INKY FINGERS

 Thought I'd shock you and post next day 😍

I found my photos of the book I made for an old friend...a friend I really love and respect, to be honest.  Although more my mum's age than mine, her youngest son is the same age as my younger son and they were best friends at school, until we went to live in France, many, many years ago. She's now one of a group I belong to in the church I'm currently at, and always someone to turn to - a real spiritual Mum. Because of lockdowns, we obviously haven't been able to meet up for the last year, communicating via Whatsapp  instead. The first day we were able to meet up again - socially distanced, in our Community garden - was her birthday, so I was asked to make something for her. 

It was a disaster from beginning to end. I started by trying to make someone else's design - very NOT 'me'. Because of the mess I was in with medication problems I had, I tore it up and restarted it 3 times and was tearing my hair out by the time I finished it, crying every time I went into my craft room.. So, I decided against the die cut book and made a concertina. I still tore out pages and started over again a couple of times, but that was mainly because no matter how hard I tried, I ended up with marks on my white space every single time I touched the book. So by the time I gave it to her, some of these pages were missing - mainly tag pages - but  I'd added a couple, too. I did a LOT of die cutting, as you can see - plus all the pages and layers I threw away!

Front of folded book

Just been catching up on a friend's blog posts and thought I'd put some more up here. I've done so little since Christmas, other than a few important occasion things. Life has just been focused on other things. I'm also still 'sorting out' my room and getting ready to clear all the stuff. Some of it is photographed and ready to upload. I just brought in the dies so I can take photos, but not in this dark, dreary weather. I'll have to wait until it's sunny again.

So here are a few things I made earlier 😊

Oops! I had a blip - and lost a week 😉 But I'm still determined to clean out my last year's folder, so here are some cards I made towards the end of last year. I've had this post waiting to upload for a week - so sorry. In between, it was my birthday and lots of other things have happened. I'm also working on a special project for a friend's 80th birthday, so it's been a little busy.

This was a Christmas card for someone special. I love Wonky Tonk images, but they're a little limiting. I was practising watercolour with these - lots of room for improvement, but I really enjoyed it and spent a while on them. I used irridescent inks on part of her hair and gel pen for her earrings. It's never easy to stamp words on watercolour paper, especially without a stamping platform. The stars are Jane Davenport and I used a deckle edged die. I cut off her hair... gosh, it's a long time since my own hair was that long! Long hair always looks so good on other people.

 I set a tag challenge for my FB group yesterday, so in order to open the album, I made a couple of quick tags, using what was on my (very, VERY messy) desk and in my stash 😊

I'd already die cut this one and used it to mop up some colour, so I smooshed a little more, stamped the Paperartsy text, added some filler stamps and doodling, then the stamped and die cut flowers from my stash - which is where the Janet Klein words came from. Edged in Delicata Gold Shimmer.  

I stamped, coloured and cut out this lovely lady yesterday, so I found another tall piece of card I'd stamped her on, smooshed some colour, added some stamping, some Inktense pencil shading and some doodling, then stuck my image over the top, colouring the stars with Oxides. I then went a bit mad with    

 This was the first book I made this year, in my quest to explore different ways of adding pages or bindings. I've made 4 since then...😊 but this is my favourite so far. I played with gluing pages back to back, using my favourite mixed media cardstock, which is quite thick. It worked beautifully, until I decided to add a little 'spine' to the cover, so that they'd fit better... it was very slightly too wide, so the back page and the cover split the pages a little on the fold. I still love the book, so I haven't attempted to fix it, although I did cover the spine with washi tape, inked to blend with the background.  It's a slimline format, which I love, and a nice change from the square/rectangular ones I've been making. Can you see the cracks? Such a shame because the thicker card works so much better.

 Hello bloggers! Happy Sunday! and wow! We have more sunshine 😁It may still be cold, especially if not in the sun, but it feels so bright and spring like - it's so uplifting. There are flowers everywhere - what a joy! I finished off a couple of things I was doing this week and decided to make two into journal pages for my 'planner journal'. I love these dies because I can die cut the binding side but make the page any size I like - plus I already had some great planner page dies and they all work really well together.

Aren't these stamps (Art by Marlene) fun? Everything Marlene does is BRIGHT, so I had to follow suit. Her t-shirt is actually lime green and white but it scanned as aqua for some reason...??? It's an A5 page.

This is another one I began last year and finished off this week... I've used it before, but this time I'd cut around the top edge so that I could add it to any b/g - don't know why I ended up putting it back on white!

And a very simple one...The image is stamped and clear embossed, then I added colour in the darker parts of the flower and drew them out with water, hoping to create paler colour, but there's so little card remaining after embossing that it doesn't really show up. Nice, bold image, though. This is a 6" x 6" card.

I've just finished and photographed another book, so I thought I'd better post the first one I made after Christmas, when I hadn't been able to stamp for a month or so... but I'll put it in a separate post. 

Hello!

I finished another little minibook yesterday, with a different way of adding pages. I noticed this method when watching a video of Marlene's new products, which included a little book die. It's very nice and makes it easy to make a book, but it's also very simple, so I thought I'd try it on standard pages. This way you can make it any size, too 😁 so it's more versatile doing your own.

Here's the book cover, with the closure in place, and without it. The one on the left is a scan, the other a photo to show that the inks are lighter than they appear in the scans. I just stencilled the backgrounds with Brilliance White inks, for speed.

 

 

 I've been making minibooks again, playing around with different ways of adding pages, with mixed results. These are two 'empty' books, made to add pages to. I used this Aall and Create stamp on the smooshed die cut cover, stamping and cutting out the bottles and the flower heads twice, to make them stand out. The one on the right is the back cover. Sometimes it's just a shame to add anything to a smooshed Oxide background because the ink effects are so beautiful 😊 

 

 I got a new laptop at Christmas - notebook to be precise - so I've just been transferring some of my files across. This is the start of the clearout of what's left from last year! 

I KNOW I'm doing a lot of JK stuff lately but I love them! This one's just a journal page, unfinished - or is it?  I haven't yet decided which of my journals it will go into, which is why I haven't trimmed it - though it may fit into the one I just made, which I'll show you another day. These are digital images.

This one was just to use up some of the images lying around. I'd had the colours in my head for a couple of days when I made it. I like the way they work together.

This one - shock horror! - isn't made with JK images 😊