Material Mondays - What else can you do with Chamois leather

Chamois leather has traditionally been used for cleaning and polishing cars.  My dad used to use them on his car, and up until a few weeks ago I never gave them another thought - though my car is in need of a good clean (Sekani - if you don't mind please!!)

Anyway in my 'lets see how we can use this' phase I have been seeing what different ways I can use it, and over the next few weeks of Material Mondays I will be showing you some things that you can do.

In my local pound store they sell 12x12 in cuts of stitched chamois in the car section, for as its name suggests £1,  If you go online you can get bigger sizes, and whole pieces, the largest I've seen so far is 5 square feet. The smaller size suited me as a trial and I took it home to see how it would take paint. 

The leather was great to work with as it is so soft it takes paint well, and I used a selection of inks, and paints through stencils made from scrap plastic.

I wanted to see how it would hold up as a journal with lots of embellishments, attaching beads, spirals, and crochet ribbon.

All the embellishments were from the charity store and so while there is a nice variety going on, they compliment each other well.

On the inside it has 3 signatures, made from a selection of scrap watercolor card and paper.  It is just the right size, measuring around 4 x 6 inch

Give it a try and see what you come up with!

Next week we are going to try to make something musical with the leather...

Check out my YouTube channel to see what other creative projects that I am making.

Tutorial Tuesdays - Pound Store Finds

Welcome to Tutorial Tuesday!  It has been a while I know, but I have been busy making projects to share with you and this one today incorporates my love of paper and working with my hands.  I thought I would share with you what I have been working on lately.

Here in the UK we have what is call 'Pound stores' or 99p stores in which they sell everything very cheaply, and as the name says either £1 or 99p.  I guess in the states you have your 'Dollar Tree' and I am sure that most places would have the equivalent.

You can often pick up a range of crafting items, not the best quality, but depending on what you are going to use them for can be quite effective.  I recently picked up these bags of all sorts and was attracted by the flower that was in the packet, it had a lot of waste and off cuts that would normally be recycled but some bright spark has realized that if they bag them up someone will buy it.

Anyway, it came with lots of different type of paper, flower off cuts, a bag of beads, foam and as you can see strips of paper.

Because of my love of paper and making things I thought it was a good idea to see what I could create with the contents of the bag.  Due to my love of making journals, I decided to set myself a challenge and see if I could make a workable journal with only the contents of the bag.

I started out with two pieces of recycled card, which along with paint were the only external additions, and I measured the cardboard to the size that I wanted the journal to be.  This was also dependent on the size of the biggest piece of paper within the paper pack.

measuring out the cardboard

After I had got the size that I wanted, I began to cover the cardboard in strips of paper from the pack, which would provide a base for the flower and any other additional decoration on the front.

I put together the pages and made 3 signatures for the journal, decorating each one as I went along.

Signatures being decorated before stitched

 With any spare paper left I made tags and a front pocket for the journal, I had placed a series of encouraging statements on the tags

I kept the sewing of the signatures very simple and with some of the shiny paper left made some paper beads to hang from the spine of the journal

paper beads and a simple stitching on the journal

 Here is the finished journal, I decorated the flower with a pearlesent paint and attached it to the cover, and finished off with stitching around the edges of the journal.

Completed journal

 Here is one of the pages within the journal that I have worked on, with a reminder that you need to take a break and dive into your creativity.

Completed page - take a break

I still have a bit of the paper left and that will go towards the next project, I also didn't get to use the beads, so we will see what we can do with these as well.  Try and get on down to your local store and see what paper packs you can find to make a journal from, that are inexpensive and encourage you to stretch your imagination as you use a limited range of resources in a different way. 

 I will be making a few more of these over the coming months, and towards the end of August next month I will be making another journal from the contents of one of these paper packs and also be hosting a giveaway, so keep an eye out!

Join me next week for Tutorial Tuesdays and see where your creativity can take you!!

Reflections on the A - Z Blogger Challenge 2013

 

Another action packed, fun filled, stress and laughter inducing, insightful, touching and meaningful month was had in April.  Whilst I am relieved that the A-Z blogging challenge has finally finished, it feels like there is a big hole left - which will be quickly filled visiting those blogs that I didn't get to see..

I will start out by saying a big THANK YOU to Lee and all the team of Ambassadors and Co-hosts that helped, supported, cheered by the side lines as we rolled out our posts and left encouraging comments.

For my challenge I had decided that it was to be a celebration of life, I listed a range of encouraging words that I would talk about, we often don't get to celebrate our achievements, shining the light on our gifts, staying motivated to keep going.  Being a creative can be an isolating journey but its the collaboration and connection and network that you can find to participate in that makes it so rewarding.  On top of the encouraging words I decided to push myself and complete a series of paintings and journal pages, it became challenging towards the end but I am so glad I kept on going.  It was great to be able to visit so many more participants and I was able to share the links of some of the other participants whose blog began with the letter for the day, there are still a few to visit, but I can take my time now.

Two highlights happened in April I was able to share the news of being chosen to participate in an Art and Healing Exhibition  (running until 5th June 2013) showing the ways in which art can be used to impact on health and well-being.  And the other highlight was meeting up for the first time with Hilary from Positive Letters, - she came to the opening of the exhibition, and I shared this in my Relationships post.

All in all it was an enjoyable month, I really glad I participated for another year, many connections were made and I look forward to keeping in touch with new found friends.  If you were thinking of joining in and didn't  I recommend that you get ready for next year, you will not look at your blog in the same way and definitely get more out than you put in.  I am looking forward to the challenges that lay ahead and look forward to seeing you on the journey!

Graze Box Recycled Journals

Got sent a graze box a while back which had an array of delightful snacks.

It came through normal post so there was no need to wait in.  After I finished it I decided to see what I could make from the packaging

With the small book you get with your first order I made a mini book with a wrap around clasp and will use this to be a little notebook

With the rest of the materials I made a bigger journal.  The box serves as the cover and I used a range of paper and tissue paper to cover this.  On the inside I used the tray that the boxes sit in as places where you can either put photographs or your favourite sayings, inspiration cards. 

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I used magazine and calender pages which were matt in finish and this made it easier to add paint and collage material for the signature pages. 

 

I will be using the bigger journal to do a series of images.  I will share more as I go along. 

It was great fun making the different items and great to see how we can reuse and repurpose a variety of things for creative purposes