Butterfly freebie ideas used in my journal

Hello friends, thanks for joining me here today. Can you believe it, two new posts, in one week... Yes it looks as if I may start using blogger a bit more again. In my previous post I offered you a freebie and today I want to show you a few options of how you can use it. I think the photos pretty much speak for themselves, but if you have any questions, I am always happy to answer.

all pages in this journal are made with coffee dyed paper.

Here you can see the butterfly a bit more clearly, I really used them mostly as embellishments. Stencils are by Tim Holtz

Here I used a smaller one to decorate a pocket

I often like to add extra little notebooks to my journals, to give more space for more journaling, quotes or like here a space to add things you are grateful for, or as you can see in one of the photos above to make notes.

This journal is far from finished, so stay tuned for further ideas and on the left of the photo above, you can see some little tags from a freebie that will be coming your way soon.

Most of the other pages, pockets etc are made with papers from collections that are available in my Etsy Shop

Well, thats it for now and like always, happy crafting and creating, and thanks for dropping by.

xxxxx

Techniques Journal for the Mini Album Makers challenge blog (a project in progress)

Hello lovely visitors and happy February!! Today sees the start of a new challenge over on the Mini Album Makers challenge blog, and here is my book. The blogosphere no doubt will soon be filled with Valentines themed projects, and in fact I will be posting one later today, - but here is something very different, a techniques journal.

This is obviously the cover and in a moment I will show you more about how I put it together. But the main part of my project are the inside pages, consisting of accordion pages with special inserts to keep notes.  I saw something similar on pinterest, thought it a great idea and so created my own version. The original I saw was made from one large sheet of watercolour paper, which I don't have, so I made mine from individual double pages which I made into an accordion by taping them together with washi tape.

So far so good, now for the inserts, - I cut separate double pages from squared paper plus drawing paper (to protect the notes from the other pages, which might otherwise rub off on them.

I then used the simlest of bookbinding techniques, the 3 hole one, to insert them into the accordion.
And below you can see how they were sewn into the main accordion, I put one little insert in every  valley, but oly on one side, the other side was left as a normal accordion.

With the main structure of the album in place, it was time to start working on the cover. I cut 3 pieces of thick mat board, slightly larger than the inside pages, for the front, back and a separate piece for the spine, covered them in some of my favourite scrapbook papers and then glued them together as you can see below

I did this by scoring the spine about a quarter inch from each side, glued the one side to the front and the other to the back and that was it, so simple. Here is the inside:

I put washi tape around the edges and then covered the spine and back page with black paper. The front inside does not need to be covered as the first side of the accordion is glued to that, thus attacching the inside to the cover. In order that the accordion can fold out, do not adhere it to the pack page, otherwise your accordion would not fold out anymore!!
To decorate the front, I first added some stenciling with transparent texture paste, highlighted the raised bits with some gilding paste when dry and then added some further embellishments:

First  I added some strips of bookpaper, a Tim Holtz metal plate with the word imagine inserted and a pen nib. Then I melted some Ancient Silver embossing powder round about and finally  added some flowers.

On the bottom half I just added some shadows to make the ink bottle that was on the paper (Blue Fern Collection) pop a little more.

Now finally to the inside pages. I have done 5 pages so far. They are all similar but subtly different and I will show you  photos of my notes in the inserts, so you can see te steps I used at the end.

page 1

page 2

page 3

page 4

page 5

And here is a picture of the notes describing how I put them together:

I am sorry, they are not easy to read, but if by any chance you want to know more, just contact me.

There are many more pages to be done, but below I show you a few pictures still of how I finished some of the pages so far:

I used a mix of collage elements, fussy cut stamps and die cuts.

Here is the next double page next to the first insert.

Creating an accordion with inserts like this, gives you tons of space, so far I have only done about a quarter of all the pages.

I attached a lable to the back of the spine still (the die is from the Eileen Hull Book Box die) and that was pretty much it.

Here you can see the accordion inside the cover, ready to fill with furher techniques.

Now, before I sign off, I just want to mention a super giveaway we have going on to celebrate the launch of our new Facebook and Instagram pages:

To read all the details of the giveaway, just click here

Well thanks for saying with me for this very long post and Happy February!

Please hop over to the Mini Album Makers Challenge blog to see the amazing albums my teamies have created and do join us by showing us your own books and albums!

Thanks for your visit like always,

xxxxx

Mini Album Makers November challenge (plus some freebies)

Hello friends, can you believe it is actually November already? Where has the year gone....?
Well, it's the first of the month and that means there is a new challenge starting over at the Mini Album Makers challengge blog.
So here is my contribution for this month's challenge:

Whether we like it or not,  Christmas is only a few weeks away. We all know what a busy time of year lies ahead, and so I thought I would make myself a littlle Christmas planner. I am including some freebie pages in this post, so if you want to, you can download those to make your own. But first let me tell you how I made mine.

I'll start with the cover: I used the Eileen Hull Mini Album Die and cut the cover from white mount board to which I had added some scrapbook paper. Next I coloured both sides using a mix of Archival and Distress inks, did some spritzing and flicking and finally added a little gold foiling, using a gluestick and some Ranger foil.

On the back I added a little angel left over from another project. It was cut with a Tim Holtz Movers and Shapers die. The nodges you see on the top and bottom were cut by me. Eileen's Passport die has nodges like that, which I like because it makes adding inserts easier, so if I want I can print more of the inside pages and add them later.

I added some Tim Holtz charms to the spine and my inside pages are attached using an elasticated ribbon glued and twisted around some black elastic. I'll show you more in a minute, but first the embellishments:

I made the poinsettia using the Tim Holtz Poinsettia die cut from some Wendy Vecchi Clearly for Art and coloured it with alcohol ink. I glued a brad in the centre and added some little berries around (making a bit of a mess). Next I added some cheesecloth with gel medium, having coloured it with Distress sprays to match the rest of my cover first. I then arranged some metal branches, berries and leaves round about my poinsettia and glued everything to the cover with hot glue. A light coat of gesso was added to it all to give it a bit of a frosty look.

Finally I added the title with little stickers, but as I had no numbers left I had no choice but to add the year with a black and white pen, not too happy with that, but too late to do anything about it.

The album closes using the tab that comes with the die and a little magnet.
Alright onto the inside: I designed some papers in Photoshop Elements, printed them and then cut them with the die. HERE is a link to a video where Eileen shows exactly how to do that.

And here a few more of the pages:

I darkened the edges with some Vintage Photo DI, and put a little key in the centre attached to the end bit of the ribbon, so it can act like a little bookmark.

Well, that is pretty much it. Below you will find the freebies for the inside pages, for those of you who want to have a go yourself.

If you don't have the die, you can of course still use the papers, just print, cut with a trimmer, round the corners if you want and fold in half. In any case make sure to print them two sided, otherwise you land up with every other page being white once you have folded them, you may want that of course, and add your own notes or whatever you want.

Well, that's it for now, - sorry for this very long post, but please make sure to check out our challenge and see the wonderful books and albums my talented teamies have created. And if you decide to play along again, you could win a $25 voucher from Lindy's Stampgang!!!

    Have a good month of November, - happy crafting and creating and thank you so much for your visit here today!

xxxxx