Pencil Note Book

I recently bought some new stamps from Happy Daze

With all the snow we have had today, it was enough to drive anyone stir crazy so  I braved the snow storm and had a play in my studio.

I just couldn't decide what to do once there - so I made a chunky notebook.

The pencils look very 3D in real life.

The rubber stamp is just the right size for a notebook

I stamped it directly onto thick mountboard, then spent quite a long time colouring it.

I coloured the grungeboard lettering with a promarker over copper.

It gives the letters a nice red lustre look to them

The back cover was coloured with all those of the pencils on the front,

then I stamped over it with five Tim Holtz mini stamps.

I used A4 computer paper which I cut up to fit.

It's great as notepaper, and with the mountboard as covers

they make great presents and at a reasonable cost too!

And each one is an original of course!

Vintage BIA Book

I haven't been up to crafting for a few days - so forced myself to go out into the studio just to relax and play.



And this is the result.

I cut up some mount board - but it was slightly not quite right, so I cut up some more, rather larger pieces.

Then cut up lots of A4 sheets of paper to size - its a nice big very chunky book.

I distressed and inked the edges to tone in with the image.

The image has a nice and tranquil look about it I thought - and quite Spring like - the sun has been out this morning.

It took more than an hour - so technically its not elegible for the One Powerful Hour challenge - but one of the hours was pretty 'powerful' whilst making it! The rest of the time was rather boring doing all the cutting out and clearing up!

Another piece of work inspired by Jo.

As I had a bit of ink still in my misters, I decided to use it up on a couple of pieces of mount board.



I think these turned out better than yesterday's attempt. I gave them two coats of spray. One with the raffia on and one without - so they have more depth.

I think they look nice just as they are - and I wish I had left them that way, because I messed one up. The best one too! But that is all part of learning a technique and what works and what doesn't. And these are on free bits of mount board so cost nothing to make.


The colours on this side do look better in real life - as you can tell by the above close ups. I stamped this one first with a Morning Glory stamp as the colours reminded me of them.

I decided that this would be the back cover, as I thought the stamping needed to be darker - so using a different stamp, I inked it up and stamped in black - as per yesterday's little coaster book.

What a mistake that was! It was way too much of a contrast with the soft colours of lime and blue. I was so cross with myself.

But I reminded myself that I am using these notebooks to try out these techniques so it didn't matter. These chunky books are made using photocopy paper that was given to me by one of my sons, and is not really suitable for stamping on.

I did 'rescue' the other piece by covering it with a piece of coloured card, spraying what was left of the blue and green - you can see a shimmer of it in daylight close up but not in the photo.


I played safe and stamped tone on tone with blue.

In hindsight, I think that the first cover looks too fussy with the lettering background - which should have been a paler colour, and the morning glory stamped image should have been in a darker shade of blue - had I had one.

I think the reason that the black stamped image worked fine yesterday, was because it was on a smaller area - but on an area twice as long, with the stamp being twice as long too - it was just looked too harsh against the soft colours.

The chunky notebook has turned out well overall, and the recipient can choose which side they like the best as the pages are plain inside.

The pages are 8cm x 17cm which just happens to be the size the A4 paper cuts up nicely in the Dreamkutz machine. The mount board is 1cm larger all round.

New stamp - another notebook

A new stamp I ordered arrived today - I didn't know what to 'do' with it, so made covers for yet another note book.

I will be adding ribons, fibres and paper beads - just need to make the beads first.

Bind it All notebook

Here's another little book I made, again the covers are from mount board. I will add fibres, ribbons, and a silver charm - when they arrive in the post.


Click to enlarge photo. I liked the little bird, printed him out, and drew a branch for him to perch on.

I am going to make a number of notebooks, for fund raising later in the year.

They are nice to do when you feel a bit 'stuck' mojo wise.