Tag Friday for A Vintage Journey

 Hello friends, - it's the last Friday of the month and that means that when it's a month with 5 Fridays, like this one, we have a Tag Friday over at A Vintage Journey.

Well, tags are always fun to make and as I was making a tag to add to a journal anyway, I decided to play along.

I started by creating the leave that I wanted to use as the focal point for my tag. On some strong card I played around with my Distress Inks and Sprays until I had more or less the colour I wanted, and then I cut and embossed the leave with one of Tim Holtz's 3D Embosslets (at least I think that's what they are called).

Next I glued a couple of old book pages together to give them some strength, cut out a tag shape and then zig zagged around it with my sewing machine.

The final steps were to add some scraps of paper and other collage elements that were flying around my desk, including the leave of course and then I just inked around the edges and that was it. I'll leave you with some more photos and if you would like to get some further tag inspiration, do head over to A Vintage Journey

to see the fabulous tags my teamies have created.

Thanks for your visit, stay safe and happy crafting!

xxxxx

Card tutorial for A Vintage Journey, some journal pages and a collaboration freebie

 Hello friends,

Today I am posting an extensive card tutorial on the A Vintage Journey Blog. This is what it looks like:

For the focal image of the card, which in fact turned into the cover of an Autumn journal I am working on, I used one of the girls from the freebie you can find at the end of this post. This freebie was created in collaboration with my friend Marjie Kemper. She is a wonderful mixed media artist that runs a number of online classes including a recently started Mixed Media Art Membership Group in which she offers a resource library too. It was for that resource library that she asked me to create the freebie, which links to one of the monthly challenges that are also part of this group. There is currently a waiting list to join, but if you are new to mixed media, I'm sure it would be worth joining the group. (I am not a member myself, but have done classes with Marjie in the past and have met her in person, and can assure you she is a wonderful person and amazing artist).

Below I will show you how I used the card in the end for my journal cover, and also some pages, using some of the freebie images and other pages from last week's freebie and my latest Etsy collection

Here you can see the cover, created with strong Kraft card and covered with some paper from my stash. And below some of the inside papers, decorated with a whole mixture of things, some altered journal cards using bits and bobs from my stash, some stamping and some elements from my collection on Etsy. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Well, that's it as far as the journal is concerned, so here is the freebie, and like usual, if you want to get a high resolution copy, just email me.

If you are interested to find out how I made the journal topper, do head over to A Vintage Journey

That's it for today, thanks for your visit and happy creating!

xxxxx

Friday Freebie and a mini tutorial

 Hello friends,

Today I have a little project to share with you and a freebie as the title of this post would suggest.

The project is a little notebook, (roughly passport size) created with help of my latest collection on Etsy. This little notebook will become part of a larger journal I am working on. More on that at some later stage. To be honest, the freebie was created, because I wanted some more embellishments to go with the collection, so now you can enjoy them, whether you decide to get the collection or not 😄

The notebook cover was made with a little file folder that is part of the collection. I cut it out, sewed around the edges, folded it in half and then made some inside pages with the help of a mix of papers from the collection and some coffee dyed paper. I sewed them in with a simple 3 hole pamphlet stitch.

A double page with some of the elements that come with the collection and a pocket, which is the height of the pages, created with coffee dyed thicker (160gms) paper.

Another double page. Since putting this booklet together, I have toned down the music behind the roses, as I found it too harsh, so this paper in the collection is now slightly different...

Another pocket created with coffee dyed paper and decorated with some lace and one of the embellishments that comes with the collection.

And here a final page with another pocket made in a similar way, and one of the tags that fits inside.

And here finally is the freebie, like usual, if you want the high resolution version, please email me.

Sorry for this extra step, but the high res version is too large a file to upload here directly.

Well, that's it for now. Next week I will be back with some pages from the larger journal and a very different freebie. Meanwhile:.....

Happy crafting and stay safe

xxxxx

Altered accordion file folder for A Vintage Journey #94

 Hello lovely visitors, the first Friday of the month has come round at that means a new challenge at A Vintage Journey. Our host this month is my lovely and talented friend Annie and she has chosen Numbers as her theme. I created a little file folder with accordion pockets inside and filled it with ephemera, all featuring numbers of course.

Here you see the folder and all the ephemera, mostly made from scraps, that fit inside. But before I go on, let's see what Annie has to say about her challenge:

"Numbers is our challenge theme for this month and we would like to see them being a focal point in your entries. 

You can use stencils, die cuts, fussy cuts or rub ons, rust them up, use texture paste or paint them, the decision is yours as long as the numbers are prominent. Just remember to create your project in one of our preferred styles: vintage, shabby, mixed media, art journaling, industrial, timeworn or steampunk."

Well, my little file folder started from a new collection on my Etsy shop, I cut it and sewed around the edges, so it looked like this:

Next I added some texture with the help of one of my Tim Holtz stencils and texture paste and when that had dried added scraps of rice paper, diecuts, some stamping and of course lots of inking with Distress Inks, so now it looks like this:

For the inside I added an accordion pocket folder, there are many different ways of doing this, but I used a very easy method: I folded 3 A4 pieces of paper in half length wise, laid them on top of each other and then cut them to the width and height of the folder, making sure the fold was at the bottom. I glued the the left and right side of each together, to form pockets and then glued them on top of each other by running a strip of glue around the middle of each. The first and last one were then glued to the folder, so it looks like this:

Then the real fun started, with creating all the pockets and ephemera that fit inside. I am still in the process of making more of them, but here are just some photos of a few of them.

The pocket of this one is made from a large circle, cut with a circle die. I found a tutorial on Youtube on how to make pockets like this, without using a die, you can find it HERE if you are interested.

Here is a different example, in a more shabby chic style. Because of the theme of our challenge, I added numbers of course as part of my embellishing, numbers really are so versatile and always add a fun touch I think.

This photo shows a little book I made to fit in one of the pockets. Below you can see the inside of that.

Here finally is a pocket made from old book pages. Again, there are numerous examples of how to do pockets similar to this on Youtube, so I won't write a long tutorial for that here.

I finished my folder by closing it with some ribbon and added a charm, it could make a lovely gift for someone who is into junk journaling.

Well that's it for now, hopefully you feel inspired to join our challenge and if you have not done so yet, do visit A Vintage Journey to see what all my talented teamies have created.

Thank you for visiting like always and happy October, - stay safe!!