Book Making Using Recycled Materials

Hello everyone, I have a few more projects to share with you today showcasing the fabulous stamps that we brought to last month's TV shows on Hochanda. The collection of stamps had a little bit of something for everyone, and I enjoyed working with them so much. I am sure that you will love them too!

My first project is a handmade book, I love books, and used to buy so many of them. Nowadays, I like to make my own, from simple accordian books, to fabric covered books that I have stitched together and used more complicated bookbinding techniques. This project uses a corrugated cardboard envelope that I received from a mail order company, and I have simply taken advantage of the fold of the envelope to create the spine of the book. I folded twelve pieces of drawing cartridge in half, splitting them into three groups, and these became the signatures of my book. I popped the pieces inside each other, so that I had four pieces of drawing cartridge sitting neatly inside each other, in groups of three. I made three holes up the fold of each group of paper.

I cut the cardboard envelope to make a cover so that it was slightly larger than the drawing cartridge, and made three lots of three holes in the spine, which would enable me to sew each signature into the cover in a simple bookbinding method. There are lots of You Tube tutorials for this, just do a search online for 'simple bookbinding', and you will find lots of help. If I were to make another one of these books, I do think that I would put washi tape on the spine for added strengthening, but I am not intending to put this book through a lot of tough use, so it will probably be okay.

I used bookbinding thread to sew the signatures into the book, but you can used dental floss if you do not have any specialist supplies.

I used black card as a matting layer, this really sets off the zingy colours that I chose for my masterboard background. I used Distress Inks to blend across some drawing cartridge, and added tone on tone stamping using the bubble wrap effect stamp from Make Your Mark stamp set. I added the cracked stamp and circles in grey ink, and some of the word clusters to build up the background. To finish, I stamped the large circle using black ink onto a piece of scrap card, added the words once more, and matted it onto black card, to create a topper. I felt that these words were perfect for a journal, and especially in these uncertain times, they can remind us that life is not so bad after all.

You could create lots of these masterboard backgrounds and cut them up to make cards, bookmarks, book covers, all sorts of projects, it just goes to show that these mark making stamps can be the stars of the show and not just for backgrounds.

For my next project, I created a background of soft greens, and added leaves and a word cluster from the Glorious stamp set using a darker green ink. I stamped the Floral Study onto a smaller piece of card, and coloured the image using watercolour pencils. I edged both pieces of card with Seedless Preserves Distress Ink.

The background on this card contains a bit of everything! I coloured the drawing cartridge using Distress Ink, and added some stamping using the Large Crackle Background stamp. The circles,words and bubble wrap image are from the Glorious stamp set, and I have used the Chocolate Baroque Strip Stencil set. I have stamped and embossed the Poppy Ledger image onto kraft card using white embossing powder, and coloured it using Koh-I-Noor paints.

Finally, a super quick little masculine card using kraft card once more. I used the tape image from Make Your Mark and three different colours of ink; red, brown and white. I then stamped the sentiment onto one of the strips, which is something that Lesley had always envisaged with this strip image. You could change the colours, as some of the other Team members have done, and make really colourful versions of this type of design.

Thanks for stopping by, xx

Glorious Flowers

Hello everyone, I have a few projects to share with you today showcasing the fabulous new stamps that we brought to last month's TV shows on Hochanda.

My first two cards use the same stamp as the focal point, but show what very different looks you can achieve with the same stamp. For my first card, I created a bold background, adding texture paste through a Chocolate Baroque Strip Stencil, and then stamped images from Make your Mark using coordinating colours, plus black ink for the circles. I chose to stamp the words in grey ink for a softer effect. The circles are just the right size to add these word collections, and I will be using this effect a lot for backgrounds, as I really like how it looks.

I took a smaller piece of card and stamped the seed pods and masked them with Masking Tissue. I then stamped the Square Bubbles and added colour as before. I took away the Masking Tissue and coloured the image with Polychromos pencils, and added some grey shading along the edge of the image with a pencil for dimension.

For my second card, I coloured a piece of book paper with Scattered Straw Distress Ink and stamped the seed pod again several times up one side, masking it each time to create  a cluster of pods. I added the small flower sprigs from the same Glorious stamp set, and coloured everything with Polychromos pencils. I edged the book paper with Seedless Preserves Distress Ink.

I stamped the single leaf and flower sprig randomly across a larger piece of kraft card, using green and purple Versafine Clair inks, and also stamped the sentiment onto a small piece of kraft card. These pieces of card were also edged with Seedless Preserves Distress Ink.

My final card uses the large fantasy flower from the Glorious stamp set. I stamped the image onto a piece of cotton fabric using Archival Ink. I coloured the image with Inktense pencils, and blended them with a waterbrush. I frayed the edges of the fabric and adhered it to a layer of dark card using strong double sided tape.

I created the background using a piece of drawing cartridge stained with tea, but you could use Distress Ink, or any other water based medium, it's up to you. I like the speed of running a wet tea bag over the drawing cartridge, and tend to colour several pieces in one go, as I make a jug of tea especially for this purpose. I then have lots of backgrounds ready for future projects.

I stamped a couple of images from Make Your Mark randomly over the background, giving the loose impression of cracked plaster, by sticking to a warm brown colour palette.

I will be back later in the month with more projects to share with you, thanks for stopping by,

 xx