WOYWW 29th June 2011

Yay... summer is here!!  A lovely 27.7 degrees C this morning and looking like it may last for a few days too!
Here we are with another week flying by and Wednesday arriving at the speed of Ryan Reynolds in the Green Lantern.... is it only me that doesn't really see him as gorgeous???
I have had a terrible week... I have cleaned out drawers, done housework, scrubbed floors... and still my mojo is AWOL!!  So I got the sewing machine out and decided that if paper wouldn't play nicely then perhaps material would!!

and decided to have a go at making a material mini book...

so now all I need to do is figure out what to put in it and how to bind it... 

Don't forget to pop along to our lovely Chief Desk Inspector, Julia, for the complete and exceedingly long list of craftyness to nose about in!

WOYWW 22nd June 2011

My desk is pristeen... all sparkly clean and tidy!!

I scrubbed and put away and scrubbed some more... well, it did need it, as I had bits and bobs all over the place from working on the book all week!!

Yes... that book!!  I hadn't heard from my niece about supplying me with the photos I wanted to put it into it and then I thought... well, do something else!!   So I did....

Here is a close-up of the dangly bits hanging from the wire.

A few days before I left Saudi Arabia, the ladies gave me a going away lunch and photoshoot... and so I have now claimed the book for me!! ;)  I can't think of a better gift for a scrapper than lovely photos to scrap as reminders of the friends and fun times we shared.

Inside front cover.

Page with a lift up flap.

Smaller booklet section in the middle.

Page with envelopes slotted into a pocket.

Fold down flap with photos behind.

Large pocket with envelopes and tags.

Clapperboard page

With a folder with more photos.

Pocket with envelopes and tags.

We had a lovely time playing about!

Photo pocket with tags.

Inside back cover.

Don't you love this stamp?  

Don't forget to pop along to Julia's to check out all the lovely desks!!

WOYWW 15th June 2011

My workdesk is looking pretty bare at the moment... sort of between projects and I needed to clear it because it was a big fat mess!

Empty except for the Graphic 45 album I made... which is still waiting for photos of my drama student niece... who hasn't responded to my request, which puts me nicely in my place, doesn't it? LOL

On my other desk is some stash that fell into my shopping basket this morning... well, it was a neccesity because Donna is making lots of fabulous journals with video tutorials and I want to be able to play along.... and I didn't have the stuff to do that... 

Someone asked me what I did with all the mini albums I make... well, most of them go to good homes but the ones I make that are personal, I store in this set of Ikea Expedits... yep... its mini book overflow!!

Don't forget to go to Julia, chief inspector of desks, and check out the list of fabby desks to visit!!

Fat Page Swap Stand

The parcel with the fat pages arrived in my post box this morning... and as you can see, they are very fat!!  So a conventional book was not really going to protect all that lovely art work... they would get damaged and dusty so an alternative had to be thought up! 

Voila!!  A fat book page stand!!  

I can look at the pages on the stand or if I want to study the different techniques then I can remove it from the stand and use it as a normal book. 

This is the back of the stand... and as you can see I managed to use some of those beads I bought at the garage sale last week! 

This is a side view.... with a few more beads... I had to get little chipboard circles and paper and ink them to match the stand and glue them on the ends of the beads so that they would hand nicely as the centre holes are very large. 

Honeypip's page using 3 dimensional flowers and buttons and crackle glaze. 

Nettyb's page used flowers cut from watercolour a paper, inked, stained and glimmer misted. 

Kitty Crafts' page used calico, inked and printed on with a sepia tinted image with stitching and distressing. 

Paddy's page used serendipity squares, cross stitch, stamping and embossing. 

She's page used stamping, clear embossing, melted wax and crackle glaze. 

Irboo's page is a mixed media collage on fabric with stamping and stitching. 

Leigh's page used hand made paper, shrink plastic embellies and alcohol inks. 

Kiarama's page used random pleating on silk and chiffon with beadwork. 

Dragonfly Jane's page used a digital stamp and dry embossing with inking.

My page which used printing on tissue paper and various embossing techniques with stamping and distressing.

Thank you to all the lovely ladies in the swap, I now have a completely unique and beautiful book of lots of different techniques to play with!

Smashing New Orleans

 Technically this is probably not your typical smash book for various reasons... the main one being that the idea of the smash book is to take it with you and fill it with all your bits and pieces whilst you travel... well, I wanted to make one and use up all the bits that I had hoarded from my trip to New Orleans so it wasn't going to be filled during the trip but after the event.  I used chipboard for the covers and 1" o'wires and bound it with my Bind It All.

 I always buy lots of postcards when I go anywhere... sometimes it is the best way to get a good pic!

 I bound some of them as individual pages and used the backs for photos or journalling. Pockets are another good way to be able to hold all the brochures etc that you pick up while on a trip.

Maps are also quite fun and the right hand side of this is a map folded. 

I added pics and journalling to the back of the map to strengthen it. 

and you can mark the places you visited and where you stayed. 

I kept ads of the restaurants we ate in and photographed the menu of the local alligator place but didn't actually eat in there!  

 Both these pages have pockets to hold tags with photos.

 Fold outs are always handy for adding extra bits and pieces.

 This is the page opened fully.

 This page has a pocket of sorts... made from the chipboard covers you put on your hot drinks from places like Starbucks.

 I used the back of the postcard for a photo and added a thinner journalling page.

 Another pocket formed by folding and glueing which has tags and leaflets in it.

 I had to laugh because the museum had less African masks than I do...

 Normal pages with a postcard bound in the middle.

 Back is used for journalling.

 I kept some adverts and used these on the pages.

 Another pocket page for leaflets.

 Made this postcard into a pocket and added some tags.

 Photos and journalling of the cemeteries - nobody is buried under ground in New Orleans because of the risk of flooding.

 Postcard back for journalling and photos of the Mississippi.

 Rear of postcard for photos and journalling.

 Large photos of the city.

Another of the coffee holders made into a holder for tags.