Around here

It’s a bit of a mess.

My studio worktable is barely visible through the piles of paper and assorted ephemera collected on our trip.

It’s time to get to work on the journal then and record a few of the stories.

I think it’s under there somewhere.

A creature of habit

I think that applies to us all to some degree, but this morning I am acutely aware that I don’t need to look too far to find a prime example.

I’ve got my hand up.

When we returned from our last adventure, I cleared out my art kit box, recognising that I am all too good at putting something extra in whilst never taking anything out.  Not only was it becoming too stuffed to close, it has pretty heavy too.  So I emptied it, thinking I’d just begin again before the next trip.

Hah!

I just went to gather the things for our road trip and had forgotten I’d done that!  It wasn’t so difficult to assemble the basics though and of course, I knew exactly where to find a record of a previous kit too.  My pink box was soon packed and ready.

But in looking for the right colour ink pad, I opened the drawer with a few leftovers from previous projects.  Maybe there’s something in there I might use?

Feeling virtuous at “using what I have”, I soon filled a small zip bag with stickers and the like. (Hang on, why am I including a “Caribbean” sticker?)

And then there was the question of colour.  Shall I take a small box of watercolours or my bag of Neocolour crayons?  Or the new set of wax aquarelle crayons bought in Prague?

Or shall I do as I did last time and take a handful of Inktense coloured pencils?  Lighter, cleaner and more compact, they’re the obvious choice.  In fact, I don’t know why I even considered the others.  I always take my Inktense pencils with me!

So there we are then.

What do you mean, what clothes am I taking?

Around here

The rose petals are drying nicely and have kept their colour.  Of course, now I’m worrying about the possibility of fine clothes being stained by any dampness in the air and deep hued rose petals!  The airing cupboard has never been so sweetly scented.

In the meantime, I’m building up to our next road trip adventure with the usual journal prep.  I’ve been mooching about various websites, in search of paper for the pages but felt thwarted by an abundance of “cute” designs.  It’s not that I an anti-cute, but I was hoping for something with a little less personality than most and hopefully in a more sophisticated palette than primary colours.

I found the answer in my stash.

This morning, I’d decided to go with the “use what you have” concept and began to cut pages from a pile of paper leftover from other projects.  Deep into the pile, I was beginning to get picky.  Did I really want one pink page, a green patterned one, a black and white checked page followed by a turquoise blue stripe?  Not really.  But lo and behold, there, lurking at the bottom of the heap was a full set of 6 x 12 sheets left from a previous travel journal (this one)

Considering the itinerary of that road trip in the Pacific North West (a couple of cities, a bit of coast and some woodsy countryside) I could see why I’d chosen that design and colour palette.  This trip will be pretty similar – we are not headed for canyons or desert this time round, but to the state with the second longest coastline in the USA – 3288 miles.  We’re looking forward to exploring a couple of cities we’ve had on our list for a while and revisiting an all-time favourite, spending time with friends and, a first for us, experiencing lakeside life.

This year, we’re going to explore Michigan, driving a round trip from Chicago!

Having cut a good number of pages (which, together with some plain white sheets will be plenty), I needed to make the covers.  In my trawl through the paper pile, I came across a sheet of paper I’d created on some workshop or other which I thought would do nicely.

Ready to go.

But a girl’s got to do something whilst the paint dries, don’t you think?  A couple of my textiley friends have been pinning links to their pinterest pages that sent me looking for my Weavette.  I hadn’t opened that box in ages (or the other two, different sized looms!)

In less than fifteen minutes I was remembering just why I loved it from the minute I started.

Half an hour later, I just had to go and get on with things!  It’s so easy to get carried away with something like this.  It’s therapeutic in that mindless way, satisfying because it works so well and it’s so easy to achieve a great result from the off.

Surely, there must be a couple more projects I can get going in the meantime!?

I love my machines

With one exception, perhaps, because printers are the devil’s work!

Do you remember this?  I’d made a knock-off of a Moleskine Message following a few days in Stockholm and yesterday, whilst mulling over how to capture a few memories from St Petersburg, I decided to do something similar.

Except I’d forgotten how I’d done it and my blog post was a little sketchy on the detail.

I looked closely at those cut edges and knew they hadn’t been cut by hand but using my Silhouette, for sure.  If that was the case, that cut file must be on my computer somewhere then, but it was proving elusive.  Where might I have saved that file?  Not in my ‘Silhouette Cut Files” folder, sadly.

I resorted to the search programs and files facility, but was unsure what to search for.  After a few no files of that name were found reports, I hit gold!  There it was, <moleskine envelope book.studio> in my photo folder for May 2013.  In no time at all, I’d cut out the cover and six pages.  Love my Silhouette!

My next step was to create a few photo collages in Picasa.  At this stage, I didn’t know how many, but simply found a few themes to work on and ended up with nine.  I opened them in Photoshop and resized them all so they’d fit in the book.

It was about now I realised that printing them wasn’t going to be easy.  I took another close look at the Stockholm book and knew I’d printed directly onto the pages and not simply glued in photo collage pages.  Hmm.  Now, how did I do that?

I created a file in Photoshop with the size of the double-page spread and placed a piece of double sided tape at one end.  I set up a print file with the collage sheet in the right place, lightly adhered the cut page on the sheet of paper and fed the whole thing through the printer.

The first one worked fine.  The second one didn’t.  Never mind.  Try again.

I managed to print three or four pages, doing my best to work out where each collage page would fit in the finished book (not easy!) sometimes needing to turn a page to get it in the right orientation.

And then I tried to print on the reverse of an already-printed sheet.  The double sided tape pulled away part of the print.  Better do that one again.

And then the printer began to add a stripe all on its own.  It does things like that from time to time, just to annoy me, I think.

I decided it was time for tea and switched everything off and thought I’d had enough for one day.

I’m not quite sure how I achieved the next step and can only think it was the inspiration fairy who visited me in my sleep!  When I went downstairs to my studio the following morning, the obvious answer to my challenge was staring me in the face.

Print and cut using my Silhouette!

In no time at all, I’d imported each page of photographs into the cut file I’d already designed and sent it to our pesky printer which purred and printed the pages perfectly.  After printing, I fed the sheet of card through the Silhouette for cutting and, amazing machine that it is, achieved a perfectly accurate result.

I love it when everything comes together like that, when the seamless process works perfectly and I can get a great workflow going.

But it was time for the intermediate technology.  A sharp pencil and ruler was the best way to measure and mark the centre fold of the little book.  I clipped all the pages together and, before folding, I switched on my sewing machine and took a deep breath.

I threaded my machine with heavy thread, fitted a jeans needle and lowered the speed.  Slowly, carefully, my lovely machine stitched a beautifully sewn spine.  I wanted the needle to pierce the paper from the right side in, which meant I was working “blind”.

I hardly dare turn it over and look at where the line of stitching had worked out on the other side.  (At this stage, I hadn’t quite noticed that I’d sewn the pages into the book cover the wrong way round!)

Look!   (I couldn’t quite believe it how neat that sewing turned out)

I carefully scored the foldlines to complete the assembly of the book but as I did, I realised my mistake.  Would it matter?  I opened and closed it, flicked through and showed it to my hero, who agreed with me.

It mattered.  It just didn’t “work” with the flap going the wrong way.

So I treated that one as a practice effort and started over again.  I’d saved all the files and it took no time at all to print and cut them all out once more.

I stitched the spine more confidently, for after all, I’d had practice!  When it came to that part though, I double checked it was the right way up, needless to say.

The book was soon finished and ready to have all the bits of ephemera stuck inside.

Yes, of course the Turkish Map Fold features!

Second time around went so much more quickly.  Not only had I worked out the process, I’d managed to avoid the pitfalls too. 

I thought I’d better write a few more details down in my blog this time as well, just so that when I next want to make a little book, I have something to refer to!  After all, I’ve got to keep all those machines working.  I even feel a little warmer about the printer, which worked perfectly with the Silhouette software, leaving me to wonder if it’s the Adobe Photoshop software which presents the problem.

But I’ll leave that one to my Hero.  I know my limits

All wrapped up

There’s something satisfying about tying the ribbon and putting the wraps on the story of December 2016.  Though I’d really finished it a couple of days ago, it was only this afternoon that I cleaned up a couple of pages and put the finishing touches to it and declared it complete.

I’d say it’s “comfortably stuffed”, to use a phrase I always attribute to a dear and long departed WI Craft Judge from Cheshire, who trained with me and who had the most delightful way with words.  Please note too, the pristine and rather swanky new cutting mat which Bettine gave me for Christmas.  I’m a lucky girl – it’s a full A1 size and with inches on one side and centimetres on the other, it fits the bill perfectly.  I’ll try not to drill holes it!

I kept my journal pretty simple this year.  I was going to write more but decided to stick to the visuals in here and write the stories in my Project Life album, which I keep more to myself.  My Christmas journals – and this is #14 – are in a large picnic basket and are often enjoyed by friends and family when they are here.  It’s always fun to look back and remember.

One thing is always staggering: How quickly the month passes and how the non-Christmassy events of the first few days soon morph into the full blown “most wonderful time of the year”.  So the month begins with a meeting on what turned out to be one of the few frosty days.

I try to identify what makes this particular year different from the others whilst still alluding to our own family traditions.  When Edward and Amy told me they had bought their first Christmas tree then, I decided to make some straw stars for them and sew them some Christmas napkins for their dining table.  Another page done!

This year, I chose to make my book 6 inches square for no other reason than I had a 6 inch square pad of cute paper I wanted to use.  It meant that I could print some full page pictures quite easily, then.

Not all the full page photos are mine though, and where I came across a catalogue or magazine photo I liked, it was trimmed to size and included too.

Of course the photograph on the 6th was the same as every year: Paddington and Aunt Lucy, “dressed in Holiday Style” for St Nikolaus.

And so the pages continue.  I didn’t preplan or prepare at all, but took each page as it came, feeling quite pleased when the end result turned out ok.

I finished with one last tradition – a memory of a Christmas past.  This year, it was a photograph of my Grandparents and I at the Christmas dinner table in a local hotel on the outskirts of Hull.  In 1967, I believe my Aunt thought it was getting too much for Nan to cook Christmas dinner for the whole family and I expect neither she nor my Mum were willing to take on the task.  So, a table was booked for a dozen or so and there we were, not looking very happy, I’ll admit!  But what I notice is that each year I have to look a little harder for a different photograph to include, because not only do I have just a few, there are no more where that came from.  For some reason, it struck me this year that the photographs I have of those days and those people are the only ones there will ever be and though the pictures I have in my head might be as clear as they always were, sadly they can’t be placed into a journal.

I think December 2016 might be a little more fully recorded.  I note that I took 507 photographs last month, not all of them are in the journal though!