Another Storage Solution

I thought I'd share with you another storage solution......how to keep your special ATCs together.  Now, I do have a 7 Gypsies ATC spinner, but it is so crammed full of them I can't even see them any more.  And certainly there is no room for any additional ones.

The ATCs I'm talking about are the ones I received from my cruise mates on last year's Tim cruise. I wanted to put them in a book, but didn't want to use adhesive on their backs.  Gotta be able to flip them over and see who did them.  Let me explain a bit about the book.  Weeks before sailing I decided to make a travel journal.  I altered an existing book for this purpose.....glued some pages together for added strength,  removed some pages,  gessoed all the pages and very lightly decorated them with inks, paints, stains and glazes.  This is the cover, and in case you're wondering why the L in England is off to the side, go ahead and have a good laugh at my expense.  I think it was literally weeks after completing it before I noticed that I had left the L out.  I wasn't about to re-do it, so I just put the L next to the rest of the word. I was so proud that all the letters fit on the cover so nicely.  Hah!  But, I digress.....

And here are a few of the pages after they were decorated, or I should say, prepped for journaling:

Why are they blank, almost a year after the cruise?  Well, the very first project we did with Tim was a travel journal, so I used that for my notes and memorabilia, and decided to use the one I'd made to hold my ATCs.  But I couldn't come up with a satisfactory means of keeping them in the book.  You know I'm a big proponent of using what I have, and what I have is a great big box of 3 1/2 x 5 1/2" coin envelopes.

Just the right size.....first I sealed the flap shut.  Then I cut the envelope down the middle:

I used a 1" circle punch to create a little half circle on the tops....makes putting the ATCs in and removing them so much easier.  

I used a very strong adhesive (with my Scotch ATG) to attach the holders to the pages.  Two fit well on each page in my 5 1/2 x 8 1/2" book.  I did minimal decorating of the envelopes.  I was just anxious to finish this project and get my cruise ATCs in their new home, but naturally you can ink and stamp and emboss as much as you like.   Here are some sample pages:

And you can see that I am still stencil-crazy.  Each and every page and most of the envelopes have some sort of stenciling on them.  Love, love, love those stencils!

If I had more ATCs to store I could have put envelopes on both sides of the pages, but as it is, they all fit well with this layout and any time I want to relive those wonderful memories I have these precious little works of art all in one place.



















Journal of Dreams -- Thinking of Days Long Gone

I received Heather's JOD last week and as sometimes happens, had an immediate idea for my pages, so got right to it.  I've been using old family photos in my altered book, and continued that theme on these pages.

This is the front.  The background is watercolor paper with distress inks and colorwash, then stamped with clear ink on a fabulous flourish stamp, embossed with clear EP, then inked some more.

The vintage pens are from a Graphic 45 sheet.

The gate is a die cut I found in my stash; the leaves are also cut from a die.....but this one I can identify.  It's on Tim's Regal Crest die.

The photo is of (in order of appearance), me and two cousins, Jack and Sandi.  It was taken one summer in the yard of my grandmother's beach house, and I have VERY fond memories of those times.  I highlighted the little faces with tiny grommets.  

And, on the flip side:

The background is a used dryer sheet, sprayed with homemade mica spray and glued to a previously colorwashed piece of watercolor paper.  You can see a few sprays of leaves peeking out from behind the journaling tag.....they were made with what was left when I cut the leaves from the TH die.  I used this negative as a stencil and pounced some Vintage Photo distress ink over them.

The strip on the left is made of bits of leftover papers from a page in the TH Lost and Found stack.

The photo is of my father and his two younger brothers.  I get a kick out of it.....they all look so solemn, and I can't help wondering how the photographer got three little guys to stay so still and appear so serious.

Journal of Dreams, Journal of Anything, and an Altered Book Update

I recently received Lori's book from our Journal Of Dreams (let's just call it JOD) collaborative journal project.  Maybe it's the title, but in this group I just can't help getting into my head (oh what a scary place that can be at times) and my pages for these journals are just very different than those I do for the other groups.
Another influence this week:  I was visiting my friend Teri, and met her friend (now mine too!) Rita, who brought along for the show and tell portion of our visit, a book she made in a Lynne Perrella workshop.  Her pages were full of little doors that opened and I knew my next journal pages would use that technique.
My page for Lori with the doors closed:

And opened (just a little -- what's behind them is Lori's surprise).

The background....various papers and some of Tim's wonderful tissue tape....lightly covered with gesso.....textured with cardboard and bubble wrap......colored mostly with Portfolio water soluble oil pastels......more gesso, more pastels.....and the journaling done with Sharpie poster paint markers.  The little houses are all Invoke stamps, inked with black Ranger Archival ink, colored with the Portfolios and further embellished with glaze pens.

For this journal we decided on one page rather than our usual two page spread, but we do some sort of art on the reverse side.  Here's my second side:

The background started out as a leftover page from my altered book project, one that had been sprayed with colorwash.  On to that I glued some pictures from a new PID sheet called photobooth.  Then I dabbed some gesso around and even over the photos and tinted it with some vintage photo distress ink when it dried.  I was trying to make the photos look a bit more organic....less like they were just plopped down on the background....which of course they were....so softened some of the edges with some gel medium.  I really wanted to use some modeling paste but couldn't find it so settled on the gel...which produced a shinier look than I would have liked, but it's OK.  When that finally dried I went over the gelled parts with some coffee Archival ink, then added the journaling around the photos.

When I was at Teri's we decorated journal covers with a collage technique she wanted to share with us.  When I got home I added the focal image, and here is the finished journal cover:

For the background, we covered the book with various papers, collage-style, added some color with Shiva Paintstiks (very cool product), then we used a palette knife to add some texture with gesso (I think it was gesso...all those Golden jars look alike).  When that was dry we brayered some deeper color (paint) over the raised textured areas, then kept brayering until we'd spread what was left of the paint all over.  I love how it turned out.
I added the Tim bird and cage on a chipboard plaque, some Sizzix SU butterflies highlighted with a perfect pearls spray, and a little blue rhinestone bling.


For those following along with my altered book journey, that blog was updated today with some folding techniques.  Here's a little peek:

Oh, and one other thing:   Happy Friday everyone!  This weekend, see some friends, make some art, and have some great food.  Cheers!