Saturday, October 17, 2009

A Little Night Mus(e)ic...




(Another installment in catching you up with my *Almost Daily Pages* journal ~~ this is still from February, and the technique was spray-inking a doily in cranberry over a page painted with light pink acrylic.)


I woke up today planning to create!

Alas, there I go again, thinking I'm in control of my life. Between paperwork with deadlines, continual drama (more like a mystery / detective series in TV lingo) on the yahoo group I co-own, finishing up some household chores, having to cook dinner, and Hubs wanting me to research a new major purchase, I finally got time to play, and now I am too tired and mentally strung-out. Luckily, I took photos Friday night of my progress on my latest project, so I'll share them with you.

The project I'm currently into is creating a Whispers Journal using the instructions in Kelly Rae Roberts' book Taking Flight and in Lynne Perella's book Artists Journals and Sketchbooks. I am doing studies of both books right now and the cosmos merged because that's the assignment in both -- make a journal. Man, if that is not an omen or something, I don't know what is. Ok, the TF journal needs to have a face painting on the cover, and the AJS journal needs to have stitched binding. This could be another omen, as I have done NEITHER of these things in all my life and frankly, they scare me. Someone suggested Samantha Kira's You Tube video for her Easy Peasy Journal, though, and it was just the thing to get me going on this finally.


Okay, this first photo (above) shows the Dollar Store composition book surrounded by the papers I think I may use on the cover. I used letter-sized paper to fill the inside, so I cut the cover down to be a closed size of 7.5" x 5.5". Then I sanded the chipboard lightly.



This next photo (above) shows the inside of the composition book after I snipped the threads holding the notebook paper and removed them.



In this photo (above) are my four signatures of 6 folded papers. Kira says to do 4 sigs of 5 file folders, but I am only putting one file folder in each sig, so I added an extra paper to each to even out the bulk. I chose to use Avery index divider sheets, ledger papers, and cut file folders for my papers, because these are all items I had too much of. Upcycle, bebe!

If you've never done this before, it is about here at this point, when you are holding the signatures that you really really begin to enjoy this process.



And, in this photo (above), you can see why it's starting to feel really cool. I've almost made a book! It looks really cool! I'm convinced this is nature's way of keeping me from quitting because I still have to paint that face and stitch those signatures in, and anyone with any brains would probably be worrying about that part. Not me...




No, not me. I'm still preening proudly over how cool my book *almost* looks! LOL {eyeroll}

Stay tuned, because I'd like to finish this in the next week and we will see if I manage to get to the end with this almost book still intact. I also need to finish up my greeting cards and survey for Linda's class. We won't talk about how far behind I am in the Bind-It-All class right now. I should also work some more on that mini-calendar I started, but I decided to put that on a back burner for a while until I decide more definitely on what Christmas gifts I'll be making.

3 comments:

Paula said...

I really like the looks of this one! Hope you get to finish it up soon.

jillconyers said...

What an awesome project! I'd love to give this a try but as you said that would mean I have control over my life right now LOL

This week! This week I'm getting control back...even if it's just a little :) Translation...Cross Country season ends!

Linda said...

Your journal is coming out great!! I'm with you on the Bind-it-all. I bought it last year and it's still sitting waiting for me to use it.

And if you don't have enough to do (wink), stop by my blog on Thursdays. I have a new project called Wanna Play. It's nothing formal just an invitation to play along.

Also, I wanted to let you know that I have a Best Blog award for you on my blog. Come by and check it out.