Another Gelli Plate Printing workshop

I had a great time in today's Intro to Gelli Plate Printing workshop with 3 very creative ladies. Just check out some of the prints they did.

Angela

Cheryl

Michelle

As usual I have the urge to keep printing!

Happy Creating.
Wendy

Leather Bound book workshop

I'm not sure what is more fun, making books or teaching book binding. Although this book is a lot of work to make it's well worth the effort and my students this week did an amazing job.

Laurie

Louise

Maggie

Sharon

Sheila

I don't make books all that often and this sure makes me want to see what other kinds I can try.

Happy Creating!

Wendy

Fun finds

Usually it's the Tin Man that goes out to estate sales and auctions to bring home fun things for me but he's been so busy with baseball this summer that I'm starting to feel like a baseball widow! So I had to take it on myself to check out a tag sale this weekend to see what good deals he was missing and I think I did pretty good.

 I think this will be good for sand paper and maybe some jewelry project in progress.

 You may have notice that I have a thing for clocks and gears so when I spotted these on Kijiji I just had to check them out. And of course if I bought them all it was a much better deal? Now to decide which to keep for my collection and which to get the Tin Man to demolish for parts!

 I don't usually buy little knick knacks and such but when I saw the inside of this mushroom it just had to come home with me.

Can you see Lord Byron(the lady bug) in his library?

And of course just a few more books for our library or possibly for altering!

This Davenport desk was the main reason I had to go check out the tag sale and to my surprise there didn't seem to be much interest in it and I was able to get it. Well I had to go just a little over the limit the Tin Man gave me. LOL.

So how is your summer going? Have you found any good deals?

Keep Creating!

Wendy

Leather Bound Book workshop

After promising a few of my students that I would have some fun colours for the Leather Bound book workshop, I was disappointed to find that my usual local leather source no longer had a good supply of scraps to chose from. So the Tin Man and I searched high and low for other sources of leather locally. The Tin Man had us searching second hand stores for previously loved leather clothes. After a few stores I found a few jackets and a pair of red pants that would work. I also had a few friends donate old jackets that they no longer used. Thanks you Lucie and Olive. And I found a wonderful local leather store Zelikovitz Leathers which had, along with other supplies, a great selection of scrap leather as well as some amazing larger pieces for good prices. So, from looking for a few small pieces for books I seem to have accumulated a good selection of leather and possible a new addiction interest in leather. My mind is a spinning with things to do with leather now. Of course teaching this great group of women yesterday just got the gears going more.

Ruth

Sharon

Cindy

Karen

My book started in class.

I even managed to work on a book while demoing in class and finished it this morning. Unfortunately I missed taking a picture of one students book. Sometimes things just get busy!

If you have any interesting things you like to do with leather please share(like I don't have enough ideas flouting around in my head).

Keep Creating!

Wendy

Handmade books and winner

 Last weekend I was able to find a little time to stop by a local show, something I don't get to do as much as I use to and I miss it. And of course I couldn't resist some of the handmade goodness.  You may remember last year I picked up a few of Mary Kritz's books (you can see them here).  This year she had an even more wonderful array of books to entice me. It was hard to choose but I went with the books that spoke to me first.

This is a Japanese stab binding book. The art work on the front just mesmerized me and I kept coming back to it.

Then when I looked inside and saw this lovely Japanese marbled paper that she had embossed gold trees onto I knew it had to come home with me.

 With so much of my own work, texture plays a huge roll, so when I come across something as textured as this book I could not pass it up. This is made with Lokta paper. I hadn't heard of this paper before but was intrigued to find out it is made from a bush from the Himalayan mountains. 

Here is a little bit closer view of the texture. To see more of Mary's amazing creations and to learn of an upcoming exhibition she doing check out her blog.

This weeks tag giveaway winner is Jennifer. Congratulations Jennifer I'll get that mailed out to you shortly.

Each year I think about and try to make and buy some handmade goodness for my Christmas giving and this year is no exception. There is so much wonderful talent out there I think we should support them more. So this year I've decided to do some sharing here on my blog. Along with giving away a tag each Monday I'm going to share some of my favourite handmade goodness that I've come across on line. 
See you Monday with this new feature.

Happy Creating!

Wendy

Books from scraps

 I have a small book about 6" square that I carry with me most places. It's for my daily to do list, ideas that pop into my head, reminders of things, etc. I've had some kind of book like this for years. I tried daily journals but always found them too confining. Some days were too short and some too long and never enough free space for what ever else needed to get out of my head.
   So when I started to use a blank sketch book it slowly found it's own rhyme, rhythm  and organization, although most people seeing it won't think it's has anything to do with organization what so ever. I use the right hand pages for my daily use. I can add the date when I need it and use as much space as that day needs. The left side pages are used for to do list, ideas and anything else that needs to be on paper that I won't loose. Sometimes when I have information that I don't want to clutter up the book I put it in the back and work my way forward with it. I know it doesn't seem too organized but it works and I like it. I usually get the books from my local art store and it's relatively inexpensive. 
   For a lot of year I used a sketch book that was 5.5" by 8.5". It was great because it had a lot of space for everything I wanted in it but I found myself bring it with me when I went places and need to carry an extra bag for it because my purse just wasn't that big, so last time I need a new book I found one that was 6" by 6" with a fun orange cover. I was surprised to find that this smaller book worked just as good as the larger one and it fit into my larger purse I was using at the time.
   Well now my little orange book is almost full and it's time for another book. I was looking forward to doing a little shopping to see what to try this time but then last week as I was trying to do some cleaning in the studio I had the idea to make my own. I have so much scrap paper that I challenged myself to use only paper from my scrap pile. This wasn't much of a challenge since the pile is so big. I also decided to try to make the book a little smaller to see how that works. So I started with covers that are 5" by 5". The inside pages are various sized with most of them being just short of the 5x5" cover to fit in nicely. The Tin man was looking at me funny when he noticed that it had all kinds of sizes of pages but he kept his comments to himself!
   Once I had the first one done and the mess was on the table I couldn't stop and made 2 more books. I bound them together with the Bind-it-all and even used small pieces of the wire binding that I had from other projects. You can't tell that it's not one continuous wire once it's all together.
  The only down side is it really didn't make much of a dent in my scrap paper pile. I guess I really do have to do some purging!

 This was my first book. It's my usual colours and patterns that's all me.

 My second and third books I tried to use colours and patterns that I wouldn't usually use, but I tried to keep the pages flowing with a bit of a colour theme.

Once I get going with something like this I think wow, I can sell these and keep going and then I look at the clock and realize how long these take to put together. You just can never get your money out of some thing can you! Oh well I enjoyed doing them and will probably have fun using them too.

Do you keep a daily to do book or organizer to keep you going? If you do let me know about it. What do you use how do you use it?

Happy Creating!

Wendy

Hand made books.

Wow, a week just slipped right by me. November is such a busy month, I must remember to slow down and enjoy the ride. I want to share with you some more wonderful finds I've made. Today it's all about Mary Kritz and her wonderful hand made books she creates. I've seen a few of Mary's books since she's joined our ATC group but recently I was lucky enough to make it to one of her shows to see many of her original creations. Each book is a one of a kind creation and some even include some of her art.

 This first book is covered with one of her Ink blot designs made of wonderful Canal paper. I love the details she adds like the tabs to hold the book closed when you're not using it. I think it will make a great art journal if I can bring myself to use such a unique piece of art.

This is a book of endearment. The intention is to write a word of endearment to another person and give the book to them. They then write a word and pass it back. You continue to pass it back and forth until it is full.

Mary has added some words and designs to get it started. I thought this was such a great idea and already know who I'm going to share it with.

This last book is bound with brown and red leather and has a wonderful stitching design on it. It may have small dimensions of 3.5" by 3" but it holds 80 pages. I think this will make a fun book to keep close in a bag ready to use any time. This is going to be a Christmas gift so I have officially started my shopping!

Mary makes many more types of books so go check out some of them here.

Wow guest designer for Grungy Monday.

Yes me a guest designer! I'm so excited I can hardly write. See this is my first time, yes I'm a virgin guest designer, so be patient with me if I stumble or fumble a bit and please help me if you see anything I should be doing differently.
So here's the juicy details. Linda over at Studio L3 host Grungy Monday each week in honor of his Craftiness Tim Holtz. Each week she chooses a Tim Holtz technique and asks 2 guest designers to make something with the technique and post about it. So this week it's my turn.

This weeks technique is Distress Ink colour blocking. It's an easy and versatile way to make a background.

As soon as I got the e-mail from Linda with the info I watched the video right away. And although it's a really easy one I was kinda stumped for ideas. I played with it on some scraps of plain paper to get the hang of it and try out different colour combos. Then I let it sink into my subconscious for a week or so(no I wasn't procrastinating...okay maybe a little) things started to form and once I started it the project grew from a small plaque to a whole book. LOL. That's just the way things work out sometimes. I actually didn't get all the pages done that I wanted to. I have 2 more on the go. Hopefully I'll get them done in the next day or so and can show you then.

I used the Colour Blocking technique for the background of each page. On this one I adhered some old book print on one side first and then did the colour blocking across the whole thing. It was interesting to see the different effects on the 2 surfaces. The inks reacts differently on the different surfaces creating different colour intensity.
Here I used a numbers Crafters Workshop stencil on the already colour blocked background. It just took a little Tea Dye DI to get the numbers to pop out over the blocking. I like the way it tones down the but doesn't completely cover them.
Again here I used some scrap paper to cover part of the background before doing colour blocking. This paper reacted differently from the old book print. I think the old book print absorbs some of the ink making it more muted that other surfaces.

This book was a lot of fun to create. Can't wait to get the last 2 pages finished. It's been a while since I've done this kind of project and I hadn't realized how much I missed it and really must find more time to do this kind of creating.

I hope you enjoyed my book today. You really must go over to Studio L3 to check out what everyone else has done with this technique.

Here are the supplies I used:
Crafters Workshop- stencils
Ranger- Distress Inks
Sizzix- Dies
Tattered Angels- Glimmer Mist, stamps
Studio 490- stamps
Tim Holtz- stamps
Hampton Art- stamps
Prima- flowers, leaves
BoBunny- Edgy Album

Thanks for stopping by have a creative week.

Create

Here's a book that's been pushed around my studio for some time now. It started off being two separate pieces that came together to make this book. I did the metal embossing not knowing what I was going to put it on and I crackled the cover of the book without an idea to embellish it. So as they got shoved around they eventually came together as one. Destiny, this work better the less I try.

Tattered Angels

I've been playing with the new Tattered Angels Nature Glimmer Kit I picked up at the Painted Pony. It came with everything to make this amazing book. I think I've become addicted to Glimmer Mist. Their was 3 small bottles in the kit and I definitely need more colours. Here's the front cover and a few inside pages I did.