Looking Forward

Having found The Documented Project life this year and followed but not participated I am keen to join in next year.  Instead of buying a journal I have decided to make my own.  One of my aims this year has been to use up some of my paper supplies.  While I have not bought any the stash does not seem to have diminished.  So I am carrying this aim on into next year and making my own journal from all those scraps I have collected.
So while others in the group are busy decorating thier covers I have been tidying out my hoarded away bits and folding them into pages to bind into a journal later.

 Pages include old book pages let over form my 2013 journal and old bits of wall paper which for some reason I thought would make a good background for a scrapbook page but never did.  No throwing it out is not an option it will be used somehow.

I am unsure if I will complete a full page each week so I have made so tags for those weeks.  Once again form scraps. Pre digital photos which I have kept even though the quality of them was not good have been cut up to use as the base for tags.  I found an old scarf that I had tried silk painting on years ago.  I did not make a good job of it and never really liked it.  It has now been stuck to card to make a couple of pages for my book and also a couple of tags.

 I also found this beautiful piece of parchment which I want to use,although at the moment I have no idea how.

 They have all been put inside the cover of an old exercise book awaiting the prompts.  I have attached a small bag on the cover in which I have put things I have found and want to use.  Putting them in my main stash would mean that they are forgotten.

My plan is to work on one page/tag each week.  Having them loose will mean that inks and paints won't seep through onto another page and also if I want to use my sewing machine it will be easier.  I also hope to post each weeks page up here.  Let's hope I am more successful than last year.

2014

Oh dear, not a single blog entry this year.  Think that rather reflects how this year has been.  However I have still been crafting and recording my year.  I chose to make a card a week and to store them all in an old book.  Here is the almost finished project. 

Each day I wrote on a calendar what I had done that day.  The calender was then incorporated into the card.  Either on a flap or a tag behind the main photo.

My Year

It really is ages since I uploaded to this blog.  That doesn't meant that I haven't been crafting.  My main project has been my art journal / altered book.  It is the first thing like this that I have ever attempted and I have learnt so much along the way.  MY original plan was to do a digi layout each week and colour a few pictures in in the book along the way.  Here are a few of my favourite pages, you will see that I deviated quite a bit from my original plan, although I did include 52 digi layouts.

Painty Fun

Having decided to be more adventurous in my scrapping I pushed myself outside of my comfort zone for this layout.

First of all I tore up various papers, material and tissues and stuck them all over my card.  I also cut circles of rug canvas and stuck them under tissue layers.  I then painted my blur thought bubble leaving the text squares blank.  These I painted white before adding my heading.

I did regretted adding the rug canvas when I came to try and write over it, a smother surface would have been better!

I finished the layout off with lots of doodling round the text and with swirls round the edge.  Doodling over my poly cotton pieces was possible but different to paper.

After this layout I made my next one a lot simpler.  For my 12 x 12 piece of card I used a piece of wallpaper.

 This added a moulded textured background onto which I added extra colour with my water colour pencils and then dabbed distress stain around the top of the photo to mimic the sprouts smeared round my nieces face.

 I mounted the photo onto a doily which I coloured with distress stain and added a dyed button which I mounted onto a dyed wooden embellishment.  To finish it off I threaded seed beads onto thread and threaded them through the holes in the button.

July Catch Up

Splashy Time

The first time my niece came to stay with us we had problems at bath time as converting our shower into a bath caused problems.  So she was bathed in the wash basin.

I mounted the photo on a piece of canvas backed plastic which I coloured dark blue.  I had used mainly blue for the layout with the water in mind but wanted to make it more girly.  The pink hearts and rings helped and this scrunched up ribbon and pretty pink button and beads made it even more girly.  A small piece of 'lacey' gauze peeping out form under the photo helped as well.

 I had stencilled the dots in opposite corners using an old sticker sheet as a stencil and then added a doodled mock stitch border.  For my journalling I used micro-pore tape that I coloured using chalks.

 Canal Walk

This layout tells of a great walk we had along the regents canal in London.  I used a sheet of water colour paper which I coloured using paint with salt sprinkled over it to achieve a blotchy effect.

 

I made an envelope out of acetate and covered it in white tissue which I adhered to it using coloured PVA glue.

For my main swirl I used acetate which I coloured using my promarkers.

 I also stamped some shapes onto acetate.  I adhered tissue to the back of one shape once again using coloured glue.  I then used a large brad to secure both acetate shapes and a dyed wooden shape to the layout.

 I stuck small painted doilies to the top right of the layout and hated them.  Trying to rescue the layout I cut shapes out of spare water coloured paper and stuck them on.  I was really pleased with the results.

 I punched small circles out of the spare water coloured paper and stuck them on as bubbles round the title which I had hand drawn.

I took these photos ages ago in order to celebrate my love of baking and the luxury of having time to do it.  I used fabric as a background and embellishments.

 

I stitched the background onto a sheet of old card (whose colour I did not like) using horizontal and vertical lines to form a grid of squares.

I hand stitched a roll of fabric on using gold thread leading to a clock face which I had stamped onto acetate and then painted the back gold.

I made this heart from a scrap of material which I padded using waste wadding from an old bandage pad.

 I used shrink plastic to make the word time and threaded the letters onto a thread which I then tied to the main title.

The Last Time

I wanted to create the effect of spray for this layout which tells of my visit to see my great aunt (who lived on the Pembrokeshire coast) for the last time before she died .  I covered the paper with geso and while it was wet covered it with slightly scrunched up gauze bandage.  I stitched seed beads all over it along with a few ribbons.

 

I used a piece of loosely coiled silver wire to hold the main photo down.  I threaded small beads onto thin pieces of wire and hung them form the main piece.

 

The main photo hinges open to show another photo and a journalling block.

I scrunched a piece of net up and sewed it in place.  I then used a decorative pin so that it appeared to be holding it down.

 Photo TZ

These two photos were official photos taken of me when we were in Tanzania and they are horrible but they tell a story about official photos.

I had originally used paint on the top half of the page only but then dropped an open pot of glue on the lower half of it.  I order to hide this mistake I extended the blue.

 

I stuck some of my embellishments down first of all and then coloured everything together.  I coloured them using a mixture of different paints and inks, holding to paper up to cause runs down the page.  I then used a paint brush to flick paint over the page.

The One

I had had a digital copy of this photo for ages and never got round to printing it.  When my great aunt died this copy was among her belongings and so I had no excuse for not scrapping it.

It is one of the first photos of my now sister inlaw and tells the story of how we knew straight form the start that she was the one for my brother.

 

I stamped my journalling onto micro pore tape which I had coloured with chalks.

 For embellishments I used a coarse piece of string which I  dyed brown.  I tied it round two cardboard toggles and hung on a chipboard heart (which I painted and stamped) and a stripy square fimo tag.

As the photo was taken on a boat called Black Rose I added one as an embellishment made by usiing a peel off mounted onto acetate and coloured using a permanent pen.  

A Little bit Different

I recently had a spending spree on craft books and so decided to use some of the new ideas on these layouts.  For this layout I decided to cut the photos of my niece out as the background was black due to me using the flash.  This really detracted from the prettiness of the doll.  I hand drew all my letters, cutting the thicker section out of card so that I could overlap the border and photo to a small degree.

My background paper was plain pink and I dry brushed it with pink acrylic paint of a slightly different shade.

 This page remembers a trip to Camden Market in London.  The backing paper was some gift wrapping given to me by my brother.  I stitched it onto a piece of card - using a colour that I wanted to use up.  Having got the black and red theme I then used up a couple of transparencies I printed up ages ago when I was using up printer ink before throwing an old printer away.  The red/black netting on the right of the photo was an old fruit net which I shrunk with my heat gun and then painted with black acrylic.  I cut my title from silver card which I had coloured with alchol inks, black versa-mark ink and foil.

 I slotted an extra photo behind the main one and used the back of it for my journalling.

I have recently started playing around with doodling and decided to take it on to a layout.  This one is way out of my usual style not an embellishment in sight.  I masked the letters off with masking tape and used my distress stains to colour the background.  Unfortunately the masking fluid tore the paper when I removed it.  Next time I think I will colour in the white first to protect the paper.  I then set to with my coloured pencils and black pen.  The layout records a real bargain but also the story behind buying new trainers.  I wanted to include the price as in years to come this could be interesting.