'Tis time for tissue

Now that I am finally back in the craft room, I am actively seeking challenges to get back in crafty shape, and I thought I'd give a go to the June challenge at A Vintage Journey.  Astrid has asked us to incorporate tissue paper into a make, and the Creative Guides have made some fabulous samples which I highly encourage you to view!

After some thought, I decided to make another little book, so I could also put a second entry into the June challenge at Mini Album Makers.  And for good measure, I decided to make my theme about travel/transport, so that I could enter the Monday challenge at Simon Says Stamp, the gist of which is "Transport It".

This will be a photo-heavy blog entry, as it is the way I keep track of my crafty journey, so please grab a favorite beverage and take a look!

I started by cutting the new Eileen Hull Note book Die from Sizzix, first out of black mat board for the cover, and then twice more from heavy black cardstock to make the pages.  I was inspired by the technique that Kathy Clements uses for this die, which is to directly glue the pages into the finished cover, rather than using elastic to keep signatures in place.  I wanted to make this a very interactive book, as you'll see!

My first step was to gesso the cover, crumple up some tissue paper, and adhere with Glue & Seal (now discontinued, but I am sure that Collage Medium would work just fine).  After this substrate had dried, I generously sprayed with Dylusions After Midnight, spritzing with water and tipping here and there to get the color concentrated in the various nooks and crannies.  Then I dabbed out some Brushed Pewter Distress Paint on my work surface, diluted with a bit of water, and splattered all over - I was going for a night sky effect.

After this dried, I trimmed off the excess tissue paper, turned the cover over, and applied more tissue paper which had a beautiful script print to it.  This time I cut the paper to size, as I was not crumpling it.

Some ink from the Dylusions spray migrated onto the inside cover, despite the gesso.  So I ended up painting a light coat of Shaded Lilac distress paint over the whole inside cover to make it look coherent.... one of my favorite shades so I was not concerned.

Once this dried, I sealed everything with Glue and Seal (matte medium or collage medium would also work).  Next I applied Emerald Creek Burnt Copper Leaves embossing powder to the edges, to try to cover the "sandwich edges" between outside and inside covers.

In hindsight, I would first apply a narrow washi tape finish on the edges before heat embossing.  Bits and pieces flaked off as I handled the cover to insert the finished pages, and I think having a more solid substrate of tape would have helped.  Also, this embossing powder is quite chunky, so probably not the best selection for this type of treatment.  But it sure is lovely!

I then die cut and heat embossed with a fine gold embossing powder the new Destination die from Time Holtz.  It is too wide to fit on the front cover, so I cut it in half, and matched the two pieces on front and back cover.  

The gold embossing on the globe diecut was a bit too bright, so I knocked it back with some aqua and iron Prima gilding waxes.  I then cut a piece of brown ribbon, and affixed that to the cover with a brad.  Onto the inside pages!

I created an accordion mini-booklet for the first page.  I smooshed some 90 lb. water color paper into Antique Linen and Shaded Lilac Distress Oxide Inks that had been spritzed with water, and continued to do so until my entire page was covered and to my liking.  I did this on both sides.

Then I accordion folded this piece, and adhered various images from the Stamperia Fantastic Voyages paper pad, bits of 3D embossing folders from Tim Holtz, and some fabulous stamps I have from Michelle Ward at Green Pepper Press, and from Carabelle Studios.  I embellished a few images with other bits from the paper pad and with various 3D cut and emboss folders from Tim Holtz, highlighted with Prima's gilding wax.

 I was able to use up some bits from my last album as well.

 This little accordion pamphlet is secured into the album by a piece of elastic cording.

                                                                                                   

                                                         
The  second page is simply an image cut from the Stamperia paper, to hide the cord from the first page.  The third page features a small pocket made from the Tim Holtz Gearhead corner die out of black card highlighted with various gilding waxes, and a little card made from the Stamperia paper....



                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             




















For the fourth page, I created a pocket made from cream card, embossed with the 3D Mechanics embossing folder from Tim Holtz.  I covered this with Antiqued Bronze Distress Paint, and some iron gilding wax from my stash to age it.  Inside is a little tag cut from the Stamperia paper, with a small bronze eyelet to which I attached some twine....

 The next page has a magnetic enclosure, cut from some map paper from my stash, and further cut with the Ornate On-the-Edge dies from Tim Holtz.  Inside is again a little tag from the Stamperia paper held in place with a gears border from my stash, heat embossed with Stampendous Aged Marine embossing powder.

The next two pages offer a pop-up of gears created from the Gearhead thinlits set.... quite hard to capture on camera, but I must say very fun in real life!  The gears are highlighted with various Prima Metallique gilding waxes.

The final page is a little pocket, again from the Stamperia paper (as well as a leftover from the Alchemy paper used in my last book), and some tags cut from the Fantastic Voyages Stamperia pad.

The booklet itself closes with the ribbon wrapped round....

Thank you so much for stopping by, and for hanging in with me through this long post!  Please do leave a comment if you choose - I love hearing from you!

http://minialbummakers.blogspot.com/

Be still my heart - I'm actually crafting again!

Well, I most certainly did not expect it to take me almost a year to get back into crafting, but it has truly been that long - mostly because it has taken me that time to get the new house and studio settled (mostly, lol!)  Several of my original organization ideas in the studio turned out to be not the best for new ways of storing stamps, etc.  Which led to deconstructing the original and replacing with the new.... but it is all good!  And in my new space, I can indulge in virtually any of the various hobbies I dabble in.  Which are many!

Although I've not been crafting, I have been following folks on Facebook, including the talented Anne Redfern, who recently posted a tutorial for a Flip Pocket Mini Album.  I've tried my hand at a few books (here, here , here and here) but Anne's tutorial got me itching to get back to it, so I could enter the June challenge at Mini Album Makers Challenge - and here we are!  There is a short video showing of the entire book at the end of this post.  If you'd like to know more of the process, read on....

Per usual, I had no set ideas of what to make, but wanted some size where I could use both the fabulous 3D embossing folder "Elegant" from Tim Holtz/Sizzix, and a technique new to me that involved such a folder and Distress Oxide (DO) ink and a metallic Distress crayon; I picked this up from Bubblescrap, through Pinterest.

First, I totally copied her colors of black card, Bundled Sage DO, and the copper Distress crayon.  By the way, I've seen recently some wonderful experiments with other colors (using a slightly different technique) from Stacey at Tattered Nest that I want to try soon!

I decided to use the Tim Holtz/Sizzix Vintage Cabinet Movers and Shapers die, as it would accommodate nicely that gorgeous flourish.  However, I wanted a larger edge for my binding, so after die-cutting two pieces from black mat board, I trimmed off the little pedestal on the bottom.

I then adhered the flourish piece, and put some lovely Stamperia paper from the "Time is an Illusion" collection on the inside covers.

I've been watching Tamara Morton of Posh Cat Crafts , who has posted very detailed tutorials on her YouTube channel making albums from various Tonic Studio memory book and other of their dies.  One of these dies cuts a ready made hinge die, and I decided to use that here.

This die will make a spine for quite a large album, so I just cut it down to size.  Only afterwards, did I realize that the spine is designed to allow for very thick pages, with lots of flaps, pockets, and the like.  My book being quite small, I kept these to mostly flaps of cardstock, with one magnet belly band in the front cover, and a small pocket on the back cover.  But I look forward to making a full size, or at least bigger, album soon with all of the fun elements.

From there, I chose a lovely set of stamps from the Herbarium Collection by Craft Consortium.   I used Spellbinders Labels 22 for the layering pieces, as this nested set has a nice selection of sizes, and fit well on my modified cabinet base.

I used papers from my stash by Maja Design, and the Alchemy collection from Stamperia.  On the first page, I created a little window with a real pressed flower in it; the other pages are flaps, and as mentioned, the front cover has a magnetized belly band.

To cover the hinge binding, I covered two pieces of Paper Leather; the first with Antique Bronze Distress Paint, and the other with Black soot.  I used a dimensional embossing folder from Spellbinders (E3D-018) on the first, and highlighted with some gunmetal gilding wax from my stash.  I did not like how it went with the outside cover, so decided to use this to cover my binding mechanism on the inside covers.

For the black soot leather, I embossed with a die (Moroccan Wildflower from the Nana's Friendships collection of Scrapbooking Made Simple).  The leather embosses much better with this latter technique.  I highlighted the embossing with Rich Coper Metallique Wax from Prima.

To create a closure, I adhered two small decorative rings from my stash with E6000, placed some Dirty Bronze Nuvo Drops as "brads" and cut a piece of copper ribbon.  And thus, we come to the end at last!  

In addition to the Mini Album Makers Challenge, I'd like to enter the 50th mixed media challenge at Creative Artiste Mixed Media.

Here is the short video - thank you to my sister-in-law Beth!