De-stash it is!!!

 (This is a post card made I for a January Challenge at the Jennibellie's Journal Workshops


 My word of the year is DE-STASH ..................    If you don't know what that means......
well, if you are a crafter of ANY kind, you are probably building up a "STASH" of supplies.  Sometimes you sort of hate to use something, thinking it might be better used later.... but apparently "later" never comes.  So why not "De-Stash" every so often.

This year I want to start combining   journaling, collage art and maybe even scrapbooking with recycling, and using up my art supplies that are sitting on a shelf, unused, seemingly unloved.......  I have made journals in the past like this but now I am getting busy to make a whole lot  since I have way too many supplies just "sitting around."   I can use them as travel journals, art journals, daily journals, what ever.

This may start out as a mish mash but so what.  I often spend an hour or so going through old magazines and ripping out pages that appeal to me, or that have an interesting color or design feature.  Then they go into a box.... and there they sit, waiting for "what?"

This year I signed up for a few journal workshop type things here on line.  There are a couple of Face book groups......   Journal 52 and Art Journaling and there is a blog site called Jennibellie's Journal Workshops (see link above).  I also signed up for a paid  workshop that is teaching MAKING the actual journals called the Journal Journey.  I have made one so far.

  I may not stick with all of them throughout the year but have to admit I have already done more in this short month than I did totally last year.  There are many more out there too.  Or you can just make up your own.

MY GOAL is to have FUN and if I use up some of my stash of supplies that is even better.

So this is a little of what I have accomplished so far...........

I made two little journals using supplies I had on hand in abundance.  The blue on on the left has a cover made from some handmade paper I found somewhere or other.   I cut watercolor paper in half to make the pages, cut some handmade paper for the cover and the back is from 1/2 of the back of the watercolor pad.  I stacked them and took them to staples to have the coil binding put on.

 The inside pages......... almost looks professionally made doesn't it.

 And this is the back.... this is definitely recycling!!!

The other little one is filled with bits and pieces of art paper, handmade paper, and bit of paper I made and even a couple of envelopes.  The real secret is that I gathered them up and took them to staples to have them bound with their coil binding.  Keeps them neater that way.
    Here are a couple of pictures of some of the inside pages.

            The green, yellow etc. partial page is a piece of paper I made when I was into making paper.



To start your own collage type journal grab any kind of paper that is reasonably strong... cover it with glued down images from magazines and cut to size......  your first attempts don't "Have" to be in a fancy or even "not fancy" journal.. You can mix in plain papers too...  I have seen some interesting things made of a fairly standard size page... stacked up, taken to a print shop or Staples and   bound with coil binding.  Or if you have a sewing machine....  add a "cover page", sew them together on one edge... voila.... a book.

I haven't done the collage type journal I mentioned above but maybe I will eventually.  I have taken classes over the years to learn to make various types of journals which in the past I have used as journals for some of our trips.

SO this is just the beginning of this new adventure...............  hope it last the year................

My travel journal

Before I get on with telling you about the new journal I wanted to share this picture of a ground hog (or sometimes called a woodchuck)  that visited our yard the other day and was caught eating an apple that had probably fallen from the apple tree.  I did show this on my facebook page but if you aren't on that you still get to see it. He is much cuter than he deserves to be!

I finished a second journal using the techniques I learned in Mary Ann Moss's Full Tilt Boogie journal class.
Here it is!!

 And here are a few signatures I put in the book.  I am using mostly scrapbooking paper cause I have way too much, some journal pages from this original journal and a few water color pages.  Nothing real wild as it isn't really my style.

The 1/2 pages will get things added to them as well.  I like having different size pages.  It makes it more fun when looking through the book.  Since it is a travel journal I will be adding pictures AND brochures and the like that I pick up on the way.  And commentary of course.  This book will be started soon as I have collected up pictures and such from past journeys and they will go in first.

Although doing these journaling classes with Mary Ann Moss (Full Tilt Boogie and Remains of the Day).  I have really gotten  into book making but believe it or not I actually took a bookmaking class a number of years ago.  It was more traditional.  Only did one small book but I learned the techniques.
Here are some pictures of it.   Although it has been 15 plus years since I made it I have just left it on the shelf to "admire" but now I realize I had best start using it. 

The technique used was adding signatures and sewing them together.  Then we used heavier  paper for the cover and the tabs.  These aren't the best pics but I hope you get the idea.

  Not as "exciting" as the full tilt boogie style.  So that is why I prefer the FTB style and will probably continue to do it


Now, what kind of journal shall I do next.

A yummy dinner and my Full Tilt Boogie Journal

I did finally put my first Full Tilt Boogie journal today but before I show that I will show a quick picture of our dinner last night.

We lived in Puerto Rico for three years and learned to like several of the more typical fare.  One thing we learned to enjoy was Plantain...  a type of banana unlike the ones we are used to here in the US.  There are recipes for using it when it is not yet ripe... and when it is VERY ripe.  That is our favorite.  You wait until it is nearly black.... then slice like french fries and deep fry it.  Very sweet.  So we had that for dinner last night along with deep fried Tilapia and a pepper, onion and kidney bean melange....  Puerto Rican's eat a LOT of beans!

Here is the picture of the dinner.

But now on to the Full Tilt Boogie Journal I am making.  I started working on it a few weeks ago and remarked on it here............  Click here to read that blog entry if you want.

So by working a bit yesterday and today, in between customers in my antique shop, I managed to put the book together and am pleased.  I would not win any awards for the stitching but it fine... I will get better. After gluing and such today I will be letting it sit and dry well before I go ahead and work on it. It may not be for another week but now that the book is finished it will call out to me I am sure!!!

A couple of weeks ago I went through my digital photos and arranged to have print copies made at out local CVS drugstore.  I will use some of those pics in the journal.  I will include pictures of the garden in winter and summer and the birds and animals that visit as well as some pictures of our cats.  It will just fill up as I feel inspired.

The book I ended up using was not one I showed in the first blog entry.  This was an old business journal I found at a local flea market for $1.00.  I added a piece of scrapbook paper to the cover, to cover up some messiness.

So here are the pictures.

 The next three pictures show some of the pages.  Some are full pages, some are just strips to which I will attach pictures.  Others are blank for journaling.  Or what ever. I used mostly scrapbooking paper, some journal pages and some blank water color paper.

 And after I was almost finished I found these nifty buttons in a vintage button box from my shop.  The little flowers in the middle are mother of pearl.  I really liked them and think they are perfect for my book.

Here is to Mary Ann Moss for another great and inspiring class!

What I found when cleaning up my studio

You never know what you will come across when you work on cleaning up an art space!  I was pleasantly surprised to find a bunch of home made papers and projects I had made a number of years ago.  When we lived in Maine one of interests was making homemade papers.  I was quite gung-ho for awhile and even got involved in a few swaps.  But as with a number of my interests once I have learned to do it, I am off on something else.
Amongst the homemade papers i found these few little projects I had made using paper and some pressed items from my gardens.  I think I will probably use them in my new FTB garden journal.  They should add an interesting contrast to the other papers I will be using.

If you click on the picture it will get larger and you can see some of the details better. There are dried daisies, pansies and something else I don't remember.  And a lot of the paper was made using inclusions of dried herbs from my garden.

An aside to this story:

One day a friend of mine and I decided to make some paper using cat tails and didn't realize we shouldn't "cook" the stalks in the house. (Cooking is how you can make them "mushy" enought to press into paper.   My dear, normally patient, husband was not at all pleased! The smell was awful.  Since I didn't have a good place to cook outside I sort of changed my way of making paper and didn't do so much anymore.  Here is a picture of a bit of cat tail paper that I still have left.
It isn't very pretty is it. I suppose it would look interesting as a layer of a project.  I may end of using it in the journal and tell this story again.

Full Tilt Boogie

If you have been following my blog for awhile you know that I seem to jump from one interest to another. I also like to take on line art classes.  A while back I took a class from Mary Ann Moss called Remains of the Day and have done two different journals using her methods.  Here are the links to the pages I did about this class:
http://agardenersart.blogspot.com/2009/12/altered-art-and-christmas.html
http://agardenersart.blogspot.com/2009/12/continuing-with-remains-of-day-project.html
http://agardenersart.blogspot.com/2009/12/we-are-going-to-have-white-christmas.html


She is now preparing a new class called Full Tilt Boogie.  Click on that title to go to her blog to learn about it.  She hasn't gotten around to doing the full description or the price yet but I will be there when it begins in June.

I have picked up a couple of antique picture albums on Etsy and have already a collection of cabinet cards from the era.  A while back I did some altered work on some.... Click here to see the pictures of them.

Here are pictures of the two photo albums I bought.  I imagine they won't look like this eventually.

 And here is a picture of a couple of pages in the above book.  they aren't in great shape but after I learn Mary Ann's techniques they should be great.

This class won't be started until some time in June,  so won't have any more reports until it does but thought some of you might like to check it out.

Continuing with "Remains of the Day" project

Last night my sewing machine was really humming along. I got out my pattern for the journal I am making, all my fabric scraps, my ironing board and iron and started the process.

This first picture is what it looked like after I picked out the fabrics I would be using. I laid them out to see how I would like them. In end however I left two of them out

In this next picture you can see how I stitched down the main pieces using a zig zag stitch in red.

I used red because it is one of the main colors in the piece AND because I LIKE IT.

And the final picture shows where I added a few other things. The leaf piece is part of a lace collar I had in my stash, the litte circle on the bottom was added cause I like that fabric and the flower was one I had. It may not stay. We shall see tomorrow.

Tomorrow I hope to be able to show you the mostly finished cover. I still have to make the tie for it. AND who knows what changes I will end up making.
I would love to read your comments.