Dragon Eggs are done!

So what do you think?  Are they dragon eggy enough?  I used inks to give them that wonderful dragon egg colour and depending on whether you do the egg in silver, gold or brass you end up with different shades... it's pretty cool. 

This was me beside a loch on the way to Oban... had such a good time with our Canadian friends eating and site seeing.

This is Fingal's Caves on the island of Staffa... it is totally amazing that this was created by nature... those columns are so uniform it's mind boggling.

The Hebridean islands are amazing, the scenery is stunning.

I have been playing with thumb tacks/drawing pins... lots of them... in fact, 400 of them for this Gae of Thrones dragon's egg!  

It's actually quite soothing to sit with a huge pile of drawing pins and press them into the polystyrene egg... I just have a couple of them to make as my son quite likes the idea of a couple for his coffee table.  

and a photo of the lovely Pandora in the cat tree staring out of the bedroom window.

Chris and I are off to the west Coast of Scotland for a few days to meet friends from Canada and bring them back to stay with us.  I hope the weather holds, it's been so lovely for the last two weeks.

Wrap Journal... just for a change...

This was one of my first attempts with the Eileen Hull wrap around journal die, love the papers, they are old and I am not sure where I got them.  I threaded lots of beads onto the elastic binding which was great fun and makes it look a bit lush!

I attached the bottom danglies with leather and threaded them through the elastic holes at the bottom.

I also used elastic for the closure, it keeps everything nice and neat.

Another Wrap Journal

We had another beautiful sunny day here today so once I had been for my bike ride and had breakfast I sat in the scrap room and had a play with the Wrap Journal die by Eileen Hull, it is becoming a firm favourite of mine.  I had some suede-like stickyback stuff in my stash and thought I could give it a try out, it looks lovely and cuts without any problem at all.

I added the Bind It All o'wires to it and lots of pages but had the most fun with my Bejeweller and went mad with the bling and gems!

Some of the pages fold out to give extra room for photos or journaling.

Yep, I added gems to the fold over cover piece as well! 

Wrap Journal Die with BIA Tutorial

I was playing with my latest Sizzix die - the Wrap Journal by Eileen Hull and found that you can put it into a Bind It All and add o'wires to hold pages and stuff which certainly adds another dimension to it's usage.  Some of the girls on Eileen Hull Facebook page asked if there was a tutorial on how to do it... so here goes!

For this version I chose a sewing theme, I think this will make a fun gift for people that sew and obviously, this is just one version as you can do what ever theme will work for you.  Plain paper for the artists among us, scrap pages to make a memory book, note books etc...

so start with your chipboard, mountboard etc that you are using for the base.  I then covered both sides with patterned paper and used the wrap journal die to cut it out.

I then decided to try my Tim Holtz On the Edge Sewing die but this is an optional step that you can ignore if you want.

but it does look kinda cool! 

I inked the scissors in silver and the cotton reel in brown and added a button to the top of the button piece so that there was some contrast with the plain paper.

Fold the centre line of the spine in half and squeeeeeeze it into the Bind It All (BIA) and then punch the holes through.  It was a tight fit but the BIA cut through all the layers without issue.

Open it out and flatten the centre line down. You can see that I also put the front of the journal piece into a lattice folder and embossed it in the Bigshot... that's optional too... I am just testing some theories as I go along.  

I added some sticky pearls to the front cover... I regretted that decision later as it made the front quite bulky... I would do it to the wrap front piece only next time.

Nope, I haven't lost the plot... those the foam things you put on your toes when you paint your toenails... but I use them for holding bobbins filled with cotton thread because they are brilliant, they hug the bobbin and stop the thread from unwinding!

I cut squares of transparency film for the pages... you can use paper instead if you prefer, it just makes it all very neat and light.

I cut some lengths of paper 1 1/2" wide which I then folded length ways.  These need to be the width of your page.

I used double sided tape to attach the folded paper to the tops of the transparencies and then put all 4 into the BIA and punched holes in them for the pages.

Then you need to put a strip of double side tape on each page and attach the foam toe thingies which are now cool bobbin holders to each one! Voila! 

I added a dangly to the o'wires and filled the holes top and bottom with half pearls, added a cord to tie it shut and that is it done and dusted.  You can see here why I would pass on the half pearls to the front cover next time round... ;)

Hope you have fun with the wrap journal die, it really is a brilliant piece of kit.