I’m re-blogging this beautiful post about the plight of the elephants – we should all be concerned and aware and active in protecting these wonderful creatures! Thank you for viewing!
Category Archives: Creations From My Craft Room
Storing Dies – Solving a Paper Crafter’s Dilemma
I love dies! They are a great tool, but there are so many on the market you can go bonkers and end up with a storage dilemma!
I use lots of Spellbinders and I love the dies that Memory Box, Poppy Stamp, Couture Creations and My Favorite Things put out. I have some Sizzix too, but not many. I find the size and thickness of those other Tim Holtz dies too problematic to store, so though I have a couple I no longer buy them.
The dies I do buy are thin. They may be thin, but they are weighty.
When I first starting using dies, about six or seven years ago now, I kept them in their packets in a small box. I kept buying more dies [all paper crafters know it is addictive!] and they graduated to a large shoe box or two, where they got all muddled up and I spent more time hunting for what I wanted then actually die-cutting.
About two years ago they found themselves being fitted onto magnetic sheets and being stored in a purpose built plastic case. Which the growing number of them soon out-grew. This solution was also problematic – the cases are pricey and the specially shaped magnetic sheets are also pricey. The cases hold a finite amount of dies and do not hold the larger ones at all [Spellbinders ‘Grands’ for example.]
Their next home was an apartment building of 3 hard cover large ring binders, still attached to their magnetic sheets and each sheet individually encased in a plastic sleeve.
That seemed to work better than any of the previous scenarios, but the weight of the combined dies in each folder made for two problems.
1: hoisting the folders down from their storage shelf and back up again [I’m short and leaning over the work bench and reaching up to the shelf with weighty things can be fraught in a crowded working space – if you drop a folder it breaks stuff!]
2: the weight was tearing the plastic sheets away from the binding holes, making the folders unstable and searching for items more difficult.
There was still also the issue of searching through weighty pages of dies to find the one I was looking for.
Then a couple of weeks ago someone in my local Freecycle group advertised 30 new, empty DVD cases to give away.
I was on the phone like a shot!
When I got to the house to collect the cases the lovely man asked me how many I wanted. “All of them” I said – meaning ‘all thirty.’ and explained what I wanted to do with them. He swooped up two boxes and carried them to the car. When I got home I discovered I had ninety new, empty DVD cases.
Ninety!
Here’s a shot of about forty of them:
All beautifully and tidily lined up, labelled and categorised. Every Virgo’s dream 🙂
Some of the fronts even have a picture of the contents, others just a list.
Open one up and take your pick – this is a selection of my favourite embellishment type dies::
This is a Sizzix set of stamps and dies – most recently used in the making of the ‘Box to Book’ project:
No more hunting through pages of heavy dies – now a quick peruse down the spines and Hola! there is the one I want to use!
I love my little mannequin posed there – he ever so slightly reminds me of C-3PO out of Star Wars ….. Perhaps I should paint him – is it silver or gold, I can’t remember – what do you think?
There is now one remaining large folder housing the aforementioned ‘Grand’s’ and a couple of extra long lace edge dies from Couture Creations. Not a problem with just six pages to sort through.
The remaining DVD cases are now being utilised to store acrylic and unmounted rubber stamps – still in progress.
And there we are my friends, one less dilemma in the creative space 🙂 It is working really well and is encouraging me to use my dies more often as they are so easily accessible!
Thanks for dropping by today, I love that you did!
Share this:
When Aged Laptops Go Bad……Make Gift Bags!
It’s been 9 days since I last posted – and I’ve also been missing out on some of my bloggie friends doings – due to a lap top that has decided to stage a ‘go slow’. I was even stopped from leaving comments on some blogs I did read by my [former] flat and shiny pal!
I went shopping with YD and priced new computers – its not in the budget, but I can’t imagine life without access to the blog-o-sphere, email or ‘Words with Friends’ on Facebook!
As always happens to me when I go shopping, we ended up looking at something that resembled a small space craft before we realised we had some how gone well beyond our brief and needed to regroup! Now I know what I need and am waiting for the ‘pre-Christmas’ sales to start.
Having told my flat and shiny former pal what is on the cards, today is a good day, and she hasn’t stopped altogether – yet……. so here’s hoping. I’m hitting ‘save draft’ at the end of every sentence just in case.
I wrote a post about a week ago and lost the whole thing when flat and shiny had a major fit and shut down completely and unexpectedly and left me all high and dry….. so I went into the play room and got on with my latest project.
Here’s what my desk looks like – its three photos moving right to left along the length
YD asked me to make some gift bags – I’ve never made them before and thought it would be pretty straight forward – but it ain’t! The first half dozen all have sloping bottoms because I still don’t know how they make ’em without adding a little extra paper across the bottom… Anyhow, I eventually worked out that I needed to seal the base with an extra strip of paper and once that was sorted I raced ahead and produced about 20 bags – here is a small assortment of some that are finished:
This is one for a bloke – no ribbons here, but some lovely jute which has been in my stash since the 70’s when we all made hanging macrame coffee tables 🙂
I used a pretty old paper collection from ‘My Mind’s Eye’ called ‘Damask’, Martha Stewart punches for the top trims and loads of organza ribbon.
I’ll show the rest when they are finished!
Thanks for coming by – love that you did! 🙂
Share this:
Another Card For Kerry!
Hello there!
ED looked at the previous post, ‘A Card For Kerry’ – “It’s very nice,” she said “but it’s supposed to be blues and purples…”
Nothing happened inside my head indicating information previously given and momentarily forgotten – nope, just a big black hole. “Oh!” I responded helpfully……….. I always have a slight feeling of panic when this happens – as it seems to do so with alarming regularity – am I losing it – already?
But no, I just wasn’t fully present and some information just went in one ear and out the other – I’m not dotty, I’m just becoming an air-head!
As it happened, I was hoping to for the opportunity to make another, similar card – and here was that very opportunity. Quite serendipitous really [this appears to be the word of the week]. Now, do you suppose I did the wrong colour deliberately ……?
Any how, I wanted to make a variation on the theme, using the same techniques I would utilise if I was creating a similar lay-out in my art journal.
I didn’t document the process this time – you’ve seen it once and any way I was much too involved with the creation of this little world to stop and get the camera out.
Here is the front of the card – it is so full of layers and textures that the camera doesn’t always pick up so I’ve included some detail shots. The house is not brick this time – the reverse of my embossing folder does a wood effect – so we have a blue wooden house 🙂
Blue House Card – front
Not everything has been hand created this time, some of the flowers are from my stash and may be Petaloo or Prima – apologies, I can’t quite remember. The larger blue and purple flowers are cut from coloured card stock, inked and layered up. The very small punched flowers, and the strip along the top of the card, are courtesy of some old inked and sprayed wallpaper that has lived in my stash for years. The ‘glass’ in the window is recycled rigid plastic packaging.
Blue House Card – detail
Blue House Card – detail
Right at the end, when everything was finished, I went back in and sprinkled a bit of glitter around – just for a wee touch of sparkle – the reality isn’t quite as glumpy as this close-up shot of the butterfly would have you believe …..
Blue House Card – detail
And here is the inside:
Inside the Blue House Card
The cut-out shapes have been finished with water soluble charcoal shadowing; the side table was some left over exterior wall [wooden this time] as is the lamp – and the book spines on the table ….. no waste! The floor rug is also a piece of the same coloured wallpaper that contributed to the small punched flowers on the front..
The chair is a Poppy Stamp die and stamp, which has been coloured with Spectrum Noir alcohol ink pens, as has the girl and cat. The banner is once again made from the discards when the windows are die cut.
The mirror is made from a lightly textured silver paper glued to a slightly larger piece of hand cut black card and has a coat of ‘Glossy Accents’ painted over it. The mirror frame is made from the same paper but has some ‘Crackle Accents’ over it and a light rubbing of ‘Pumice Stone’ Distress ink to finish.
Blue House Card, inside – right
The window blind and side drapes are cut from paper doilies, another stash inhabitant for many years – I’m not that thrilled with them, must have another try at some stage…….
Blue House Card, inside – left
Blue House Card – inside detail
Blue House Card – inside detail
And finally, because there is no room inside to write a nice Birthday Greeting to the recipient – the back of the card:
I hope you enjoyed that little visit to the Blue House! I just hope I’ve got the colours right this time!
Thanks for coming by today, I am always happy to know you have been 🙂
Share this:
A Card For Kerry
Hi all!
You may remember this card – I made it for my ED’s birthday back in March
ED’s sister-in-law liked it very much and has asked that I make something similar for her.
I had the camera sitting on my desk, so pretty much was able to document the process step by step – ergo if you want to know how I make a card, read on! 🙂
I used 2 A4 pieces of white card stock, one folded in half made the card base, the second went to the die machine and was put to work making all the add ons. I think all the dies I used – with one exception – are Memory Box dies and I also used a Martha Stewart punch.
The Contented Crafter
I embossed the house wall with my brick embossing folder than rubbed three different shades of reddy-browns in Tim Holtz stains over it. The die cut window was treated to some white acrylic paint and grey ink to shabby it up.
That done, I turned my attention to the inside. Wallpaper was added to both sides of the card and another window frame was fitted with some recycled plastic packaging fitted between the two frames to serve as glass, so we have a proper window:
The Contented Crafter
Next the architraves and floorboards were created. I used a Couture Creations Die at the top:
The Contented Crafter
I coloured the floor boards with water colour pencils and am really happy with the result!
Yay water colour pencils!
The next step was to create the cat and the girl – Benson and Kerry:
The Contented Crafter
They were stamped onto white card stock and coloured with alcohol ink pens:
The Contented Crafter
Then they were cut out – to you non-crafters this is called ‘fussy cutting’ and takes forever
The Contented Crafter
This is where I discovered I’d made an error with my calculations – the window was too far above the floor and the cat couldn’t see out the window – some creative thinking was called for:
The Contented Crafter
Puss sits on top of the pile of books so he can see out the window:
The Contented Crafter
I made the flower garden and forgot to photograph that process too – sorry!
Now we are getting to the finishing touches – ‘So, what’s all this for?’ you ask:
‘Well,’ I respond ‘You remember when I cut out the window from a die? Where the panes of glass go there are little square discards of white card. When cut in half they are just the right size for some banners….”
The Contented Crafter
The Contented Crafter
The Contented Crafter
Did you spot the window blind? Forgot to photograph that being made – and the presents?
All ready to go!
Here is the finished front:
The Contented Crafter
And finally, a few close ups for those of you who want a better look:
The Contented Crafter
The Contented Crafter
The Contented Crafter
The Contented Crafter
If I ever make another one I think I’ll put a table in, with a cake or some flowers on – or a chair – the room looks a little bare to me ……
I hope you enjoyed that walk through my card making process.
Thanks for dropping by today and I hope you are having a great week!
Go well!
Share this:
Be The Change …….
Hello friends! If you have been following my posts you know that I have been busy taking a few courses and learning lots……. Yesterday was the day when I decided it was time to return to my journal and create a page just for me, by me and without following anybody else’s guide lines.
Happily, I discovered I had a few more tricks in my bag!
It was time to create a page using one of my favourite quotes; Gandhi’s ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’. It’s an exhortation to stop blaming, stop whining, stop waiting for someone else to fix things and get on and do what you can do yourself ……
I started the double page spread with three colour washes – yellow, green and red. The colours were watered down 1:3 sploshed over and left to dry.
Next I die-cut a double run of lace from my couture creations die in white card stock and lay a length to the left and right side of the double page spread, inked it up with some ‘Aged Mahogany’ Distress Ink, glued it down and left that to dry.
An hour later I lay a piece of old lace curtain over the pages and spritzed a good coat of Dylusions white over everything. Peeling back the the lace revealed a rather gorgeous, soft dappled effect.
Then I got out the water colour pencils and started drawing – I wasn’t a hundred percent sure I knew what I was going to do – I had my quote and that was about it – oh and I had just found an old Fiskars template with big butterfly wings that had appealed to me – I knew I wanted to do something with that if I could …. I drew the left side first and after that the right side just kind of drew itself.
This is the water colour pencil drawing on the left side:
Image: Contented Crafter
On the right hand page, the template made the outline of her wings and I drew and doodled inside the shape. I edged the wings with a golden yellow Sakura gel pen – gotta have a little bling somewhere right? I liked that so much that when I had the quote all written out and mounted I edged that with the same pen……… if a little bling is good, a little more is even better!
This is the water colour pencil drawing on the right side:
paulinekingblog.wordpress.com
Finally the edges were treated to a light coat of gold paint, around the lace to define it a bit and top and bottom of the pages with a doodle or two, date stamped and voila, finito!
Please do note that the girl is wearing a rather fabulous pair of red gumboots [galoshes, wellingtons, rain boots – depending on where in the world you are] with a big red bow with polka dots on them, because I saw a pair in a store recently and really, really wanted to buy them despite the fact that my garden is the size of a postage stamp….. As I couldn’t justify the expense the gardening gal gets to wear them instead!
paulinekingblog.wordpress.com
paulinekingblog.wordpress.com
So, this is my latest page – what do you think?
paulinekingblog.wordpress.com
Thanks for dropping by today, do leave as note to say you’ve been – it’s always nice to hear from you 🙂 Have a great day!
Share this:
Hope – A New Journal Page
I’ve managed to completely discombobulate myself with all my new found arty-farty techniques, new equipment and re-found mediums – shall I use the water paints or the fluid acrylics or the water soluble pastels or the water soluble crayons? Perhaps I should just use the inks and sprays I am used to – but then why are all these pretty colours sitting on my desk smiling at me hopefully?
Shall I doodle, draw freehand or use stencils? Shall I layer or not layer? How will I ever become an artiste if I can’t decide which medium to use? Is it kosher to use ’em all at once?
To add to my confusion I took a short on-line class with the remarkably talented Valerie Sjodin. Her work is stunning and she works with accuracy and attention to detail. Doesn’t really sound like me does it?
One aspect which was really new for me was doing the lettering first – usually I do any writing towards the end of my process and, with a blank sheet of white paper looking back at me, I found it impossible to picture how it would look at the end – which is pretty obvious when you see the end! It is so interesting learning different ways of working and so challenging too!
I learnt a lot but didn’t have a hope of coming anywhere near the beauty of Valerie’s work. Standing back to assess my effort, I told Orlando despondently it wasn’t working out for me because I didn’t have the right paint colours and he just stretched up and asked for a dance.
We had a wee dance around the studio – well, to be accurate, I do the dancing – swaying really – and he sits up in my arms, head back, eyes closed and purrs and harrumps and warbles with bliss…..
But I digress! Here is my first effort:
All the wording comes from Valerie – I loved it so much I just went with it. You may notice the curvy edged paper – I have made a small 8 page journal with shaped edges and a wrap around cover – also courtesy Valerie. When the whole thing is finished I’ll put it up for your admiration and delight 🙂
But this first effort is pretty dismal! Usually when I make a muck up I can retrieve, cover, change, somehow redeem something – but there is nothing on this page I like. The background is flat and uninspiring and I over-doodled on the right hand edge. The splodges of gold are an aborted attempt to stencil some leaves with gold perfect pearls – which is a brilliant thing to do provided you don’t blast them over enthusiastically with the very large water spritzer bottle picked up mistakenly because you weren’t really concentrating at that particular moment, and thusly cause them to just go glump!
Let’s see, what else ….. I don’t like the colours I’ve put on the egg shaped words. There should have been a gap between that egg of words and the doodled edge – and the rest of the wording is – well, just rubbish really!
But was I deterred? Was I heck!! Hope is my friend, so I flipped the page and had another go:
I lay down tiny bits of torn book pages and painted the background with Hansa Yellow fluid acrylics. Those white circles are made with a bit of bubble wrap dipped into gesso and pressed onto the page. Then I did the words [Little rebel contented crafter 🙂 ]
I doodled the flowers and edges and felt much happier.
Here are a couple of close-ups:
All in all, much happier with version two – do you agree?
Thank you for coming by today, love that you did!
Share this:
Recycled Packaging Box
Hello Friends!
If you’re someone who has been following my posts for a while, you may remember how keen I am on being able to recycle stuff – especially packaging. And then, in my last post, I told you how I spoiled myself a little and purchased a host of paints, pastels, crayons, pencils, charcoals and pens for my budding artistic endeavours…….
They arrived in two identical sturdy boxes like this:
The boxes have substance, being made of corrugated card laid between the two outer sheets of cardboard and measure 305 x 165 mm. Which, to my way of thinking, is a size that just has to be useful.
So, yesterday afternoon I said to Orlando, ‘Come, let the ‘repurposing’ begin!’ and off we went to the play room. I got out the silver ultra-sticky plumbers tape that I picked up on a visit to the local DIY store years ago and which is an ever-so-handy member of my adhesives drawer, a pair of scissors and the tacky glue. I rummaged through the paper stash and found the left overs from the ‘Le Tres Chic’ 30 x 30 papers from DCWV. The size of these sheets was pretty spot on, so even though the colours don’t exactly sing to me I figured this is a trial run to see what I can do, so let’s use ’em!
And this is what I did:
I ran the plumbers tape all around the edges and along the creases where the box folded over into its top. This was for extra strength, protection and because I didn’t want to try wrapping paper around a slightly wonky edged cardboard box.
I cut the paper just short of the box edges and adhered it with the tacky glue.
I did the inside too:
Voila! A new home for my art journals, sketch book and note books
And here they are, proud as punch, sitting in the morning sun on Orlando’s table.
All up it took me about 40 minutes to make, so I shall probably put the other one together this evening.
Recycling and repurposing is very satisfying!
Thanks for coming by, it’s always lovely to know you’ve been 🙂
Share this:
New Beginnings
It’s September, my birthday is later this week and Spring is here! How much better can it get?
I always think of Spring as a new beginning, and I am also at a ‘new beginning’ stage in my life and I wanted to make a journal page to commemorate both these events.
I had gone on line a couple of days back and treated myself to a pile of new art products: half a dozen Golden Fluid Acrylics; Pitt pens in all sizes, water colour paints, water soluble oil pastels and a selection of pastel gliders.
While there I also purchased a selection of sketching pencils and graphite pencils and charcoal in pencil form and slabs. And a calligraphy pen.
It all arrived on my doorstep yesterday and I was ready to rock and roll!
And I’m on a high because this latest page in my journal has been a delight to do. I wasn’t glaring at her-in-the-video or muttering under my breath – I was smiling delightedly and clapping my hands and saying ‘Whoo-hoo’ to Orlando, who thought it was an invitation to dance …. but I rushed into the playroom and quickly completed the first days work:
I lay down some old book pages, put a good wash of gesso over the pages and edged with that gorgeous Hansa Yellow – one of my new paints. I sketched the face and went to watch the next installment.
You may remember I said in my last post I wasn’t going to muck about with just 10 minutes journalling time every day – I’m going to work for as long as I want. So I watched the next two days videos and went back to work:
She arrived quite quickly on the page – but when I stood back and looked I noticed the nose was – well – misplaced ….. [Did you spot it?]
In adjusting it I mucked everything up – not only because of the nose placement, but also because I have all these new toys and tried to put ’em all onto the same page at once ….. sigh! I never learn!
Any way, I was so engrossed in my artistic conundrum that I never gave the camera a thought until today – and as you can see, flowers hide a multitude of sins and I’m delighted with the end result!
There’s tons of texture on the page and of course I doodled – but not as much as in the last post:
And those purple flowers were fussy cut from a sheet of designer paper and they are flocked, so quite pleasing to the touch.
A quick aside: I’d had that sheet of paper in my stash for some years – it was one of those things that was just to beautiful to actually use – I thought it would probably stay there forever. So another thing I take away from this course is the ability to actually dive in and use the stuff I squirrel away … hah! Ten points to Julie!!
Thanks for sticking with me on this process – I have one more spread to do before things go back to normal – what ever that is – I hope you will come back for it.
Hope your weekend is going as splendidly as mine 🙂
Share this:
Spots Before My Eyes!
Hello there 🙂 [waving and smiling happily}
Here I am with the latest episode of my adventure in learning to step outside of my comfort zone. Although, to tell the truth and ‘fess up, pretty early in this lesson I began by doing my own thing, as I wasn’t in love with the flowers the tutor produced on her page
I started well, laying down a coat of white gesso followed by two coats of black paint as I did not have to hand any black gesso.
Then the rebellion started. I didn’t like what I was seeing [multi-coloured scribbles of water soluble crayon to make three flowers] so I made my own flowers from design paper and a template. I made every flower two layers, off-setting the layers. I cut one completed flower in half. I outlined the petals with a black pen and then doodled dots and lines as the tutor indicated.
Day 1 the page looked like this:
So far, so good right? I was quite pleased with that ……
Next day I began by edging everything with a gold pen ………..
…….as I returned to the format the lovely tutor was trying to teach me and I edged, dotted, swirled and scripted with the paint pen over two days until the page looked like this:
Apart from the flowers and gold paint, this double page spread was made almost exclusively with a paint pen – which is really just a fat ‘Sharpie’ like marker filled with white acrylic paint.
Over these four days I dotted, doodled, scripted ‘Spring is coming’ [because it really is – Hallelujah!!] and recorded my thoughts on the process.
My thoughts on the process have settled into – I don’t really like this style of working in my art journal. Which is good to gain clarity on. I don’t use my art journal as a diary. I use it to try out ‘good ideas’ or to play about and see what happens and am not that comfortable with mixing up the two. I also tend to work organically developing and tweaking the original idea for quite a while before moving on to something different.
Having said that I feel I have been freed up a lot while engaged in the process, I’ve tried loads of different things, been introduced to radically different concepts [for me] and I’m pretty sure they will spill over in some way into my continuing work.
I’m also not a ten-minuter. I’m a sixty minuter or more! I have the time and I like to spend it carefully crafting and trying, discarding, re-doing and endlessly tweaking.
These are all really great discoveries to make and I am so grateful to have been able to take this workshop and find it all out.
I no longer need castigate myself for my slow and ponderous efforts.
I’m a plodder and proud of it!
I might have to rename my blog ‘The Happy Plodder’ – has a certain ring don’t you think?
Any hoo – I digress. Here is the completed spread – don’t look for too long or you’ll start hallucinating:
The keen eyed among my bloggie friends will spot that I am projecting myself a day into the future … [I’m publishing this Friday 30th – a deliciously spring-like evening in my part of New Zealand] I cheated, I just can’t look at the dots and doodles and swirls and spots any longer!
I haven’t finished my course yet – I think I’m just over half way through. And I think I’m going to ditch the ten minutes a day and work for however long I feel like it on each installment. Which means I might have it finished in a day or two. 🙂
Please do pop back and see what happens next. I know I’m curious to know….
Thanks for coming by – have a great weekend!
The Contented Crafter 