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

Of Colour and Fabric and things....

Hello all and thanks for dropping in.

It's been a while since I did some more in my technique's journal, but today I am sharing another page.

It started with a size 8 manilla tag that I covered in cotton calico fabric. I then added some swirls with Ranger clear embossing paste through one of Tim's stencils to act as a resist for the colours.

Colour was added with Distress sprays, they turned a bit dark, I probably should have wetted the fabric first....

Next I stamped the Indigoblu blazing poppies stamp on thin paper fussy cut parts of it and coloured it with Distress ink (Fossilized Amber). I highlighted some of the small flowers with a white gel pen.

I stamped the same stamp again but this time just fussy cut the flowers and a couple of the leaves and gave them a slightly deeper tone in the centre for more depth. Before adhering them to the layer below I added a tiny bit of stained cheese cloth. I also stamped and coloured a butterfly, I have no idea any more who made that stamp, sorry. The background page was created with a mix of Decoart and Distress paints and stencilled with Archival inks

The final stage was to add another butterfly, this one is from the Tim Holtz butterfly duo that has its own embossing folder.

And here finally is the finished page in my journal

Well, that's it for today. Thanks for your visit like always and have a wonderful weekend!

Make your own background

Make your own background is the theme at Countryview Challenges and today I am posting my second project created for the challenge.

Well this theme was easy as I mostly make my backgrounds anyway, but for this project I wanted to try something a little different....
It all started with a size 10 tag.

I gave it a coat of gesso and then played around with a mix of acrylic paints, - Antique Linen Distress, a bit of Peacock Feathers Distress and some Golden Paynes Grey (this particular brand has a blueish tone, which I rather like).

Next I did some stenciling with gesso and a couple of different stencils, - when that was dry I did further stenciling with Watering Can Archival ink, bringing in some further stencils.

It all got a bit busy, so by that point I decided to use the tag as the background to a vintage collage.

Here you can see some of the elements I collected and stamped to add to my collage.

And here you can see the finished collage. The lady is from the 7 Dots Studio Cool Country collection. As you can see I also added a die cut,  the word Authentic from the Tim Holtz Adventure Thinlits die set and the word love which comes from a Prima vintage trinkets collection.
Well when the tag was pretty much complete I decided I was going to make it part of a next page in my Techniques Journal. Earlier pages can be seen HERE,  HERE and HERE.
So I made the background to the page for that, using similar colours and a stencil to integrate the tag into the background.

I kept it much simpler as the tag would cover most of it anyway. I just added a few strips of tissue tape and an old book page to add a bit of interest in the corner that would not be covered.

I also did a tiny bit of background stamping with a text stamp.

Below finally you can see the tag on its background.

I die cut the word Journey from the same die set, placing it partly over the tag, to integrate the two elements together a bit more still and make it all part of a whole.

I pounced a bit of ink on the little Prima plaque still

And here is another little detail still, the bottle stamped from the Tim Holtz Mercantile stamp set and a little label tied to its neck with some twine.

Here finally you can see the whole piece in situe in my journal.

Well that's it and this is actually also my very last project as part of the Countryview Crafts Design Team. I have very much enjoyed being part of the team, but life is taking me in different directions so I felt it was time to move on.....

There are however still a couple of days left to join into the challenge, you can find all the details here

Thank you for your visit like always and I hope you enjoyed my little background experiment.

Butterfly Dreams

Hello all, thanks for dropping by. Today I finally have another page for my techniques journal to show. No step by step for most of these pages I'm sorry to say, as I am mostly just using this journal to play around with different techniques.

Above you can see the finished page, mostly put together with bits and pieces from my scrap box that never seems to get any emptier, - do you know that feeling?

Here you can see the background before I added the collage elements. Playing with different colour paints, my favourite stencil of the moment, one of Seth Apter's ones and some background stamping, using various IndigoBlu stamps.

The focal image was taken from one of the Tim Holtz Found relatives

Both sentiments were taken from a paper collection from Heartfelt Creations as far as I remember (like I said they were scraps from my box of "bits and pieces that might come in handy at some point")....

We don't normally think of boys having butterfly dreams I suppose, but I rather do like the dreamy look in his eyes, and after all, boys can have dreams too can't they?

Well, that's it for today, - just a bit of playing around, great for relaxation....

Thanks for your visit today and I hope you are having a good week.