Recycle Wednesday

I FINALLY have a post for Recycle Wednesday. It's not what I've had in my mind initially but it definitely fits.

I have a passion for Altered Art. I love taking something and repurposing it. And one of my favorite things to repurpose is a book. As a writer, I value the 'book in my hands', 'turn the pages', kind of thing. However, I am also wise enough to understand that as technology continues to advance, a lot more books are going to wind up in landfills. Sad, but true. I have 3 or 4 different 'Altered Books' in progress. Little by little I'll get them finished. In the coming weeks, as my creative time is shared with my granddaughter, I'll be posting some of my past completed projects.

Over the past couple of months, I've been working on a Stationary Swap over at SCS. My SCS friend, Susan always comes up with the neatest swaps! Being a hostess has a bonus! We work them as a 3 + 1... meaning everyone who signs up makes a total of 4. 3 will be swapped out amongst the other participants and 1 is for the hostess. She gets the goodies without having to create. Trust me, she has enough of a job coordinating the swap. She EARNS the goodies she receives in return.

Initially I wanted to use a binder system from Univenture. One of their products is THIS cute little binder. My plan was to make 'pocket pages' to fit the confines of the binder, and be able to hold the components required for the swap:

* at least 3 cards with envelopes

* coordinated pen or pencil

* place for postage stamps

* coordinating cover

* And we HAD to including stamping in some way.

Anything else we wanted to add, such as a notebook/ address book/ notepads/ stickers, etc were optional.

So I ordered my binders from Univenture and was all excited about my coming project when...

they were back ordered until the end of April! The swap was due to be in Susan's hands by March 1st. Okay... new plan.

The following weekend I was in the city and spent a lazy afternoon at Barnes n Noble perusing the mixed media art books when I came across an altered hardback book with pockets. BINGO!

Because I had to make four of these, I picked up 8 books (always nice to have extras on hand, right?) from my local library sales room for 25 cents each. They were each approximately 6" X 8.5". I plan to write a tutorial on this soon so I can't show the step by step, just the end results. But I will give you a brief overview of what I did. Here is a picture of the three different covers.

I used SU Sage Shadow to complement the soft florals in the first one, Cherry Cobbler in the 2nd one and Almost Amethyst in the 3rd one. I made two of the second design as I had purchased the most of that print. I must have really liked it.

After determining the placement of the items I needed to include and how much space would be needed between the pages, I cut out the excess book pages. They'll be great for punched flowers and other mixed media projects in the future.

While in the city, I made a lucky stop at JoAnns Fabrics where they had all their 12x12 paper on sale. I was able to coordinate the papers for all 4 albums at a reasonable price and pair them with papers in my stash. Here's how my pages came out:

Front pocket for Pen and Stamps 2nd pocket for Mini-notebook

I used this pocket for the 4 cards and this one to hold the envelopes.

I did 4 cards and lined the envelopes to coordinate with each album's color scheme. I also covered a mini-composition book to match the cover of the stationary keeper.

This particular set was done using SU Cherry Cobbler as the coordinating cardstock to The Paper Studios Mirabella Floral DP I purchased at JoAnns. The spine cover is Tan Leather by Paper Pizzazz.

My tip for this week... never judge a book by it's cover. It truly is what's inside that counts!

Creative Blessings!

Collage Playground

Collage hasn't changed much over the years. It's still about cutting pieces of this, pictures of that and a little bit of everything else from our creative stash and gluing them to a surface. The end result is a beautiful, recycled piece of art.

When playing with our art mediums, it is so easy to get stuck in the rut of doing the same old thing every time we pull out our toys. In Collage Playground: A Fresh Approach to Creating Mixed-Media Art by Kimberly Santiago, we are introduced to 25 projects and 10 simple crafting techniques that bring the art of collage to it's pinnacle of creativity. I have Kimberly's book, Altered Book Pages and refer to it frequently when looking for a way to do something different. Funny thing is, most of us have all the things we need to create beautiful pieces of art. We just get attached to our favorites and forget about the gems just waiting for their turn. Kimberly reminds us to pull those treasures out and let them shine.

Whether you are into Art Journaling, Mixed Media art forms or Scrapbooking, Collage Playground offers tips for every artist. And yes, you are an artist. If you like to dream, explore and create, you ARE an artist.

And if you'd like a chance to win a free copy of Collage Playground, follow this LINK.

Creative Blessings!

Squeeeee!

Whenever I am inspired by someone else's work, I try to link back to them whenever possible and drop and email so they know.

Imagine my surprise when I received an email from Jessica Acs this morning, informing me she was featuring my CD album on the Outstanding Mini Albums blog. Please check out the blog. There are some amazing artists there and I feel honored to be included!

After checking out Jessica's blog yesterday, I had trouble sleeping last night. With a 'call for submissions' for her next book coming to a close, I had all kinds of ideas swirling through my head. After pouring through her first mini albums book and discarding ideas that had already been done or just didn't seem right, I think I finally hit upon the book I need to create. So I'm off to do some photographs today so I can get them developed while I'm in town.

So what albums have you created? Post a link in your comment so we can all take a look and leave some Love!

Creative Blessings!

Magazine Monday

We're back on-line and back to normal. I really enjoyed the peace and quiet without power last week. I was off for 48 hours - almost to the minute. Rather than try to clear the desk off downstairs, I sat and read the newest book in the Sons of Chance series by Vicki Lewis Thompson. She has become a dear writing friend over the past couple of years and has guest-blogged for me a couple of times at my author blog. It was nice to actually read a book while it was still new on the shelf. LOL

For this week, I'm taking a bit of a detour. The concept behind Magazine Monday was to apply some of the ideas I find in magazines. Well, I think it also applies to those technique books we just have to have. One of my favorites is Outstanding Mini Albums by Jessica Acs. She is such a talented lady. You can see her blog, as well as a link to purchase the album HERE

I told you a few weeks about about the altered CD mini-albums I was creating and teaching a class on. So I thought today I'd show pics of the completed album. I used the poem, 8 THINGS THAT DON'T COST A CENT. I have no clue where I got it from so if you know, please drop me a note so I may give credit where it's due. First the pics, then I'll give you a couple of tips.

The ones I did for the swap, I obviously had my brain turned off. To have enough pages to fit the poem, you need to cut 12 circles. I had 5 albums to make plus mine and I cut them all by hand! When I got ready to make up the kits for the class, I was inspired to use my Cricut. The circles are 4.75". I chose flowers from Recollections that matched the 50's style DCVW slab. I printed the poem on vellum so the background papers would still show through.

I love how this turned out. It could be used for so many things and a great way to repurpose those old CDs and DVDs.

Until next time...

Creative Blessings!

A-Z Grunge Tags

Wow... very chilly morning in Nashville. I wound up not getting into town last week so just decided these pics could wait until I got to my daughter's in Nashville. I can sit comfortably on her sofa and use the WiFi. I'm so spoiled. But I'm headed back to MO today... with my granddaughter as my co-pilot. She gets to spend the whole week with grandma so I probably won't get much creating done. Though she does like to play with my stamps, so.... maybe.

Here are pics of the Grunge Tag swap, I promised. I had the letters R and W. I had to make 26 of each letter and I'd get 26 tags back - 1 for each letter of the alphabet. Well... I wound up making 52

of each! The first set I mailed out, never made it to NY so 2 days past the deadline I was frantically recreating the 26 tags. When I create something, I keep a 'recipe' card of how I made it so when I post it to a gallery I can list what stamps, inks, papers, etc I used. Good habit to get into if you ever plan to submit for publication -just a tip. :-)

Well, it's time to pack up the laptop and head for MO. I'll check in later in the week with a couple of links I think you'll like.

Creative Blessings!