Look who's 'helping' me craft today

I've adapted to Izzy helping me on the computer. She loves to come and walk all over the keyboard and press the buttons, - the other day she managed to reset the brightness with her front paws and it took tech support to rectify it! Well today she decided to help me craft, fortunately I'd only just sat down, so no glue, glitter and gunk were involved.

To my shame, I've let myself get behind with my cardmaking - my brother in laws birthday totally passed me by and his card ended up being almost a week late. I'm blaming the early Easter - it can't be my ineptitude after all can it? It's my mum's birthday on Friday so in plenty of time, here is her card. Quite simple, but I think it looks lovely.

TFL

Adventures in bookbinding

I've developed quit a youtube addiction of late - all in the interest of research of course (although the hour I spent 'learning' why Michael Jackson is actually still alive is time I'll never get back and a tangent I sincerely regret) So I've been looking into different methods of book binding and also junk journalling and have been seriously inspired by Michelle at The Paper Addiction and Marianne at Pocket full of vintage. Last weekend I tea dyed a shed load of paper and yesterday bought some hardbacks to demolish for practice. This is my first attempt - Marianne recommends having a practice first on scrap, but my thinking was I'm an experienced sewer/cross stitcher/ papercrafter, how hard can it be - the answer? pretty hard (not enough hands being a major stumbling block) For all my hubris, practice would've helped, but I'm ok-ish with the results and I've learned from my mistakes and got a useful book to boot.

I had left the cover unadorned and without the fastening, it was meant to be rough and ready, primitive, but Ray snaffled it for his research, asked for a fastening and hinted at some form of embellishment. I made a hole, added a grommet and looped a hair band through the back cover, sewed a toggle type bead on the front for the band to attach to as a fastening and then added some oriental ephemera including some more of my art tiles.

Found in the attic

Well not really, but I wanted it to look as though it was. I started making this on Saturday and had it almost finished by Saturday night, but I've been faffing around with it ever since - now I'm stepping away and declaring it finished, mainly because I've stuffed it to the gills with 'stuff'.
It's largely made from the Shabby n Chic kit by Ephemera's Vintage Garden, I've added a few extras but not too many. The kit includes all the envelopes, reproduction adverts. tags and such. I distressed it to within an inch using ink and a distress tool to scuff the papers. The only thing missing is the musty aroma!

Steampunk Debutante

This weekend I've been having a play with some remnants of one of my favorite paper collections - Steampunk Debutante by Graphic 45. I'm closely guarding the last of my full sheets (not sure what for, but it needs to be done - my name's Tracy and I'm a paper addict) but I still had the bits left from this lovely specimen. It's such a shame to see this beautiful paper sitting around, so I've created a paper bag mini; small in size though it is, it's a little tubby thing and it jingles and crinkles in a really satisfying way - don't worry, the men it white coats are on standby to confiscate my sharp objects.

Enjoy!

Handmade flowers and chipboard cogs.

A shot of all the inserts from the pockets - plenty of additional space for pictures and journalling.

The Notebook (s)

No not the Ryan Gosling film unfortunately - but lets take a moment to think about him, mmmm.

A couple of weeks ago, Ray asked me if there was any way of making majong themed art tiles. His idea was to use printed images, but I had a bit of a play and came up with some stamped ones - not sure what he had in mind for them, I left them as they were. However, he'd expected me to actually DO something with them - the very idea! Well after a bit of jiggery pokery, these are what I made.

I've also been using the other tiles I made from my first batch - these are a bit more mixed media arty farty ish. I love the way the frame worked out, and the newsprint cover makes me smile - so random, so me!

All these are available to buy in my etsy shop

Tx