I am very honored to be sharing with everyone today. I have posted my first video as a guest design team member for Ephemera's Vintage Garden. The project is a Bible cover made from a recycled pair of jeans and digital papers from Ephemera's Vintage Garden designed by Debbie Anne Parent. Debbie's work is phenomenal. I cannot say enough good things about the items available from her Etsy Store. They are all so pretty. The digital paper pack that I used was Love and Romance. Just click on the name of the pack to go directly to the paper on Debbie's Etsy store. While you are there, make sure you check out her other digital goodies as well.
I have an inkjet printer (Epson Artisan), which took me a little while to adjust to from my vintage Lexmark, but I love this printer. Now some would say that an inkjet printer is not the best to print digital files, but I say the papers are just as beautiful no matter if you use an inkjet or a laser printer. There is one draw back to the inkjet if you want to use any type of wet media though, where as a laser printer printouts are waterproof the inkjet prints are not. I have a solution though that I just found. This magical product is Microglaze by Judikins (this link is to Amazon, but Walmart.com also carries this product). This little pot of waxy goodness makes inkjet prints awesome. It seals the prints and you can use Diamond Glaze, Glossy Accents, Resin, Collage Pauge, etc, etc. The print stays put and the ink does not run when sealed with Microglaze. This product also seals your stamped images.
So, I made a video of my project and in the video I explain how I made the bible cover and the journal. I hope you enjoy the video. I encourage questions and feedback.
Thanks for stopping by today. I will have more projects in the next month with more videos to follow, so I hope you can stop in again. I hope you are enjoying your week!
Me? Organized? Never going to happen to my satisfaction and maybe that is what is wrong. I need to re-visit my satisfaction levels. But, isn't this a lot of women's dilemmas, enough is never enough? So, over the years of working at a desk in corporate America (and a need to recycle all those boxes that are thrown away everyday), I designed a desk organizer. I have given these as gifts over the years and designed one that I used on my desk for some of those years. This is the newest one that I made. The step-by-step is long and intrusive, so I will give a short version.
I also have been enjoying STAMPtember over at Simon Says Stamp. Great projects, challenges and giveaways this week. Check out all of the goodies and blog hop going on right now!
The box is a rectangle that held chlorine for the pool. I covered the box with Tyvek paper and then painted the paper. I then covered that with two colors of StampinUp! card stock. I stamped the card stock with Versamark and a StampinUp! wheel. I stamped the Bible verse and embossed with clear embossing powder. The butterfly and bee were stamped and hand painted. The Pen holder is a small recycled can covered with stamped card stock. I cut a piece of white fun foam to fit the bottom of the can and the bottom of the organizer. The flower image I hand painted on the front and the sides.
I have a lot of fun working on these. Unfortunately, I no longer have a pool, so I no longer get these boxes and I have gone through my stash. I am now looking for any subs I can find, so far no luck. I have moved onto a large desk organizer/postal center that I will post soon. I am building this one from the ground up out of card board. Time will tell. Here are some pictures of the first one I made that sat on my desk.
I had also made a clipboard and little notepad to go with this green set.
Hope everyone had a great Labor Day weekend. I am still waiting for cool weather here in Texas. This week the average high will be about 104 degrees. Stay cool everyone!
Enjoy and God bless!
Weekly Scripture
"I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved." Psalms 16:8
Digital files are all the rage these days in the scrapbook/crafting world. I made a journal from pages that I printed from a digital file. Marion Smith has some of the most beautiful digital journal files I have ever seen. She had a challenge for her Cottage Chic Mini Book this last month. I submitted my journal that I made with her designs and I did so via YouTube and I want to share my experience with this project.
To be honest I have always been skeptical of digital files. I have printed some freebies out that have not been very "clean" digitally and I have an inkjet printer. So when thinking about printing out 12+ pages of digital imagery, you want everything perfect so you're not printing over and over to get a "good" print. Well, Prima has freebies on their facebook page every week. Marion had a file for her new Romance Novel paper line with Prima, so I decided to print it out. I was so impressed with the file that I knew I had to get the Cottage Chic Mini Book even with my inkjet printer.
I cannot say enough good things about Marion's digital files. Every one is beautiful, digitally clean and easy to print. The best part is you can print as many copies as you want. Say you have 10 friends that you want to make journals for as gifts, you can print 10 copies. There is not a limit on how many you can print. When you purchase the paper pads at the store, you only get (at the most) 3 sheets of each print. So you would need 4 paper pads! Ouch! Now you say what about the card and ink that you use with your printer? So much cheaper than the paper pads. I just purchased index card weight cardstock, 250 count, for less than $8. Printer ink is expensive, but I printed my whole Cottage Chic Mini on the color ink cartridge low ink warning and I am still printing in color.
To sum up my experience, I love Marion's digital designs. I would recommend these to anyone looking for quality digital designs.
In the journal I did a lot of stamping. I painted this dress form with black acrylic, Martha Stewart black glitter, and Liquid pearls. The dress form is a two piece form from Mini Album Scraps ning site. I then made a number of different pockets to handle all of the tags from Marion and multiple freebie websites. The two butterfly tags are stamped images that I stamped in Stazon Black and then colored with colored pencils.
I have attached my video below. I go through the mini pretty quickly, so if you have any questions, please leave me a comment. Hope you enjoy and go check out Marion Smith Designs.
It's been awhile, so I thought I would post my art journal page that I submitted to the Limor1278 MM July Contest on her Facebook group page. I have a Glitz stamp set that I love the quote stamp in by Audrey Hepburn, "Happy girls are the prettiest!" It's sooo true. Beauty comes from deep within.
For the page, I first layered 4 or 5 torn scrapbook paper pieces and covered the whole page. I then white washed with gesso. I tried a couple of masks from Prima with Tsukineko color sprays. I then tried a mask with some green acrylic paint, which didn't work. So, I washed the whole page with the green, which I liked and brought out the two other masks I used first. I then grabbed a Crafter's Workshop stencil and using Black Soot Distress Ink, stenciled the while page.
I then decided to try drawing a girl again. She's not perfect by far, but I kind of like her. For her clothing I created a pattern and cut from Prima scrapbook paper (Alla Prima & Annalee). Her neck area I cut from Alla Prima as well. I then colored her face and hair with Distress Inks and Tsukineko color sprays. I cut her headband from the Annalee paper to match her pants. Inked edges and put together.
I stamped with Black Stazon the Audrey Helpburn quote and then from Prima the Beauty and Style stamps. I decided that she needed shoes, but she has no feet.......hmmmmm?! Ok, it's the end of the day and she is headed for the beach, she can carry her shoes. These were stamped with a Prima stamp on a paper from the Annalee Prima line.
I had fun creating this page while watching the Olympics. I have been behind with the Tim Holtz monthly tag challenge and hope to get caught up soon. I am currently working on a journal that I will show soon.
Okay, so it's been a long while since I have posted. I have been hanging at home basically due to my disability now. I have been able to do a little each day at a desk or crafting. I always choose crafting over the computer. It's only been about year now since I have been able to craft for about 2 hours a day a couple times a week, so I am so thankful that I am able again.
Well, I want to share a page that I created for a journal I made in January. The journal was for Marion Smith's 31 Day Challenge 2012. We were to make a daily page for a journal and take a picture about our life or whatever we wanted. So this is one of the pages that I made from white card stock and stamps. Hope you enjoy. So my goal is to do more blogging this year. I have also been hanging out on Pinterest, which is the best find this year so far. I have just posted my first video tutorial on Youtube and plan on continuing the videos too. Hope everyone has had a wonderful start to 2012 with more blessings coming. Enjoy!
