Journals and Notebooks

Simple Books

Before Gluing and Assembly

Shutterfly Notebooks

Shutterfly Notebooks II

Today I’d like to share with you two of my recent notebook/journal discoveries – a handmade approach, and a customized production approach.

Handmade first: I was cruising the web for art journalling techniques and came across an excellent little video of how to make a simple journal from a few pages of standard size paper and glue.  Here’s a link to Laura Tiffany’s web site and video. And here’s the youtube link for the same video.  I like this method because you can do background painting on several full size sheets of paper (I used sketching weight), then cut them in half to make a small journal.  The first one I made just 3″x3″ from cardstock, to make sure I understood how to do it.  The cover is from an old Christmas card.  The second one, that I still have to glue together, is from the last pages of a sketch pad.  I used the cover of the pad, which is watercolor paper weight, to make the cover of the book. To glue the pages and cover together I used my favorite large size glue stick.  Quick and easy!

Now customized production: Shutterfly is a favorite of mine – I love their easy software for making books and calendars, and the finished product is always of excellent quality.  Now they have notebooks!  You can choose lined or unlined pages, and you can compose the cover using your own photos and text.  I ordered the two shown in the photographs above during a half-off sale, so the price was right.  Excellent gift idea!  Size if 5 1/2″ x 8 1/2″.

Travel Snugs

Snugs – Back

Snugs – Front

Notebook Snugs

Snuggle your iPad

Snuggle your creative tools! That’s what I’ve done with these small bags/purses. They’re just the right size for my small notebooks, and the larger one fits my iPad. I’ll probably modify the iPad version to have a flap and strap, instead of the drawstring closure. I didn’t realize until I’d finished that it was such a good fit! The pattern was distributed at Quilting Adventures’ New Years Day party – a Mary Terry design.  I added batting and lining, and a second drawstring.  Dimensions before stitching together were 9 1/2″ x 14″.

The small clutch style snugs were inspired by the Urban Winter fabric from Stephanie Brandenburg’s Urban Art Collection, Camelot Cottons.  I love the typewriter image!  I embellished with sari silk yarn that I unwrapped and stitched on as I free motion quilted before inserting the zipper and then stitching across the ends.  They’re just the right size for my small notebooks!  The smaller one fits a small moleskin notebook – fabric, batting and lining were cut 7 3/4″ x 9 1/2″. Fabric, batting, lining for the slightly larger one were cut 9″x11″.  I used nylon zippers and cut them to fit, after stitching across the teeth for stops.  Each snug also accomodates a small pen and a few envelopes, in case in my travels I come across papers I’d like to save.

New Years Photos

Waller Mill Park, New Years Eve

New Years Day Clouds

A Man and His Dog

2012! Only two years til my passport expires – time to get on the move! Tho there’s so much to see right here in the US of A. These photos were taken just a couple of hours drive from home, in Williamsburg and Virginia Beach. Having daughter and grandson along was an extra bonus!

So what are your plans for 2012? I’m in goal mode – art, home, life. Writing them down, dating applicable tasks; musing on art-imparted resilience and authenic creative endeavor. My art ah-ha’s disappear so quickly beneath the every day, I find it helps to have a few notes on new things I’d like to try. ideas I’d like to expand and explore.

Meanwhile, it’s good to have a quiet spell after holiday hectic. Time to make the last batch of ambrosia!

Time for Winter

Winter 1960, NY

Bundled up, 1983

Winter Light

Happy New Year! Central Virginia is enjoying a balmy New Yeas weekend, in prep for artic temps next week! A week or so of winter will be fun – just hoping it doesn’t hang around too long or shut the power off for extended periods. I’m in the midst of reworking my studio, so I’ve plenty to do inside once it gets too cold to go outdoors (that would be 35 degrees or lower!). Meanwhile, I’m off to Williamsburg and Virginia Beach to frolic in the sunshine. Best of 2012 to you!!

Notes on the photos: cholea’s on our kitchen window sill; a frozen winter in Troy, New York the year I was 11; our daughters and friend all bundled up on their babysitter’s porch swing!

Bracelet Cuffs

Cuff Modeled

Couple of Versions

Wide and Narrow

Christmas (or anytime) cuffs from Cloth Paper Scissors! Got the pattern for these bracelets in one of their daily e-mails just before Christmas, when I was trying to come up with a gift for my quilt buds. Love the way them came out!

Click for a link to the pattern. I used fusible batting for the ends.  Pattern calls for  turning under 1/4″ around the end pieces and layer everything wrong sides together.  Instead I stitched the pieces right sides together around three sides, then turned, poked the strips into the open side, and stitched across.  Worked well.

I’m tempted to try doing one from plain muslin, then stamping words and painting. ..

Best of the Christmas/New Years week to you all!

Beach + Camera

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Here’re the photos I promised in my last post! Most of them were taken right outside our cottage. The two exceptions are the snow geese and the black coots. We took a break from sewing/quilting one afternoon and drove down to Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge and discovered a viewing building not a far walk from the nature center. The building was built like a concrete duck blind – an open portico with one solid side slashed with open viewing slots, and an enclosed glass-fronted area with several rows of stadium seating for viewing the marshes of migrating birds in comfort. The coots were busily feeding; the geese were wheeling thru the December sky showing off their plummage!

Next year we plan to coordinate our week at the beach so we can take advantage of the Sunday tram rides from Back Bay to False Cape State Park. Public vehicular access isn’t permitted.

Art at the Beach

Tiny Christmas

Mixed Media

Water Color

Just got back from a creative retreat to Sandbridge Beach with my quilting buds! Weather was more typical of early December this year – not freezing like 2010. And we didn’t have snow, or loose power – probably because of the multitude of flashlights we brought along! We did a lot of sewing, but the projects pictured above were my favorite. First day we did screen printing, using thermofax and adhesive vinyl screens. I’d brought along some of the handmade paper I made for daughter number one’s wedding back in 2002 – took a great print! Added a silk sari strip from the skein I bought at the Long Beach Quilt show this summer, some shells, sand, text stamps – fun down by the seashore! Finally got to the water colors on our last day – should have started much earlier, but I’m pleased with the result. I posted earlier about the little houses and trees – we all gave it a try and built a village!

A very Merry Christmas to you all! Next post – beach and wildlife photos – stay tuned!

Pincushions

Pineneedle Pincushions

Top View

I made the little pineneedle and pineneelde/gourd bowls several years ago, and last year made the wool balls that fit in them. For the last 12 months or so they’ve been sitting around the studio waiting to turn into pincushions. This past weekend I saw a ratty, well-used version that incorporated a doily. I have plenty of those! Metamorphosis!

Christmas Crafts

Boxes from Christmas Cards

Yo Yo Tree and Small House

Happy Thanksgiving! And almost time to start thinking about Christmas! Here’re a few craft ideas you may want to try, if you’re not already familiar with them. I made these little boxes from Christmas cards many years ago, but forgot all about them until we made them recently at a quilt chapter meeting. The directions look complicated, but once you’ve made one they’re easy as pie!

At the same chapter meeting they had kits for the little Christmas tree shown above.  I takes four yo yos, an empty thread spool, a 5″ dowel or twig to fit in the hole of the spool, and a small star.  Circle sizes for the yo yos are: 2 3/4″, 3 1/2″, 4 1/2″ and 5″.  Glue the twig into the spool.  Snip a hole in the center of each fabric circle by folding the circle into quarters and snipping off the pointed tip.  Starting with the biggest circle, stitch around the edge turning down about 1/4″. Gather about halfway and slip over the twig.  Place a little stuffing in the yo yo, then finish gathering tightly around the twig and knot.  Repeat for each successive smaller circle.  Cut a slit in the top of the twig and insert star!

The little house is a bit more complicated, and your best bet is to get the May/June issue of Cloth Paper Scissors – pattern is on page 87.  Once assembled, its just the right size to insert in the bottom one of those fake tea candles.  Photos of 95 of these little houses can be found in the November/December issue.  I love the great variety of approaches folks came up with!

Pomegrante Prints

Adhesive Vinyl Screens

Carved Stamp

Completed Fabric Post Card

I had a good time in the studio recently working with pomegrante images. Tried Enid Gjelten Weichselbaum’s technique for simple reusable silk screens.  See the Oct/Nov 2011 issue of Quilting Arts for the details.  I was very pleased with the results – the adhesive vinyl works much better than the contact paper I’d tried before, and it can be cleaned and used again! 

Part of the reason I was working with the pomegrantes, tho, was for our Virginia Consortium of Quilter’s Fall fabric postcard challenge.  The topic is ‘seeds’ – going forward six degrees of separation/free association.  I wasn’t having much luck, but did come up with a bit of verse that might work, and I needed to show the seeds of the pomegrante.  I wasn’t sure how to do that with a silk screen, so fell back on cutting two stamps.  I was somewhat pleased with the results on paper, tho doing it with two partial stamps wasn’t completely satisfactory.

I wound up recarving the image as one stamp, with a border to reduce some of the unwanted area from printing.  Worked well on fabric, and that’s what I used for the postcards.  First I discharge printed with one of the partial stamps, to highlight the seeds.  Then overprinted with gold/yellow using the single stamp with the full image.  Added some stitching and glitter highlights to finish up!

Mailed the cards out to my fellow posties on Saturday, and used the same design for the Cloth Paper Scissors Reader Challenge from the Nov/Dec 2011 issue! 

Here’s the verse that went with the cards, with apologies to Persephone:

I seed the light, it were shining down on me.                                                                           I closed mine eyes, the better for to see.

The under demon grabbed me, all unaware                                                                           Of the rapture in mine heart, the flames he cannot bear.

I surged forth from his bonds, a ‘grante in my grasp.                                                     Six seeds forever bind me to Winter’s freezing fast.