My Art - Portfolio

I created this little portfolio for my god daughter for her birthday! Filled it with papercrafting goodies - images, layers, cards and envelopes!! She loves scrapbooking and paper crafting!

Therese

MM - sticky note books

Sticky note books!! A new bunch delivered to Merchants Mill a few weeks ago!! These are a handy little gift which almost everyone can use - by the phone, in a briefcase or purse or on your desk!! They are highly personal and no one will be able to claim them as their own!! They are refillable too!!

The Merchant's Mill is now open Friday, Saturday and Sundaysfrom 10am to 6pm!! Drop by and check out their wonderful selection of great gifts!!

Therese

My Art - Exchange card

Had some friends over the other night to play!! We have decided this year to do Shoe Box swaps as our activity for the year. Each person in the group provides supplies for a little project which we will create during our get togethers. We made Stair Step Cards this month with some boats and a lot of waves!! Fun!!

Here is the card I created for my exchange!! The main element is "holiday gift wrap" sold at Liquidation World a few years ago. It is like woven polyester with silver snowflakes printed on it. It looks like fabric!! Very cool!! I did buy several different ones - used one with snowmen on it in last year's Christmas cards.
I wrapped a small piece of this fabric around a blue piece of cardstock and layered it onto white pearlescent cardstock which I had trimmed with deckle edged scissors (Fiskars). Added a silver brad to the center of the main snowflake to create focal point. I used the snowflake embossing folder (CB) on the right hand side of the card and layered a silver embossed greeting over another piece of trimmed pearl paper and tucked it under the main element.
Really like the look of the card. You will see later that I incorporated this design in my cardmaking class this month!!

Therese

My Art - birthday cards

Created some birthday cards!! I used die cuts (Sizzix) along with a variety of punchies as layers to create the flowers on these cards!! The stems are leaf die cuts (SU). I stippled some of the elements to help them blend and look good with the rest of the pieces. The dragonflies were left over from a previous class. Added some decorative papers and some script stamping!! Was fun to play with lots of pieces and come up with some cool cards!!
One was sent off to a special person! Hope she enjoyed her birthday!! Love you!!

Therese

My Art - card holder

I created the template for this little card holder a while back and thought I had already uploaded it to my blog but checked last night and alas I had not!! So here it is!!
I created the template and printed it on the back of scrapbooking cardstock. Once printed, it is just a matter of scoring all the lines, folding them, making four cuts and applying two pieces of double sided tape and assembling the little box!! There is enough space at the top to accomodate a variety of closures. On this one I just punched the two top pieces with oval punch (SU) and added a ribbon to keep it closed. You could punch two smaller holes and thread in ribbon, twine or fibers. You could cut one shorter and fold the other one over it and add a magnet or velcro as the closure, All sorts of options!!
It holds 4 (or more) standard A2 sized cards with their envelopes and makes a wonderful presentation for anyone wanting to gift cards as gifts!! With Christmas on the horizon consider making your office coworkers, neighbours, girl friends, elderly family members, etc some handmade cards as gifts! You will have a great time making them and they will be proud to be sending them to their friends!!

Therese

My Art - invitation #1

These are samples I have made up for a friend who is looking for wedding invitations!! It was so fun to play with paper and create some beautifully embossed cards!!

This invitation has it all - elegance, dimension and some bling!!
Added clear rhinestones to the centers of the white confetti flowers (M) and layered them onto this beautiful ribbon (M). Tucked the ends behind a layer that was embossed with D'vine Swirl (CB). Glued this layer to the front of the white card. Added two red punched hearts!!

Gorgeous!!

Therese

My Art - invitation #2

I used the Manhattan Flower embossing folder (SU) to emboss the vellum on this one and the doily border punch (MS) on the top flap. Tied a short piece of ribbon to the one that goes across to make a soft knot for the top.

Love the soft elegance of this card!!

Therese

My Art - invitation #3

This one is very similar to the previous one! Used the D'vine Swirl embossing folder for the top and bottom flaps as well as the small heart. Cut the hearts using a Sizzix die.

Therese

My Art -- Invitations! #4

Used the Birds and Swirls embossing folder (CB) on each side of this one and added a layered flower embellishment. I cut the flowers with a Sizzix die and embossed the large flower with the Swiss Dots embossing folder (CB) and the small one with one of the birds from the Birds and Swirls (CB) embossing folder.

Therese

My Art - OSW cards #2

Here are four more cards I created with the other half of the "DTP" onto which I stamped a flower in blue pigment ink and embossed with sparkly embossing powder - not very visible in the scan. I used just ink to stamp the little flourishes in between the flowers and then used my stipple stamp to add some texture and embossed those as well. I used blue cardstock scraps with my accents on white cards.
I like the sparkly look these cards have - gives them just a little "wow"!!

We all need a little "wow" in our life!!

Therese

My Art - OSW cards

Had a sheet of cardstock I decorated with the "direct to paper" technique and pigment ink a while back and decided to stamp on it to create a sheet of decorative paper to make a few cards. I cut the sheet in half and stamped this cool flower and "my garden" in dark blue and leaves in green. I cut it up to make the accents and teamed them up with a leaf green cardstock on white cards. The five petal flowers are table confetti available in the wedding section of Michaels - they have a nice pearl finish!! I added blue rhinstones their centers on the card in the lower left hand corner.
It was fun to use different tehniques and add element to create my cards. Dug through my scraps for coordinating pieces and greetings.

Therese

Mini mag holder template/diagram

This is the diagram I created for the mini mag card holder. I scored all the lines to begin with and then cut on the solid lines and folded on the dashed lines. It takes advantage of a full 12x12 piece of cardstock and makes a holder that is 4.5" deep, 6" high and almost 3" wide.

I modified a pattern I found on Blythe's blog!!

Would make a perfect holder to present a "gift of cards"!! Great for teachers gifts for the upcoming holiday season!! It is coming!!

Therese

My Art - mini magazine card holder

Created this cool little magazine holder for cards!! Modified the design I found on Blythe's blog to take advantage of a full sheet of 12x12 cardstock. These are really cool and are the perfect size for holding A2 sized cards with their envelopes!! You could make several for your studio to store cards that are ready to be sent out - maybe one for each month or one for each occasion!

I started by scoring all the lines onto the 12x12 cardstock, then made cuts with my exacto knife and ruler where I needed them. I, then, folded all the lines neatly and assembled the holder to see that everything fit properly. I used double sided adhesive to glue it all together. I added a strip of decorative paper and a bookplate (Sizzix die cut) which I attached with a couple of brads. Check the next post for the diagram/template of how I scored, cut and folded my cardstock to create this holder.

Therese

My Art - Thank you cards

Made some thankyou cards this weekend!!! I used a pad of 6 x 6 scrapbooking paper I bought a while back which has a rose theme. These feature three sheets of the same patterned paper combined with caramel, cocoa and plum cardstocks. It was fun to try to do something different on each one. A few have fibers, others have stamping as well and most have some sort of decorative punching (scallop SU, doily MS)!! Very happy with how these turned out!!

Therese

My Art - frame

One of my friends is having a significant birthday - a time for celebrating all that is GOOD!!!

I decorated a square wood frame (Michaels) with decorative scrapbooking paper, grosgrain ribbon and some paper flowers!!

I am very happy with the way it turned out!!

I primed and painted the frame before I modge podged on the papers. Once I was done I sprayed it with matt clear finish to keep it looking good for years!!

I made the card after I had decorated the frame so used the same papers!! The image is one I received in a swap - was just perfect! I watercoloured the flowers and ladybug!! Added a layered greeting over the brown grosgrain ribbon!!

Every day is a good time to celebrate all that is good about being YOU!! Be sure to let your friends know that you appreciate who they are!!

Therese

My Art - altered book page

An altered book page which incorporates an altered puzzle piece that we swapped on one of my groups!! Our theme was summer and Linda created this adorable puzzle piece with a little girl at the sea shore!! This layout sort of just developed - I started by finding hand decorated paper for the beach portion of the left hand page and modified it a bit so the puzzle piece would blend. Tore a blue piece of bond and stippled it so it would blend with the beach and added a horizon. Added the window muntin bars using strips of brown cardstock. The "curtains" are a used dryer sheet ironed flat and cut into two. I used double sided tape to adhere them to the page as well as so attach the brown cornice at the top of the page. On the right hand page I used a swirl stencil and blue and caramel ink pads for stippling the colour on the page after I glued down the blue rectangle and the sand coloured tissue paper strips. It features a poem quote by Charles Kingsley which I laser printed and altered once it was glued in place. I added handwriting to the cornice and along the various lines in my layout!! Totally fun to do!!

Have a great weekend, everyone!!

Therese

My Art - collaged tag

One evening we decided to play a little and created this cool little tag which was inspired by a blog post - one of the many that Linda follows with her Google Reader.
We used plastic packaging for the large clear tag and ran it through the Cuttlebug in the Textile embossing folder. Created a coordinating green cardstock tag and collaged the front!! Added some fibers and voila!! - a cool little tag we can add to our altered books somewhere along the line!!

I would highly recommend getting together with your creative friends and making "stuff"!! It is so fun to have people who understand you and that you can brainstorm with.
We visited some garage sales, attended the Women's Art Festival with a few of her friends and went to a stage production on Sunday afternoon. Great R&R for me!!

I am grateful for Linda's hospitality and willingness to share her life with me. She has a suppotive husband who was gracious and understanding. I am blessed!!

Therese

My Art - first coptic bound book

Linda and I both wanted to learn some bookbinding techniques and decided to start with making a coptic bound book. We perused our personal libraries for instructions and searched the internet for more information as well. We had several books between us that had some instructions, printed some instructions from the internet and found several video tutorials that were helpful. Here is where you will find the video tutorial we found most helpful when we made our books!! It took amazingly little time for us to make our books!! Less than an afternoon to make our covers, signatures and to bind our books!!! They are quite loose because we did not tie off our original thread because we were following printed instructions when we first began. I will be redoing mine to make it tighter!! We used book board which we covered with paper. I used hand decorated paper on mine which was created with the leftover acrylic paint from the creation of the pages for the mini book in my previous post applied to a brown paper envelope from our shopping trip to the local art store. I used 28 lb colour laser paper in my signatures - 4 sheets per signature - 3 signatures. I may consider adding signatures when I redo my binding. I used waxed crochet thread for binding as I did not have any waxed linen. We used a cropadile to make the holes in our covers and an awl to make the necessary holes in our signatures. This technique does create an exposed spine which makes it easy to add danglies, fibers and charms!! With this binding every page in the book opens flat and is fully accessible which makes it a great choice for an art journal or altered book.
If you have been interested in bookbinding I would encourage you to give it a try. Very fun!! Customize a book with your favorite papers for both the covers and the signatures best suited to just what you want!!

Therese

My art - mini book

A mini book to celebrate a gathering of friends!! This is a little memory book we created as a bit of a surprise for those who attended a dinner party that Linda hosted on Monday night!! We collaged coasters for the covers and used food and friend quotes on the inside cardstock pages. Over the evening we took group photos and secretly printed them up. Just before dessert, Linda passed around the books and had everyone glue in the photos. A variety of charms, beads and fibers were also passed around so everyone could embellish their books to reflect their personal style. Totally fun!! The books were bound with black 3/4" Zutter metal bindings.
The dinner party went off without a hitch and the food was so great. The appetizers were potluck! We talked, visited and munched on a great variety of fun snacky food. Fresh salmon steaks were cooked on a plank on the BBQ for dinner and served with fresh garden salad!! The salmon was so good!!!!!!! We had cheesecake for dessert!!
An evening of good food, good conversation and good friends makes great memories!!

Therese

My Art - handmade paper

Taught a papermaking class and made paper with my friends last week!! I really enjoy the process and the end results of making paper!!

The top three include natural elements - flower petals, herbal tea and palm leaves/grass. I started with used white office bond paper that was headed for the recycle bin and added yellow paper for one batch (right) and orange for the other batch (middle). The paper on the left hand side was the leftovers of the two above batches.

The bottom three include hand made paper confetti!! The base pulp for these papers was SU cardstock scraps donated to me by my local SU demos (Catherine and Dorothy). It makes wonderful paper!! Used a mixture of colours so I could have enough to make a batch.

If you are a papercrafter I would certainly recommend that you turn your scraps into handmade paper!! It is fun and easy and requires very few tools. If papermaking is not your thing, try to find a local papermaker and donate your scraps!! It is the ultimate in recycling!!

Therese