Fabric and Paper Journals

               Apropos of absolutely nothing related to this post! Just a lovely healthy bowlful.

Phew! Well, I'm all musicked out, and I expect you are too, after ploughing through all the Burwell photos  - about a quarter of the ones I took. Never mind, here we are, back in the land of cloth, paper and ...er......yes, the odd pair of scissors. Now obviously you know I haven't been stitching away diligently the last week or so, and very little journaling has been done either. So in order to get this blog back on its tracks, I photgraphed some fabric journals I made....ooooh, at least 6 years ago, and a couple of paper books. Unfortunatley the sun went in just as I assembled everything outside, but I think the shots are reasonable.

The first is a card book designed in a Gothic arch shape, called 'Crowns and Wings'.

I recycled the backs from used note-pads as the bases, and covered them with 'altered' wrapping paper and my own hand designed papers.

I used rubber stamps, collage and marker embellishment. I coated each page with some kind of varnish, maybe Mod Podge, I really can't remember!

Both background papers are mine, I merged inks on a piece of butcher's wrap and when dry I stamped text all over it. They remain my favourites still.

 Background right side is wrapping paper, left side, one of mine. I bet several of you have a roll of that paper somewhere, it's really lovely; I've never used it for wrapping!

Finished off with some yarn and beads Lots of gold outlining!

These next pages are from a slim volume that I'm still working on. I took it to Burwell with me-- hah! as if I'd have any time to work on it! However I did want to take it to show Martina, whistle and flute player from Vienna, who now blames me for the fact she HAD to go out and buy a small collection of Copic markers as she is now addicted to journaling! We swapped ideas and checked out each others pages, Martina you have to put yours on facebook! Anyway, here are just four double pages, some of which I haven't finished. I intend to coptic bind them as four signatures. Eventually.

The backgrounds are mostly inked, one or two may be watercolour pencilled, before stamping, collaging, then finally adding text and doodling.

  This spread is waiting to be 'journaled' upon. You can see clearly the background was crayonned.

                                        This one needs some more work as well.

             Waiting for some words of wisdom - not sure how successful the background is.

                      This one needs tidying up, and more emphasis on the right-hand page.

This tiny book is called Rare Egyptian, and depicts Cleopatra.

                                                 It's about 3" tall. Lots of gold ink.

This one is merely a '7 Gypsies' slim book which I covered with stamped papers and a little collage.

This next little fabric book I made using my own hand-dyed fabrics, and image transfer techniques.

I stamped images onto paper then scanned and printed them onto treated fabric so the images wouldn't wash off. Each page is sandwiched with wadding, and hand stitched to make this little accordian House Book.

This little hand-stitched book is my favourite. It's so simple yet somehow perfect to me. Inspired by the hymn 'Glad that I live am I', I used my hand-dyed fabrics and used the same omage transfer technique to get the text onto the fabric. Finished off with oversewn edges and a few beads - I love it!

I did some sun dyeing here, treated the fabric, then laid leaves on it and left it out in the sunshine - lo and behold, you get a kind of 'sun-resist'! Brill! Right hand page I used coloured foils in the bottom corner to suggest the rainbow.

I have three other fabric books to show you, but I think I'll leave them for the next post as this is getting rather long! Hope you've enjoyed these, anyway.

Now before I go I must say something about comments. Comments, as one of my bloggy friends has said, are the best thing! It's great to have some feedback on your words and pictures; I do try to leave a comment regularly on a number of my favourite blogs. If you leave one, check back because I always reply. (I know bloggers with huge numbers of comments would find this impossible! Not a problem for me!)
I have done everything to make it esasy for you to comment, but if you sign in as 'anonymous' can you mention your name somewhere in the comment? The I can reply properly.  One thing I have done to facilitate things is to disable the 'Robot check' thingy because I know how frustrating it is. I could scream sometimes when I have left a comment and then find the botcheck thing is indecipherable. I KNOW you can click 'refresh' and get a new attempt, but today I clicked FOUR TIMES simply because I really needed to leave this particular comment. Ordinarily I would give it two goes then give up. WHY do they make them so impossible to see? PLEASE, bloggy friends, see if you can disable yours, give it a try, you won't get inundated with spam, it certainly hasn't had any effect on my blog.  Who on earth designs these things? Total rubbish. get a proper job!

Anyway, (yet another) rant over! The rain is pouring down but I have some gorgeous homemade veggie soup in the oven then later I am off to my melodeon lesson YAY! (as they say!) and after that....I'm taking myself to a new-to-me Folk Session in Dereham, which is on my way home. I'll give you the low-down next time! Enjoy what's left of the holidays.xx

Journalling Supplies

Now first of all I must do something which I ought to have done a few posts back, but events overtook me - as so often happens! A couple of weeks ago Ada Bea from Vintage Sheet Addict blog, awarded me the 'Lovely Blog Award' which was so kind of her. Ada has only been blogging a short while and has already got right into the swing of it...pop across and visit! So........

Big thank you, Ada, and I nominate....gosh this is hard.......and you kind of forget who's got which award so hope I don't duplicate anyone here........

Christine at A Mermaid's TaleA mermaid's tale...........Els at Fiberrainbowfiberrainbow........Wendz at 15 Coast Road15 coast road
Sue at  crafts@homecrafts@home and Penelope at L is for LoveLisforLove. I will try and do the linky thing but if it doesn't work, take some time out to visit these lovely sites, if you don't already know them.

Oh and.....a few things you don't know about me...that you don't already know....that I don't mind you knowing! Even more difficult!

1. I love horses and riding but have quite recently lost my nerve, which is hugely sad, but there you are.

2. I have wasted 6 months of a gymn subscription; partly due to a family bereavement and partly to the trouble I had with The Toe, but mostly because of sheer apathy. Smack wrist!

3. I am having difficulty getting back into my textile mode - this is not a Good Thing!

4. And because the other 3 have been mostly confessional and a bit negative I am going to blow my own trumpet and tell you that my usually non-commenting melodeon tutor made some ridiculously lovely comments about my playing the other night, I was beaming widely all the way home, 50 miles in the car! I have to say he is not a grumpy tutor - far from it, just doesn't make a fuss about progress etc. So such comments are highly prized, believe me!

That's your lot about me.  I was asked about the pens and markers I use for my journals so I thought it would make a good - and colourful - post. Bear in mind that I am not the fount of all - or even very much- knowledge on this topic, I am very much a beginner and it is kind of a side-line with me. If you want to know more there are LOADS of bloggers out there who really know what they are talking about, and some brilliant tutorials on youtbube.

So, starting back-to-front, really, the markers which I use for my favourite bit of journalling, the last bit, the writing and detailing. I do sometimes use them in the earlier stages, but mostly not.

These are Letraset PROMARKER permanent twin tip inks. They blend beautifully and the wedge and bullet tips are really useful. Yes, you can store them like this!

Ah, my lovely twin-tipped ink markers, various brands. Great for both coverage with the brush tips and fine detail with....the other end! I have  Marvy LePlume,  Tombow ABT, Zig Art & Graphic Twin, Zig Calligraphy, Berol, Stabilo `Write-all.I have a pack of Staeddtler triplus fineliners which are nice for detail, and can be found in supermarkets for much less than the full price. I think that's it, I will never turn down a new brand, and would LOVE to be able to afford COPIC markers which everyone raves about, but as a messer-abouter I am not going to take on a mortgage to buy markers which are definitely in the professional league.

I also have a collection of the most important BLACK MARKERS which I forgot to take a piccie of, sorry. Journallers will atest to the fact that a good black lettering marker is a special find and you choose carefully. I have various tip-sizes of Sharpies, a bog standard Multi Purpose Marker Pen, Faber-Castell Pitt markers are brill, various tips with them, Uni-pin fineline by Mitsubishi do a great pen, and I pick up anything I think will do the job.

WHITE MARKERS are less common and I use mine up quickly. I have a new uni POSCA white marker, also mitsubishi I just note. Pilot do a variety of tips but are a bit  over-emotional at times! Sakura do a BRILLIANT gelly roll white, I love it, and also I have a Hybrid Gel by Pentel. They use up at varying rates.

 Ooooops, I notice I also have some metallic markers which I use for small details - too much is....too much!

The surfaces these markers write best on also varies, some will cover almost any surface, others are a little more temperamental. As long as they are permanent you can varnish over them, but to be on the safe side I varnish (if I'm going to at all) before I add the lettering and final details.

I've also got some Derwent Inktense water-colour ink pencils which give a lovely saturated colour when you paint over them with water, and some Aquapastels which do a great finishing job, or as an all-over background which I then knock-back with a thin layer of white acrylic or white gesso, scraped down with an old credit card - a brilliant and simple technique.

I also buy large tubes of acrylic from discount stores which come in great for backgrounds, I love scraping a layer of in onto the page as well.

..............and I wouldn't be me if I didn't have a book or two on the subject!

These are my own journals....the top smaller one is one I am prepping the pages to take to Ireland with me.  Each page is ready with a background, some colour, maybe some collage, some barely-seen background stamping....so all I have to do is the lettering and final detail, which means I don't have to take a load of stuff with me.

 (Besides which I shall be stitching, playing and listening to some music, shopping, sight-seeing maybe..and just generally chillin'!)

Here are some detail shots of the page I made in response to the way I was feeling about the 'count -down' to the Olympics. I was quite angry with all the shennanigins, but I am now enjoying the stuff that REALLY MATTERS - sponsors take note YOU ARE NOT IMPORTANT.  I do not want to eat your disgusting beefburgers or drink your toxic brown liquid.  You do not 'own' the logo or the name or anything else. Stop spreading your noxious influence round the world and do something honest with your billions. There. I promised myself I would not rant on my blog and I just did. Get over it.

Phew, well, it's just between you and me, isn't it? Actually I felt we should have orchestrated mass civil disobedience and everyone worn 'illicit' tee-shirts or hats to the torch journeys through each town...let them try and sue everyone - hah! Anyway, the superb efforts by the real heroes of the events have pushed all of that to the background and there is true Olympic spirit being shown every day. Well done to them!

well, I think it's all I've got to say about my journalling 'stuff'. I have re-organised my space to better accommodate things near to hand. But I'm now feeling the tug of the textiles urging me to get my mitts on some fabric and commence stitching again. Thank goodness! I wish I could be an evenly balanced person....after all, I am a Libran...but I am a bit all or nothing...there, that's another thing about me! It's amazing, really, that I get anything finished at all, but I muddle through, somehow.

Hope you are enjoying your Olympic  weekend, and that some of you, at least, are having some continuous sunshine! Catch you next time.