Day 7

The last challenge  day # 7 of the 7 Days in May Challenge at Jessica Sprague was to make a card. We could use any theme, colour, or digital papers. I very quickly put this card together as I was on Grandmother duties with our little granddaughters today while my daughter is still in the hospital.

I thought some thank you cards might come in handy.The digital paper and elements that I used came from KPertiet at Designer Digitals. The 7 Days in May challenge has been so much fun to participate in. Have a 24 hour time limit I found really gets the creative juices working. And I went into the challenge with the mind set that finished was better than perfect!

And she arrived

Day 6 challenge for 7 Days in May was to create a layout with the theme "true story".
My true story was the birth of a beautiful new granddaughter today. How good is that!

Day 5

Continuing the 7 Days in May challenge at Jessica Sprague, day 5 we were told  the only restriction we had was to use the words "this is love", colours, layout, journaling all were left open. In the layout I created was  easy  to chose the photo's to use, they seemed just perfect to fit the words "this is love".

Day 4

The day 4 challenge from Jessica Sprague was to create a layout  using the template   that we could  download, we were free to use any colours and paper, no restriction on topic and at least one frame was to contain a photo.

This is the layout  I came up with. The topic I chose was Week in Life 2010 which was a 7 day photo documentary project from Ali Edwards blog last April. The basic instruction was to carry a camera  all week long and take photo's of everything. At the end of the week I printed my favorite photo's added some journaling, pretty papers and made up a album using baseball card plastic storage sheets to put the photo's in.  Ali provides all of the instructions and inspiration on her blog. It was really interesting looking back today and seeing that week captured. Surprisingly I received a email from Ali Edwards today announcing another Week in Life starting in July. After the pleasure I received today looking at the photos from last year definitely sign up for the new Week in Life project.

7 Days in May

Jessica Sprague is offering challenge called a 7 DAYS IN MAY . The first a day we were given a blank layout with 9 boxes and 24 hours to complete it.

Day two another  blank layout with the words "and then" and told to design something that related to the words. We are awaiting the birth of our third grandchild and this picture seem to work perfectly.

Today, day 3 we were challenged with a colour pallet and offered some digital paper. The challenged was to create a layout containing the colours in the pallet.

I've had great fun completing these challenges and not stressing over them being perfect, just being done and posted to the gallery.

Full Tilt Boogie

A year ago I took a wonderful on line class called "Remains of the Day" given by Mary Ann Moss. It started me on my journey of making Travel Journals.

Mary Ann writes a very entertaining blog call "Dispatch from LA" which you can find here.

Mary Ann has a new class which will be debuting in June called "Full Tilt Boogie".
This time we will be making journals out of old photo albums. Click on the link and you will find out more about it.
In anticipation I scoured the internet and found two journals on etsy. One is celluloid with a velvet spine and measures 7"x 9" with lots of lovely  different size and shape spots for photo's

The second album that I purchased is a lovely velvet with gold edging on the pages.

It too has lots of pages with to use with an assortment of photo frames. It measures

9" x 11".  Buying these albums can become addictive so beware!

Grandma's garden

My little grand daughters came over on the weekend to "help" me wash the patio furniture. They had a grand time playing with the water. A tub of water a few bubbles and some sponges that's all it takes to entertain 4 year olds for several hours!

Spring & Fairy Slippers

Begone winter!

Spring although very (VERY) wet has arrived in Southern Ontario. I wanted to show off my garden that has started blooming with Forget-Me-Nots, which we call my daughters birthday flowers, Virginia Blue Bells, Bleeding Hearts and the Magnolia tree. It is such a pleasure to see some colour back into my world. Next will be the peony bush, peony trees and the lilac's. In the very early spring my DH and I dug up the peony trees and lifted them several inches in hopes that they would start blooming. And it worked! Lots of buds almost ready to come out. Our very aggressive squirrels were eating the bark off the the peony trees and eating the buds of the magnolia tree. The garden center recommended a spray which worked! It isn't often that I can outsmart the squirrels!

My very dear friend from across the world in Australia sent these Fairy Slippers to me. It was our exchange challenge for May. She very kindly included lots of goodies in the package and it felt like Christmas opening them all.

Coptic binding refers to methods of bookbinding developed by early Christians in Egypt, the Copts, and used from as early as the 2nd century AD to the 11th century. The term is also used to describe modern bindings sewn in the same style...Wikipedia

Last weekend I took a 3 hour class at Bizzy b's Stamp & Scrap with Samantha Starr learning how to make a journal using Coptic binding. How cool is it to still be using the same stitch used in the 2nd century. That's truly staying power! Once you get the hang of it, it's a very easy stitch to do. For you embroiders out there it almost like a lazy daisy stitch.

The journal at the top of the page is 8x10". The covers are made using "Graphic 45" paper which I love for their wonderful designs and watercolour paper for the inner pages.

I made this small journal which is only 6x6" after taking the class on the weekend. It is also made with watercolour paper pages inside and will be given to my daughter for her birthday.

I've been thinking

My husband always gets a worried look on his face when I say I've been thinking.

What I have been thinking about was how to make a travel journal using loose leaf rings rather than a stitched binding so I could add more pages as needed. I came up with a idea and worked on it over the weekend. As you can see from the photo's it was successful. What I did was to make a spine that I could attach the loose leaf rings to. I then made the books front and back covers in the usual way attaching the spine. I used handmade Japanese paper to cover both the outside and inside of the books covers. I made an assortment pages using both watercolour paper that I sprayed with colour, 7 Gypsies journal pages and some stitched pages with pockets . Another item that I added was Maya Road Kraft envelopes to be able to put bits and pieces in. All that is left now is to decorate the front cover and it's done and waiting for my next trip!