Perpetual Playtime

I posted the picture above on Instagram and Stacy, an online friend from B lissfully ArtJournaling (one of my Yahoo groups) was interested in some close up images so I thought I would post it here so she (and anyone else interested) could see them. I will state upfront – this is not our original idea. Nope, like many crafters we got our inspiration from another crafter. In this case the inspiration came from Gillian’s project on Snazzy’s DT:  Design Team Project #2 ... A Christmas Cottage . As soon as I saw this my first thought was “I want one!” And my second thought was that this would be a fun project for me and my daughter to work on together.  So off I went in search of house shaped shadow boxes.  I have no idea about the house shadowbox Gillian used, but I found one I liked that are made by Kaisercraft.  I sent my daughter an email with links to the inspiration house on Snazzy's blog and to the Kaisercraft shadowboxes I thought we coul...

I follow Krista Smith and her Saturated Canary Blog not only because I love her images, but also because I love her heart, the way she sees life and the way she feels about family. Krista recently blogged "If You Looked..." , which I really enjoyed reading. Krista got her inspiration from a blog she follows, The Shine Project (where The Shine Scholarship Project to help at risk kids get to college started). I found it interesting reading both "If You Looked" (well, actually all four since Ashley, who writes The Shine Project blog, actually has written three "If You Looked" blog posts - I'll link all four below). So, I decided to throw one of my own out here. I hope you enjoy mine and maybe you can link your own in the comments and I can enjoy some more "If You Looked . . . " posts. Anyway, here goes: If you looked into my home, you would find a house that is obviously well lived in. We keep most mess contained to my den and the...

True story. But yeah, the big problem with typical coloring books is they are made from paper that is generally best colored on with crayons. Not my medium of choice. :( Ah, but no need for the sad face! Nope, no need at all! I am making my own coloring book! And I am making it with digi-stamps printed on my favorite paper for coloring with, my preferred medium, Copic Markers ( X-Press It Paper ). This image is going to be part of my coloring book cover. Her name is Ani. She is currently available in Krista's shop: Ani , but if you like her and want to own your own copy than I recommend going on over there to buy her because shop stock is dynamic and she may not be there later. Ani, colored with Copic markers I haven't decided on the complete cover yet, but I went ahead and colored my girl so I could enter her in the color challenge ( Challenge #36 ) over on Krista Smith's challenge blog:  Saturated Canary Challenge Blog . I had her printed and had stared at h...

I made another journal . . .  This one started (as so many projects do) with a YouTube sitting session. I sometimes spend so much time travelling from one video to the next that in the end I have no idea where I started. That's the case here - I watched a video, linked from that one to another "suggested" video, on to another (rinse & repeat) and then saw one where someone (and I hate that I cannot find the video that provided my first inspiration) made a journal with envelopes. A couple of days later I went on a failed search to watch that video again and ended up watching several envelope journal videos, but never happened upon that specific video again. But I wasn't deterred since I had the general concept. However, on this subsequent video journey I did come across a video by Kathy Orta that showed her Hidden Hinge process . So I went with that and jumped right in. There are actually two different Kathy Orta videos that show the Hidden Hinge, but since...

. . . From Recycle (for the most part.) Yes, two fauxs - since this faux leather is paper and not cloth. I figure, if faux leather is made from cloth, that this is a paper faux of the cloth faux. Have I lost you yet? eep! Yep, I made most of it from recycled items. I bought the leather cord that closes it at Target and I bought the skeleton key on etsy, and all other components are recycled (of course the thread to sew the signatures and the glue to bind the cover to the liner is not recycled, but that probably should go without saying.) This journal took a couple of months of migration and morphation (new word! Yay me!) to find what it wanted to be. It started with a piece of junk mail. Yep, junk mail - back in October I had a tri-fold cardboard mailer delivered to my mailbox with a free sample attached inside. I started to throw it all away when inspiration jumped right off the card. I removed the sample and the sticky that held it in place as well as the sticky that hel...

My granddaughter came to visit last weekend and brought her journal we worked on in July back so that she could add more pictures (Click HERE to see the July journal). She also pointed out that her journal was almost full and that we needed to make her another one.  Well, I'm always interested in trying something different so I went in search of ideas for her next journal and found a technique I thought would be interesting - sewing it together using a coptic stitch. I watched several videos of different people using the technique and decided I could do that.  Here is a WIP image:  I cut the front & back covers from chipboard and let her look through my scrapbook paper for something she would like for her cover. I did the cutting and she did the gluing.  We used basic copy paper folded in half for the pages. I would start the paper folds and then had her press the crease with the bone-folder. Once we had folded 50 sheets (we could now ca...

I'm not very consistent with blog posts, and sometimes I'm just in a short hiatus from crafty stuff, but that doesn't mean I'm not slowly working on something. Right now I'm in the process of altering a piece of junk mail to turn it into something I'm happy with for a homemade journal. But that is a slow process since I'm not really sure how I want the journal cover to look. So, while that has been on my table for a couple of weeks it my still be there in another couple of weeks. For me that is just how my creative process works.  But, when I realized I had not posted any blog posts in over two months I thought I might ought to. So today I will share my granddaughters creative project. She is altering a pair of plain white Keds with Copic markers: Pretty good if you ask me!