Paper, Scissors, Rock! - A Selfmade Art Journal

I told you in my last post that I only took some watercolours, pencils and some paper with me....well, today I really took my "holiday stash" to its limits (and a bit further ;)

Sadly the weather causes me a lot of headaches again, so I was not too keen on walking out into the hot summer sun or lying on the beach today... which led to my very first selfmade art journal.

As my son loves to draw and craft too, we always take some glue, scissors and paper with us when we leave for our summer vacation. We also have a travellers sewing kit with us, just in case a button comes off... well, all of this came in quite handy today. ;)

I started my journal by tearing two sheets from my drawing block into six pieces of same size. Then I folded them in half.

I tore all the edges too as I did not want any cut off looking edges with my journal.

That reduced some of the pages' width of course, but I think it was worth it as I wanted my journal to look torn and worn all over.

Then I "stained" my pages using the watercolours brushing, dripping and sqishing them through puddles of paint which I simply made on the kitchen desk ;)

To avoid having my pages blown away during drying time on the balcony I put some weights on them - using some of the fossil stones we found some days ago.

The worm traces look beautiful, don't they? I am always fascinated by the idea that they have been lying there for thousands of years - waiting to be found by my son, DH and me....

I remember, when I first found one of these (being a little girl then) I thought I had found imprints of fossile grass... later I learned that these are traces made by tiny organisms... a kind of "wormholes" they dug into the mud before time transformed it into stone.

While my pages dried, I created the book cover from some cardboard (from a cookie box), some newspaper and a page from an old nature science book I found at a church fleamarket some days ago.

As you can see I added some washes of colour to the book page for more depth.

The bookplate was made from a scrap of the same page, which I tore to size and stamped the title onto. Then I painted a border using shades of brown, lilac and orange.

I glued the bookplate to the cover and let all dry.

Using a crack in the balcony's wooden rail, I punched five holes for my sewn binding using nail scissors ;)

Then I used the "first aid" sewing kit (from a hotel from our studies trip to Turkey) for the binding.

I glued the first and last pages to the book's cover. Done!

The first page shows a sketch of one of the fossils I used ;)

I used an Indian Ink pen.

Sadly the light was gone, when I wanted to make some more shots of the finished journal...I hope you will forgive me for the dark pictures:

I enter this journal into the "Wings and Things" challenge over at Vintage Stamping challenges. 
And last but not least an image showing the things I used for creating my journal:

Holiday Journaling

As some of you may already know, I am off on holidays in the beautiful Austrian Salzkammergut.

Today we had a wonderful day at the lake and I went swimming, enjoyed the lovely view at the Höllengebirge (transl.: "Hell Mountains" ;) and tried to capture some of it in a watercolor painting. (Watercolors and my HeroArts letter stamp set are the only things I have been taking with me .... I thought that some aquarell painting exercising wood definitely do me some good ;)


As you can see, when the painting was finished I decided to add some written thoughts and script stamping, to create a kind of journal page.

As I am totally unexperienced with art journaling, I hope you like it anyway!

I hope you are all doing well and have a wonderful creative time!

Hugs,

die amelie - Claudia x

12 tags of 2013 - August

Hah! I managed to do the August tag from Tim Holtz' "12 tags of 2013" before we leave on holls! And as I LOVE masking I loved the August tag tutorial too!

Here comes my take on the August tag 2013:

I loved that Tim made more than just one tag and took his idea a bit further. My three tags come with a tag shaped fold pocket that is held together by idea-ology tissue tape and double sided tape (on the insides of the pockets).

Once you take them out the tags look like this:

I followed his tutorial very closely this time and had a lot of fun. I hope you like the result too!

Hugs,

die amelie x

Edit: I just realized that this one works well with Frilly and Funkie's "Anyway you fold it" challenge too! (even though it is a rather simple fold) :D

Time Traveler - an "all Tim Holtz" multi-fold tag ;)

Frilly and Funkie have a great challenge at the moment - "Any way you fold it"! The DT came up with awesome pieces and they really inspired me to give this one a try! (Thank you, ladies ;)

I played around a little with the possibilities of a multi-fold tag and finally came up with a template I really liked. Using it I created this multi-fold tag:

But before I show you the insides,  here's the template:

I used a wonderful calendar sheet from one of my Tim Holtz paper stashes and the Sizzix Alterations Tim Holtz "Tag & Tie" die for this. But for my first try for a template I took an upright DIN A4 size sheet of white card and drew a horizontal line at the middle of it using my set square . Then I marked the three widths of the middle and the side tags. The one in the middle measures 5,5 mm, the two to the sides 5,3 mm.

Then I drew four verticals at these marks, paying attention to maintain perfect right angles. Afterwards I sketched in the hights of the upper and lower tag sections, which measure 12 cm. I cut this to size (having a rectangle with one horizontal and two vertical lines in it). Then I creased all the folds using a folding tool - first to one side and then to the other. The left wing was folded to the back of the center panel and the right to the front as a cover. Finally I folded the lower section upwards so it was on top.

I put this paper sandwhich onto the sizzix die, paying attention that it was centered and that only the upper section of the tag would be cut (all the rest of the folded paper should be "inside" the tag's cutting shape (therefore we made it some mm smaller than the actual size of the tag)).

Only after I was sure that this template really worked, I drew it once again - this time onto my Tim Holtz paper - and "sizzix-ed" it.

Voila:

Then I cut off a part of the lower left tag section, leaving a lid to build a pocket with by glueing it to the upper tag section later (after inking all the edges).

I folded my tag again the way I could insert just the lower right section into my sizzix and die cut a border (I used the Tim Holtz On The Edge die "Iron Fence"). This piece was meant to form a pocket later.

Next I blended all the edges with DI "gathered twigs". Then I glued the two pockets.

The vertical pocket lid was stamped with my favourite pointing hand image to add more interest. I stamped one of the great gentlemen onto a TH journaling ticket and blended the edges too. Then I inserted it into the pocket (and glued it in place).

This is how the tag unfolds once you pull off the ribbon:

The cover (well, actually the whole tag) was stamped with TH stamps and embellished with idea-ology  and chit chat stickers.

When you fold the cover down, you reveal the back of the right tag:

Here you can see the pocket made from the lower tag panel, which now holds another ticket.

As my multi-fold tag is all about life, lifetime travel and time travel (which sometimes can all feel the same ;), I chose clocks, compasses and theme related chit chat stickers for the designs of the single tags.





All folded out, the inner/front side of the tag looks like this:

The compass and the key were die cut from grunge paper using the TH "mini pocket watch and key" dies. The compass was painted using Distress stains "tarnished brass", stamped and heat embossed with black embossing powder. For the key I used Fran-tage "aged copper" embossing enamel.

The alarm clock shape was a gift from dear Rosie. Thank you, Rosie!

The rotating clock hand is fixed with the same brad that also holds the metal flower in place on the other side of this tag.

For a finish I added some chit chat stickers and fixed the "pocket compass" to the middle tag with a silver chain, that I had toned down with alcohol inks first.



I overcooked the key during the heat embossing process, which gave it a really worn look:

Done!

This is how the tag looks seen from the other side:

 

I hope you like it (and I also hope that I explained the how-to rather understandable...but if not, you will surely find out on your own by folding until you have the single tags where you want them to have in and in what order you want them to have...the possibilities are almost endless (well, hubby, who is a mathematician would tell you that there are exactly 6x4x2 ways to fold your tag ...yes, I asked him even though "almost endless" always works well for me *lol). Really important is, that you have exact right angles and your folded paper is smaller than the die's measurements, so you only cut the shape of the tag's top.

Thanks for stopping by and have fun!

Hugs,
die amelie x

Steampunk Notes and a swap!

I had the great pleasure to do a swap with awesomely talented Candy Colwell lately and today is the day we both chose for showing to you what we swapped with each other.

 As you may well remember - if you have already visited my blog yesterday - she is our fabulous guest designer this month at SanDee&amelie's Steampunk Challenges! Yay!

All those who haven't already seen what she made for our August challenge "Matchbox Steampunk" - hop over to our challenge blog or to her blog to see the absolutely fantastic make of hers!!!

 She also created an awesome project for me! A truly terrific Steampunk note book!!!

It's soooo fantastafabuliciously great, isn't it? :)
The inside comes with beautiful papers and an envelope to store some tiny notes in too!!! I LOVE that! 

Loads of yummy texture and detail on the outside:

And the magnifying glass with the awesome portait of a gentleman wearing a top hat is the perfect eye-catcher! Yippeeh! And it's all MINE! *lol


But not enough - Candy also sent some wonderful goodies along with her fabulous note book:

Loads of great ephemera, ribbons, buttons and paper treasures AND also some fab metal embellishments. WOW!

It felt like Christmas (maybe even better!) when I unwrapped all the treasures she had sent me! What a terrific parcel to receive!! Thank you so much, Candy!!! (I already used some of the goodies you sent me *giggle...but I as I did use them on a DT project I cannot show you before 1st of September (yes, I am a well prepared crafting girl *lol).

I also had sent her an altered steampunk note book (but only about half the size of hers *lol). I really wanted to make something very special for her and when she told me that she liked it, I was very happy!  (I am still so very proud and happy that she wanted to do this swap with me as I am a great admirer of all of her work ;).

It took me some days to figure out what I wanted to create for our swap, but when I stumbled upon a little notebook (a free gift from my favourite "Schloss-Hotel", Burg Bernstein) and a folding yardstick from the 1Euro store, the project started to take shape in my imagination finally....

I cut the folding yardstick (with old large scissors) to pieces, alcohol inked them and  sanded them down afterwards for later use.

Then I covered the booklet with some papers from my Tim Holtz stash on the in- and outsides, leaving the paper with the inside of the booklet's back cover a little wider than the actual size of the cover so I could glue one of the yardstick pieces to it.

The edges of the front and back covers were distressed using a carpet knife. After that I blended the edges with DI "gathered twigs" and "rusty hinge".








  For the two "inventors" images behind the screens
on the front and back covers I first gessoed a page from an old book, then stamped the three inventors from the Artistic Outpost "French Flight" sheet onto it using Memento archival ink "rich cocoa" and tore them to three pieces, blending the edges with DI "gathered twigs" (one of my new favourites from the DI range).






I cut two screens from acetate (mostly packaging material from my Sizzix dies) and treated them with various alcohol inks. After they had dried I sanded the edges with a sanding tool and scratched the surface with the Tim Holtz "retractable scratching tool".



I mounted them together with the stamped images and some layers of heavily distressed ribbons to the booklet using brads and glue.


Both parts of the metal latch were glued to the cover and the yardstick using strong crafting glue made especially for use with wood, metal or plastic.

The gear and the yardstick piece on the front cover were also glued in place after
stamping and heat embossing the Paper Artsy "gears" image using Ranger "rust" embossing enamel and the heat tool.

The "notes" sticker is one of the Tim Holtz idea-ology chit chat stickers, blended with DI "rusty hinge" before adhering it to the cover.

I love the closing mechanism! I had been storing this one for a very long time and was so happy that it finally found its perfect "home" :)









For a finish I added some self adhesive ribbon on the back, covering the overlapping piece on the back of the paper where I glued the yardstick on. I added a tiny piece of a dictionary page for further embellishment and gave the edges of the pages a coating with copper rub on and  - done!

I hope you like it (and of course that Candy does as well ;)! I really enjoyed creating this booklet and using some of the stuff I love so much! Thank you for stopping by and staying with me this far. As usual I have added some more close-ups for you and hope you enjoy them as you enjoyed your visit here!

Hugs,

die amelie x

I enter this project into SimonSaysStamp's Wednesday Challenges "Anything Goes" and Fashionalbe Stamping Challenges' "Script/Book/Pages/Print" challenges