Among the Wildflowers and Teacups

 Here's a little ring-bound ephemera holder made using the Among the Wildflowers and Teacups digital kit from Bee Happy Stationery. 

The little mouse on the cover is one of the cute images from the kit, as is the lavender and the tea set. The corner pieces are die cut and the book rings are decorated with ribbons and lace and a ribbon rose. I've made a coordinating spine dangle from yellow, pink, turquoise and white beads and a lobster clasp.

The pages are folded in half and edged with blue card folded over the open end, punched to fit the book rings and strengthened with hole reinforcers I've inked in pink. 

The pages are a mixture of papers from the kit and plain cream paper. The images are so pretty that I've left some of the kit papers as they are and just added wooden buttons and some of the cut out images from the kit here and there.

All the pages are trimmed with lace or ribbon and embellished with little beaded dangles in coordinating colours.

The kit is full of lovely little envelopes, which I've used to store the ephemera from the kit, which includes seed packet designs, tickets, tags and invitations featuring wildflowers, bees or the animals depicted on the pages.

This will be a handy way of storing various bits of ephemera for later use. 

Here's a quick flip through and details of where to purchase the kit:  

Rust and Revolutions Folio

 I've been working with the Rust and Revolutions kit from Bee Happy Stationery to make this steampunk style folio. The papers are beautiful, lots of script, clocks and gears, not to mention the characters themselves. I've made lots of tucks and pockets from the elements included in the kit and cut sections of the pages to form a couple of waterfalls.

Here's a link to the kit in Bee Happy Stationery's Ko-fi shop. Use code BHS to get a discount.

Gilded Peacock Journal

 This is a flip through of a journal I've made for the Bee Happy Stationery design team, using the beautiful Gilded Peacock kit. The kit is available from Bee Happy Stationery's Ko-fi store

I love the rich colours and jewel tones. This really is a gorgeous kit to work with.

Bee Journal

I've used the Jenndi Bee-utiful digital kit from Patreon.com/melodimade to make this cute little journal. It's nice to be back to bright colours after all the Christmas crafting! 

#MMDREAMTEAM

Cat Mini Journal

 A little journal I've made with the Jenndi Purrfection digital kit from Patreon.com/melodimade . It's such a lovely kit I'll be making a larger journal with it too.

#MMDREAMTEAM

Floral Journal

This is a floral themed journal I made for a swap on the MyMakes.net forum.  The cover is a birthday card from my Mother-in-Law and there are flowers galore inside.  This really was a lovely journal to work on, just right for the beginning of Spring! There are lots of pockets, tuck spots and tags and plenty of  journalling space.

Thank you for watching, I hope you enjoyed a breath of Spring too.

Purple Journal

I was lucky enough to be a member of the January journal design team using the beautiful Purple Jenndi digikit from melodimade.com. In addition to the lovely papers in the kit I used the Artisan Design Butterfly Background and Spotted texture stamps, Laurel Burst, Sycamore and Daisy Burst stencils, gelli prints, and some floral and bird images from the Graphics Fairy.

The cover is a rich pink and silver fabric and the journal is Traveller's Notebook size with 3 removable signatures and there are silvery bells on the spine tassel. There are lots of journalling spots and tags throughout and I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

Here's a quick flip through of the pages:

Thank you for looking!

Winter's Kiss envelope

As soon as I saw my new RHS magazine I knew exactly what I was going to do with the envelope it came in, which always has a picture of the magazine cover on it.  This month it was a beautiful icy rose image and with a background that matched the Iced Spruce Distress Oxide ink perfectly, it was just asking to go in a junk journal. 

In the same post was a nice large envelope, so I used the Artisan Design Snowflake mask to make a pretty background for the rose and the wording, and trimmed it with some glittery washi tape.  Quick and easy but I think it's so pretty, and I'll add it to a Christmassy journal I've started creating.

Flow-type journal cover

I turned a 20p hardback book from a charity shop into this cover for a flow-type journal.  Once the pages were removed I gessoed the cover and added some torn scraps of book paper, then used three colours of my brand-new Brushos to colour it purples and blues.  I really enjoyed playing with the Brushos and plan on trying out some more techniques soon.  I stencilled the front cover with an alphabet stencil and the back with the Daisy Burst stencil from Artisan Design.  I used matt gel through the stencils and once it was dry highlighted it with Diamond Starlight Wax and added a beaded dangle to the spine. 

The inside was lined with an off-cut of wallpaper. As it's going to be a flow-type journal, which will hold papers, envelopes etc. for the recipient to use in her own journal making, I decided to use elastic cord to hold the contents in. I made an inside spine and tied the elastic round that so it wasn't visible on the outside and trimmed it with Washi tape.

Here's the finished journal, stuffed full of goodies!

I'm in print!

I was so excited to see that there's an article about me and my crafting in this month's WI Life magazine.  I was interviewed and photographed a while back and finally I'm in print!  Thank you Chloe Davies for writing the article and Rhondell from RELM Photography for the great pictures, and to everyone from NJJM and FJJP who have sent me the RAKs and swaps in some of the photos.  Look closely and you may spot some of your work!

Halloween Stuffed Pocket

I don't normally do much for Halloween but this is a stuffed pocket I made for a swap on the Newbie Junk Journal Makers Facebook group.  The basis is a 9" x 12" strip of paper, folded lengthways to make a 4.5" x 12" strip and scored at 5" from the bottom to make the first pocket.  The middle pocket is 4.5" wide by 3" .  I made it double thickness for strength so I cut a piece 4.5" x 6" and folded it in half.  The third pocket is 4.5" x 1.5" so I cut 4.5" x 3" and again folded it in half.  You could of course make them 9" wide and fold them in half the other way, it depends what size your scraps of paper are. Just be careful of using one-way designs: make sure they are the right way up when folded.

The pockets all line up at the base. I made them all top-loading so glued both sides and the bottom. I trimmed the top of the largest pocket with lace, the middle with gold ball chain and the bottom one with spotty ribbon.  I also added a parade of spiders from some Halloween table confetti.

I used the packaging from the confetti to make a couple of pockets on the back as well.  The idea of the swap was to add plenty of Halloween ephemera, so I printed some tags and journalling cards from Calico Collage and the Graphics Fairy, and added some elements from a Halloween bunting.

One well and truly stuffed Halloween pocket. I hope the recipient will enjoy it.

Authentic Soul journal embellishments

I was lucky enough to be a member of the design team for the Authentic Soul Boho digital kit from Melodimade.com in September.  I have made various embellishments from the kit, including tags, envelopes and a library pocket, and I've had some fun with altered paperclips, a ticket strip and even a giant piece from a child's jigsaw puzzle.

It really is a beautiful kit with a great boho feel, do check it out.  I just love those fairy doors!