Dive journal for Terri

Oh goody, another project...and I get to use my new Bind It All!!!
When Terri, our daughter (well technically she's really my step-daughter, but what does that matter...I love her), was with us over the Christmas Holiday she asked if I could make her a couple of dive journals. She is a big time scuba diver, both for fun and professionally, and she wanted one journal for her personal use and one for her professional use. Sounded like a fun thing to do. This is Terri's personal journal. Using alcohol inks, I swiped the inks across a piece of glossy cardstock. I used the cardstock to cover both the front and back covers of the journal.

And here is the finished journal, well, at least the front cover. The letters are Tim Holtz grungeboard that have been painted with acrylics. 'Scuba Goddess' is Terri's diving nickname, so why not use it on the cover!! It was a little tricky getting all those letters on the 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 cover, but it worked.


Lucky for me my friend, Maggi, came to the rescue with 3/4" o wires so that I could bind the book and ship it off to Terri. I only had very large and small o wires. I'm still a Bind It All novice and need more practice. The binding turned out okay, and Terri won't have a problem with the journal, but it's not perfect....maybe I'm the only one who will notice!



This is the inside of the front cover and the front of the intro page. I just had to use some of my stamps! And that is Terri's business card in the center of the front cover.
Dive for Food??? Oh yes, she does hunt lobsters so I couldn't resist the lobster sign when I found it on the internet.
For the inside of the front and back covers I used some decorative cardstock that I've had in my stash for years. You may not be able to tell in this picture, but the paper is very sparkly. I attached it to a cardboard base with double sided tape; I hope it holds up well and doesn't peel away from the base.


This is the back of the intro page and the first page of journaling. All the pictures I used in Terri's journal are either from the internet, from her friend Doug's website or blog, or from a CD Terri gave me some time ago that contains pictures her friend Joe had taken underwater. I hope her friends don't mind that I've used their pictures for her journal.
After emailing back and forth several times Terri gave me the format for the journal pages. There is some information she always documents with her personal dives and then she needed some blank lines for other information she wanted to record.


These are the second and third journaling pages. There are 38 double sided pages in the book. Each side of the page is set up for Terri to journal 1 day, and each day is split into 2 dives. I used 4 different headings throughout the journal pages: Diving is my Passion (that's Terri in a nutshell), Live! Love! Dive!, Diving...what life is all about, and Live Life! Go Diving!

Here is the inside of the back cover. On the left are 6 photo sleeves for Terri to use if she or one of her dive buddies captures some spectacular pictures. On the right are some underwater photos.

Well Terri, I sure hope you like it and that it works for you! I'll be taking this to the post office in a day or two.

IT Girl for Karen

Karen is the 'IT GIRL' on Art Ventures for the month of March. I know, I'm ahead of schedule, but when an idea hits it is best for me to go with the flow. Karen's theme is shrines. Well, I learned how to create shrines with clay tiles from Laurie Mika back in October....so, why not?
I started with a small wood frame (5 x 5) that I found at Michael's. I painted it with gold acrylic paint so that any spaces between clay or glass tiles would be gold, and not brown wood.



I had a stash of white clay tiles that I made a month or two ago, and had already painted them with a base coat of gold. I needed to make the roof, since I was thinking 'bird house' and some additional decorative tiles. I got out a package of black sculpey for those. After cutting out the roof and some additional tiles, I either stamped into them to get texture or added some 'gems'; then I rubbed perfect pearls interference colors onto the clay before baking. When the black tiles were ready I looked through my white tiles and some other glass tiles that I had on hand, and proceeded to create an arrangement on the wood frame. Pretty soon I had what I felt was a good coverage on the shrine.

After deciding which of my white clay tiles would fit best on the shrine I painted them with acrylic paint. I knew I wanted purple, but it took several attempts to get the proper green/blue color I was looking for. And once again I checked the arrangement of the tiles before gluing them in place. I also applied matte varnish to all the clay tiles before gluing them in place.

Once I determined where the tiles should be placed I glued them down with Weldbond. There was a very small open space just below the roof line on the left and the right. I had some small glass beads that fit perfectly in that space. First I placed some Diamond Glaze in the space and then using a toothpick placed the beads down one at a time.

Here's a picture of the finished shrine. The sunlight is casting a shadow on the inside left of the frame.

In the opening I had taken my HeidiSwap mask of a bird and tree branch, placed them on a script background, and sponged on dusty concord distress ink. The sunlight in this photo gives the background a much lighter appearance than it really is.

I couldn't decide whether to place the small blackbird charm on the inside left or right of the frame, or to place it on the top of the frame just to the right or left of the roof line. I decided I liked it best where it is.

Here's another view of the finished shrine. Since the sunlight was creating shadows I wanted to take a couple of shots so that the entire shrine could be seen.

I hope that Karen likes it. And I hope that I can package it up well enough so that it makes it to her without any damage.

Altered CD

I just posted a swap on the CCSwaps group asking members to alter a CD. I had just the right stamp to use for this project. I stamped my spinner card onto watercolor paper and painted with many of my H2O watercolors. I ran it through my xyron to laminate it to make it sturdier. I didn't have a spinner in my stash so my wonderful husband helped to create the pointer/spinner you see on this project. I covered the CD with some cardstock that was painted with blue watercolors. Before attaching the spinner card to the covered CD, I used my cuttlebug and the alphabet dies I have to punch the letters I placed along the outer edge of the CD. I did place some foam tape under the spinner card before attaching to the CD to give the project some depth. This swap doesn't close until the end of January so I don't know who will be receiving this altered CD.

IT Girl for Pea

February is Pea's turn to be the IT Girl in the ART Ventures group.
I had purchased some wood letters spelling ART months ago; I had even forgotten I had them! Pea requested bold and funky colors with black and white checkerboard. I drew the checkerboards using pencil after painting all the letters with gesso. I chose 3 bold colors and mixed them up amongst the 3 letters; then I painted the checkerboard. I stamped art-related sayings on each using black stazon ink, but they still needed something else to complete them. I found some black and silver cording in my stash, so I used red line tape to adhere the cording around the edges of each letter.

GIVE ME AN 'A'!!!!!


I stamped "art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time". I wasn't sure if stamping these sayings on the wood letters would work, but I was glad it did. They needed something and art sayings seemed to be an appropriate thing to add.



GIVE ME AN 'R'!!!!

On the R, I stamped "the ability to play is essential to a creative artist".

GIVE ME A 'T'!!!!

The 'art' saying used on the T is "fill your paper with the breathings of your heart".

Pauline's IT girl ... Woman booklet

The Art Ventures group has an IT GIRL swap. For the month of January Pauline is IT. She chooses a theme and the rest of us playing in this swap create an item on that theme. Some time ago I had purchased these blank matchbooks so I decided to use one to make Pauline a 'Woman booklet'. There are 6 page in the booklet... here's what I did with it.....

Here is the finished matchbook with the cover closed. I attached decorative paper to the outside of the booklet. Pauline likes purple so that became my primary color throughout the booklet.

After applying 2 colors of distress inks, using the blending foam pads, I stamped images of women on the cover and each of the page fronts.

On the backs of each page I placed a quote relevant to women. I typed them up and printed them on purple vellum.

Special Dates File

Thanks to Chris Bennett, a fellow stamper on the CCSwaps group, I created several of these special date files to give as gifts to friends. I received one from Chris in the 2007 '12 Days of Christmas Swap'. This wonderful folder is for organizing all those special dates (birthdays, anniversaries, etc) that you want to remember throughout the year. I had given 4 of them away for Christmas 2008 and had requests to make more. Here are 7 of the 8 I created recently. One is missing because I gave it to my Best Friend, Bert, just yesterday for her Birthday!!

Here's the inside of one of the files. There is a tab attached to each of 12 pockets; the tab is marked with the month. There are 2 additional pockets in the front and the back for holding blank cards. Each pocket is made from one half of a sealed invitation size envelope. You can't see in these pictures, but I colored and stamped along the edges of the envelopes. The middle sections of the envelopes doesn't show since that is where you attach each of the envelopes to one another.

Here's the inside of another file. I've included 90 cards to fill in for the birthdates, anniversaries, etc that the recipient of this file will be able to use. The unused cards can be stored in the front and back pocket until the owner needs to fill one out. The card is preprinted with name, address, event, and date.

Journal for Alex

My friend, Ann, asked if I could create a journal for her granddaughter, Alex, who would be traveling to France, Spain, and Italy in December of 2008 and part of January 2008. I couldn't pass up the challenge.

Ann and I talked about the size and color of the journal, and other items that were important to Ann. My friend Maggi came to the rescue as far as binding the book since Ann wanted the O-wire binding and not the type of binding that my machine does.

The idea, planning, and organizing can take me a long time, but I could sort of see this book in my head... so that was a good start.

I found some great decorative cardstock to use on the outside of the front and back covers. I had recently purchase grungeboard letters, for the first time, and was anxious to use them! And I had a stash of some embellishments that came in handy. I used my metal alpha and number embellishments on the front cover to spell 'adventure' and '2008/2009'. I found some Jolee Embellishments specifically for France and Italy, but I'd have to come up with something on my own for Spain. But one of the hardest things to do and something I am still struggling with as I write this is... how much to charge!!!! I can add up some of the expenditures very simply and others I need to quess at, but there is no way I can calculate the time or effort and put a price on that. And... I don't intend to. After all, it is for a friend and I enjoyed the time I spent working on it.

This is the inside of the book's front cover. I painted a piece of white cardstock with various golden fluid acrylic colors hoping to achieve a 'Tuscan look'. I didn't know at the time if this piece would be used for the outside or inside of the covers. After painting, I stamped with a texture stamp. I used half the sheet for the front cover and the other half on the inside of the back cover.

It only seemed appropriate to have maps of the 3 countries that Alex would be visiting while on this adventure.

This page signifies the start of the section for France. I used colored cardstock and sponged distress inks along the edges. Then I added a couple of corner flourish stamps before attaching the painted grungeboard letters and the Jolee embellishments.

This is the back of the section divider for France. I stamped a grapevine image along the left side of the page before attaching some images of France. The middle image is a sidewalk cafe and I had some Jolee Embellishments to go along with the picture. On the right is the start of the journal pages for France. In the lower right corner is a postal image with the eiffel tower.

After the journal pages I created a 'keepsake' page. I used double sided decorative cardstock and adhered a plastic sleeve to the bottom half of the page. This can be used for storing momentos that Alex picks up along the way. I printed an image of a French postal stamp and then also typed the word keepsake in both english and french.

On the left is the back of France's keepsake page. Just as on the front, I attached a plastic sleeve on the lower half of the page. I printed an image of the Arc de Triomphe and attached to the top. On the right side you can see some photo sleeves. There are 4 of them and I included some at the end of each country's section so that Alex could include some photos that she takes while on her adventure.

The begining of the Spain section. I used a piece of brick red cardstock and sponged the edges with distress ink. I stamped a couple of flourishes and then added the pictures of the Spanish flag and the bullfighter..... when I think of Spain, I think of bullfighters!!! The letters are painted grungeboard like the other countries, just a different color and a different style of letter.

The back of Spain's page is decorated with a strip of scrapbook paper and 3 notable places found in Spain. On the right you can see one of the journal pages that has an image of a bullfighter in the lower right corner. I know, again with the bullfighter!!! What can I say? It's an image stuck in my head!

Spain's keepsake page. The double sided cardstock worked well for this page... sturdier than the journal pages, but not as thick as the divider pages. A Spanish postal image in the upper right and some decorative ribbon laced down the upper right of the page. Actually, the ribbon is there to hide the mistake I made when punching the pages!!! At the end of the ribbon is a metal embellishment that says 'adventure'.

This is the back of the keepsake page for Spain. And you can see on the right there are, again, some photo sleeves for any pictures of Spain that Alex may want to include here.

On the right is the start for the Italy section. I used a rust cardstock and sponged on some distress inks along the edge. A couple of flourish stamps were used in the corners once I knew where the placement of the letters and embellishments would be. The letters are painted grungeboard.

Here is the back of the Italy page. Just as with the other 2 countries I printed images of 3 places in Italy. I stamped a couple of 'Italian images' that I have on the rust colored cardstock first. I also had a gondola (Jolee embellishment) to add next to the picture of Venice.

On the right you can see the first of the journal pages. Each page has an image of the Italy map in the corner.

This is the front of the keepsake page for Italy with the word 'keepsake' and the Italian equivalent typed and adhered near the top of the page along with an image of an Italian postage stamp.

This is the back of the keepsake page for Italy. The set up is the same as for the other 2 countries with a plastic pocket attached to the bottom half for holding various momentos. On the right you can see the photo sleeves.

I used the same paper on the inside of the back cover that I used on the inside of the front cover. I used 3 images, that I found on the internet, from each of the 3 countries that are represented in the journal.

The outside of the back is covered with scrapbook paper. I found 3 'poster type' images on the internet to represent each of the 3 countries.

Well, it's done.... And I am very happy with it!!! There is at least one thing Iwould have done differently; it has to do with how I incorporated and punched the photo sleeves. BUT, I really like it and I sure hope that Ann and Alex do too!