Autumn Book

Autumn is here in the Southern Hemisphere and I thought that it would be a good time to share these pictures of a book I created last year. It was an adaptation of a concertina book from one of the books I purchased from the Making Books site.

The quote says " Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower - Albert Camus"

I had photographs of autumn leaves and leaves made by cutting out leaves and dying them. To dye the leaves I scrunched them up and unfolded them to add creases, then they are dyed with inks of different colours and left to dry. Last I added a touch of iridescent paint for sparkle.

Pictures of goodies

These are the goodies I got.

Goodies!

I got some lovely goodies for my birthday recently! Some photos will come, I promise. Anyway, I got:
3 balls of brown Patons Inca wool and the right size needles to knit a gorgeous bag I'd seen that I want to make,

a kit to crochet a loopy, lacy scarf which includes some absolutely amazing yarn (the colours in it are beautiful blues), a hook, needles to sew up and beads for the beaded trim on the ends,

the latest issue of Scrapbook Creations with Ideas DVD,

some beautiful resin alphabet stickers that have flowers with the letters,

instructions to sew a pillowcase and a bag (love them - the instructions are so clear!),

and a book made by my wonderful mother for me to put down inspirations and ideas. It's full of different textured and coloured pages and pockets with some already decorated. It's beautiful!

I have lots of crafting ahead to do!!

Notebook Holders

Thanks to this fantastic tutorial I have had great fun making notebook holders. For this one I adapted the idea to make a letter writing wallet with less pen pockets and space for envelopes on one side and on the other a pouch of A5 paper decorated with fabric squares left over from the holder and a homemade notebook. More photos in my Picasa Album. The idea for the homemade notebook came from this blog. I just cut different papers to A5 size added envelope pages by cutting down C5 envelopes and making sure the cut edge is bound. In this version there are lined pages (made in Publisher using a table to fit two to a page and then cutting the page to create two A5 pages), textured beige pages and envelopes.

From Crafty Bits a...

This second one (made by avid crafter) uses a purchased visual diary with plenty of pen space to create the perfect place to collect all those bits and pieces that crafters find useful.

Number Memory Pocket Book

From Number Memory...

I have finished making this little book and am feeling very pleased with the end result. It is a concertina book with a pocket for each number from 1 to 10. Inside each pocket are three cards about the number and these can be used for a game of memory or just a matching game with the pockets. The ladybirds are a gif image I created using Paintshop Pro. See more pictures in my Picassa Albums.

My inspiration for this book came from many sources but particularly from the work of Susan Kapuscinski Gaylord and her wonderful site about making books with children.

A new book for the shelf called "Expressive Handmade Books" by Alisa Golden provided the instructions for the pockets on each page.

Butterfly progress

Not much crafting happened over the weekend. I did a bit of stitching on the butterflies. Now I've almost finished one butterfly, and have finished a flower and a few leaves. It should look nice when it's finished. The threads used in the kit are slightly different to the normal ones used for cross-stitch and they give a soft sort of finish.

Creating with Artrage

From Art Rage Butt...

These images were macro photographs I took of a butterfly. I used a brilliant program called Artrage to paint over the photos with glitter to give a textured finish. Artrage allows you to load a tracing image and when you paint over it the program will select the colours from the tracing image. Next I think I want to try creating a collage effect by changing the tracing image part way through.

Artrage only costs $19.95 US dollars and is available from Ambient Design

Another little project I have been working on is a felted bag. I borrowed a book from the library on felting knitted objects and tried it out on a sample. Love the feel of the wool once it is felted. I like how it is all a little bit of a surprise once the bit of knitting appears back out of the washing machine. Will have to do some internet searching to find out more about this fun activity.

To do list

Not much crafting happening.
Things on the list to do are: finish a cross-stitch of butterflies and flowers, make some more cards and a scrapbook page for a new baby cousin.

The quilt and craft fair is coming soon and I'm hoping to go. If I do go, I'll hopefully come home with some great ideas and new techniques.

Using up scraps

I had some scraps of shiny pearl paper with boats punched out. When I was sorting out my papers the other day I laid it over the top of some photo paper I had decorated with inks. The end result was this card.

Need a card in a hurry

A quick card made using a stencil. The stencil was cut from a left over piece of laminating with a punch. I added a border and some stitches to each square before adding them to a strip of card.

First Post

This is one of the 'Punch People' cards I've made using ideas from Debra Clark's book Punch Art Fun for Everyone.