Journal Journey Continues.........

I spent some time messing about with my journal and made a couple more pages.

A quick precis of the story so far.

Lucinda and Kate are childhood friends .

As a young woman, Kate was invited to join her cousins in France, and through them mixed with a wealthy circle of the 'elite'

She has been staying in a Chateau, has a new companion Genevieve.

They have been wined and dined and have been sampling the delights of Paris around 1900.

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Lucinda is now an old lady still living in England and looking through her scrap book of memorabilia of bygone days

If this is your first visit and want to see previous pages you can see them here and here  and here and here

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Lucinda kept all the letters and postcards etc and here are some of them.

Kate sent little bottles of eau de cologne.

The bottles have long since gone, but the labels, now yellowed with age have been pressed and saved on a sheet of French writing -  which she glued on with flour and water.

Kate and Genevieve were swept away by the latest fashions and used to send paintings of the latest fashion items to Kate. 

The shoes particularly amazed Lucinda - who wore leather ankle boots for Sunday best!

Like these - the height of fashion!

Some of Kate's letters survived over the years, but the gold leaf on her napkins and writing paper had almost all flaked off.

But despite the ageing the letters were still legible.

(Un)Friendly Plastic Swap

I joined in a swap this month which required the use of Friendly Plastic. 

 So what's friendly about it tell me do!

I bought a number of sticks, a set of heart cutters and thought it was going to be easy!

I even watched a mini demo on TV - and it did look fairly easy - but clever people have a way of  doing that don't they. - Making things look easy!

I thought I would make a book and decorate it with friendly plastic.

But I received a lovely book in the swap from someone, so had to think of something else.

As I had a heart cutter I had a flash of inspiration and I cut out a big heart out of material - almost A4 in size.

I stamped it with vintage wording, and did an image transfer of a lovely gypsy girl onto a piece of cream lawn cotton, and sewed it on the front adding some vintage lace to frame it.

Having admitted defeat with the unfriendly plastic and ending up with lots of disasters I decided to make a back for it and turn it into a 'puffy heart' which I remember seeing on someone's blog but just can't find it to add a link.  

**** Edited to say - it's here ****

Carol makes the most amazing things - and her little vintage hearts are stunning- so is her photography - do go and pay her a visit.

It was nothing like my heart - and as soon as I have tracked it down I will post a link. 

I made a gold heart from Friendly Plastic for the gypsy girl to wear, and experimented making  leaves and little gold flowers with gems in them for the front.

I did an image transfer on the back of a vintage heart.

Then sewed it all together and filled it with stuffing which I perfumed with Anais Anais

It's a Friendly Plastic failure, but hopefully the padded heart will be used to add fragrance to a room or to a wardrobe full of clothes.

How doth my journal grow!

Well very slowly is the answer as it takes so much time!

But I am getting there slowly

I have finally managed to sew all the signatures/pages in - which took me a few days to do, and today I glued on the outer cover.

As usual my photography skills leave a lot to be desired but you get the overall idea.

The material is a scrap/offcut I found and is really rich in colour with a lot of gold on it.

I made a padded name plate which looks much better in real life as you can see the printing very clearly on it - but not in the photo.

Because this is a story journal, it is taking me a long time to do, so I decided to assemble it and then do the  remainder of the story a bit at a time. 

It was a bit soul destroying seeing all the pages etc loose in a bag and it wasn't tempting me to do any more to it - it was too daunting.

The above left is a serviette which I have painted over, which  has turned it from a paper napkin glued on  - to looking like a delicate painting with room for some journalling.

Here are a few more pages.......

They look so much better now that they are sewn to make a book, and more tempting to fill now

I used a skein of embroidery cotton - which I bought in  a charity shop - I just sewed it on with a zigzag stitch and I like the effect.

I have so many more pages apart from these - but it takes too long to upload them all.

These will look so different once they get the text and images on them.

All closed up

I just wish you could see all the gold work in the photo - it positively gleams in  daylight.

Blog Giveaway

Linda Elbourne is off on her hols so is having a giveaway when she gets back.

This is what you can win!

Why not pop over and leave a comment

Penultimate Banner for the swap - "Brown, Cream and gold"

I am all bannered out - but have one more to make + my own.

I dyed lace, stamped on pieces of material and the metal disc.

Lovely thick vintange asian fabric, with cream lining, netting, etc finished off with some glitter top right hand side - which actually looks lovely and sparkly in real life.

"Green, cream, grungey not bright'

I had fun making this one - it took me four hours - I seem to be taking ages doing each banner, but it's more my inexperience on a sewing machine and just trying things out.

I used a lovely piece of vintage velvet for this one.

The little girl's dreadlocks I machined on top of a few of the inked ones.

It may have taken a long time but I did actually enjoy the process, the inking, staining, sewing, collaging, and writing one of the quotes from a Tim Holtz stamp on a pure cream piece of new cotton.

And grunging it all up.

The bottom 'circle' is a grunged piece of paper on which I have written a grungey Love

This looks so much better in real life too.  The velvet is all the same green in colour and feels just lovely to touch.

I have got quite attached to this and really hope the recipient is happy with it when she has received it.

'Purple, red, burgundy and gold" - Another banner for the swap

The wonderful Cath recently ran a blog candy giveaway -  I was amazed to receive a parcel as a 'Consolation Prize' for not winning - as one of a number of people.

I have been spending the past couple of days making more banners  for the swap I am in.

I had some of these lovely little blank discs amongst the stash so I stamped one and used it for this banner

The purple fabric with gold patterns, came from an India skirt - one of those large crinkle ones of years gone by.  I bought it from a charity shop to use. 

All the material is sewn onto a material base banner.

I used a vintage image which I overlaid with burgundy netting.

I had trouble photograping things lately - it's me not the camera

I used some more of the Indian scarf - its lovely rich colours with lots of gold don't show up here.

It looks even stranger in the bright sunshine - you'll just have to take my word for it, that it looks fine and subtle and rich in 'the hand'

I felt really 'free' with this template and just played.

I used one backing paper (a ledger sheet). 

 Instead of more strips or layers of backing papers,  I used oil based pastels and smudged them. 

It really was great fun.

It doesn't look quite so bare in real life as it does in the photo - mainly because you can see the light shading of the smudged pastels and lines and columns of the ledger page.

These templates are really good fun and so very challenging - well they are to me!

And maybe at a later stage I will have something more to write about!

Journal page - Make the most of your time every day.

Another page in my book of intentions.

Another random template - I think that I might get the hang of it after all!

The prompt was 'What is happening right now?'

The focal image was again torn out of the Sunday supplement, and 'messed about with a bit'

Book of Intentions - struggling into the world of journalling with templates and prompts

You can click photos to enlarge

I finally adding some wording - which I am finding rather hard.

This is another page - not the one next to the  above.

You can tell how I feel about it by the messy photo!

I am struggling with images at the moment  - no magazines etc the Sunday 'You' which didn't really have anything inspiring.   I am not happy with this page, but will keep it in to remind me how 'bad' I was when I started out.  This first book is designed as experimental.

I picked out a 'prompt' and a template at random then set about tearing, sticking, drawing, masking, and writing to fit the prompt.

You'll probably recognise the 'Never look back' heading from the weekend mag.  Again I picked a template at random, and ahered to the desing rigidly!

I where the black paint is - I did open up my soul - which was very hard - but as the tutor writes in her notes -  you can paint over it or cover it with more backing paper - which I did - and was surprised how good it felt to do so.  A bit like writing something on a blackboard and rubbing it out!

I am only going to post a few more of my pages, then leave it until the book is finished - hopefully they will get better

I am taking a bit of 'time out' so you won't see much of me on the forums or leaving comments.  I will be visiting your blogs though and keeping up to date with what you are doing - just don't have enough time to leave comments at the moment.