to buy a book to put this in ... I feel an internet shopping spree coming on ... 

Remebrance

The CJ that arrived a couple of weeks ago had the title "Scrap the month" and an invitation to scrap anything at all that reminded us of the particular month we were in.  My initial thought, as it arrived in early November, was to do something about fireworks, but I thought that was a little "obvious".  Then I remembered my grandfather, who died earlier this year, and who was a radio operator in bomber planes in World War 2, and decided to combine memories of him with the acts of Remembrance in November (Armistice Day and Remembrance Sunday).  The only photo I had of him in uniform was at his wedding, but I love it as it makes it more personal.

O Christmas tree ..

 I recently bought an intricately laser cut 3D bare chipboard christmas tree and yesterday I had a go at decorating it.

I started off colouring the whole thing using a distress stain (peeled paint).  Then I used various distress inks (shabby shutters, crushed olive, bundled sage and forest moss) all over it to create a less "solid" colour - lots of texture and subtle variation in colour. 

I found a couple of old metallic ink pads that were beginning to dry out a little, and they were ideal for dabbing around the edges to add little hints of gold and copper

Finally I sprayed the whole thing with a gold perfect pearls mist and then painted the star gold using acrylic paint.

I have some little mini bells that I want to tie to the branches but don't have suitable ribbon/cord yet.  I'll take another photo once I've been shopping ...