Rocking Your World Friday - week 2

It’s that time of the week again – time to reflect on the good stuff.

I’ve got to say, it’s been a little harder this week to pick past the big piles of not-so-good-stuff to get to those little nuggets of positivity – but that’s really what Rockin’ My World Friday is all about, I guess.  It’s EASY to feel positive and grateful when everything is going swimmingly, but we need a bit of help when everything starts heading downhill…

First of all, rewinding back to this time next week, I’m still smiling from the super warm welcome I got from all the other “Rockettes” to my very first RMWF post.  Thanks ladies :)

The next thing to make me grin was an email on Friday evening from the newly formed Swindon Roller Derby team, asking if I would be able to come and photograph their first ever bout for them (I used to do a lot of ice hockey photography and so I have the kit to get past the challenges of shooting fast moving people indoors under artificial light) – the bout takes place this coming Sunday and I am super excited about it as I’ve never seen live Roller Derby before.  

As a warm up, I dusted off my old camera kit (literally!) and took a round of pics at hockey on Saturday night, just to get myself back into the swing of things, and I really enjoyed it (funny, since I stopped taking photos there every week as it had become such a chore, I guess once in a while is fun, every Saturday week in week out, not so much).

In fact last Saturday was a good hockey day all round, I had fun with my camera, we won (beating the team we all love to hate, the Guildford Flames, 6-4), and then when I got home I caught the last period of my NHL team, the Vancouver Canucks, beating their current nemesis, the Boston Bruins, in Boston’s home rink no less.  Fantastic, I was positively jumping up and down with excitement :D  Nothing beats the adrenaline buzz of seeing both my teams win on the same night!

Over the weekend I was still on my New Year cleaning / decluttering kick, I filled another 4 black bags with stuff to take to the tip, and freecycled and ebayed some stuff too. I’ll have nothing left soon :)  The items I freecycled (toys that Connor has outgrown but were too good to chuck away) were all claimed and collected within an hour of me posting the offers online – brilliant!  I get some space back in my hallway, some little kiddies get a new blackboard easel and toy town, and all sorted with the minimum of fuss or effort, win win all round.

Monday was the horrid day, with a pile more redundancies announced at my work, including two of the ladies who work for me, as their role is now being reduced from two heads to one :(  The only positive to come from this is that one of them chose, seemingly quite happily, to take voluntary redundancy, so at least there won’t be any of that nasty competing over one job. Not in my team anyway.  But the atmosphere at work will be tough for a while as all the other role reductions shake out.

Anyway – enough of that negativity – this isn’t the place for it!  Also on Monday, I took my middle son back to Uni in Bristol, and he seemed happy and full of plans, so that’s always good.

Also this week I finished making my new art journal for 2012, and I’m chuffed with how it turned out (this is now the third blog post in a row with a photo of this journal on it – you must all be sick of the sight of it by now lol) – and the tutorial I put together while making the journal was used to kick start the 6 month “Art Journey” art journalling workshop over at UKScrappers.  It seems to have been well received, so that’s good, as I was a bit nervous about it, wasn’t quite sure what was expected of me as I haven’t written a tutorial for them before.

Some other little happy bits and bobs that happened this week:

• I discovered Sherlock on telly. Not seen it before. It's fab!  I have spent the whole week catching up on previous episodes that I had missed.  
• The Hungry Horse pub chain – the kids idea of heaven - have started accepting Tesco Clubcard tokens at 4 x face value, so that means we can have a giant family meal out for a tenners’ worth of vouchers, which I got for free just for doing my shopping anyway.  Bargain.  I do love my Clubcard.
• My middle son is still a member of the National Trust (mine ran out a few months ago), and he got sent his 2012 parking sticker this week.  He doesn’t have a car so he gave it to me.  Result – that’ll save me a fiver a pop whenever I go to Avebury :)  
• I finished another couple of spreads in my sketchbook project book, only 3 left to go now thank god. And despite rushing them, I don't hate them.  Here’s a sneaky of one:

• I bought a couple of items from ebay this week and had really good experiences with both sellers – one insisted on refunding 80p as he had over estimated postage (despite me telling him it really was ok and he didn’t have to), and the other sent me half as much product again as I had ordered as a free gift.  Thank you ebay peeps :) 

Reading that back, even a bad week looks like a fab week :)

See you again next Friday!

Make your own long-stitch bound journal : a photo heavy tutorial

If you have arrived here from the UKScrappers Art Journey - welcome! This is the tutorial for the “making your own journal” option.

If you have come from elsewhere – you’re also very welcome :) please enjoy the tutorial in its own right 

Step by step, I'll go through exactly how I made the journal pictured in my last blog post.  Hopefully you will find it easy to follow, and might be inspired to make one of your own (and if you do, I'd love to see it!)

Like many art journallers (or should that be art journallists??), especially those with a scrapbooking background who are used to having patterned paper to use as a foundation, I often suffer from “white page syndrome” – starting with a completely blank page, or, scarier still, a completely blank spanking new journal, can be daunting!

So here are instructions to build yourself a journal that starts its life already full of colour, pattern and texture, just enough to give your pages that little head start…

You will need:

1)      Various papers

2)      A ruler

3)      Paper trimmer or scissors and a steady hand

4)      Leather, grungeboard, upholstery fabric, or any other durable, flexible material to cover your book

5)      Awl or other sharp pointy tool

6)      Waxed bookbinding thread (if you have no ready waxed thread you can make your own by pulling embroidery thread through a block of beeswax)

7)      A large needle

8)      A small plate or saucer

9)      Optional – leather cord or ribbon to make a book closure

Step one – gather papers

This is the most fun step – as you get to rummage through your stash of papers, ephemera, even fabrics, to find potential pages for your new book – who doesn’t love to spend a few hours paper stroking?

Ideal candidates:

Heavyweight scrapbook papers – especially double sided

Pages from old books and dictionaries, sheet music, braille paper

Hand painted and inked papers left over from old projects or experiments

Handmade and speciality papers

Some plainer papers – thin cardstock, watercolour paper etc – to balance out all the patterns

Old postcards – both the picture and written sides will make an interesting base for a journal page

And anything else you think might work – acetate panels, felt and stiff fabric, perforated cardstock, go on, throw it all into the mix!

Other ideas – envelopes, junk mail, your own photographs….honestly, anything goes!

Step two – prepare your signatures

“Signatures” are simply the bookbinding world’s word for groups of pages.  For this book, we will be using three-sheet signatures – essentially little folded pamphlets of 6 pages each.

So you will need to sort the papers and ephemera that you sorted out in step one, into groups of three that go together fairly well, and then cut these to size.

For my book I settled on a page size of 7.5” height by 5” width – so I cut most of my sheets to 7.5” by 10” and then folded in half.  At least the outside page of each signature needs to be full size, but inner pages can be smaller.

Fold all pages, especially the trickier ones like acetate sheets, firmly with a bone folder to ensure a crisp fold

Add some flaps and pockets to some pages as they will be fun to work with later on:

(apologies for the state of my work table in some of these pics, by the way, it has so much old paint on it that it’s a minor work of art in its own right! :) ) 

And cut some small mini insert pages from scraps to add in here and there:

If any of your papers are too thin and flimsy, glue two or more sheets together with a glue stick or gel medium, to provide a more heavyweight foundation: 

Join unconnected or smaller pages together at the fold point with decorative tape:

Eventually you will have a set of signatures, each containing three folded sheets, all cut to size and ready to bind:

I am making a big book here, with many signatures, you might want to aim for something smaller – 5 or 7 signatures makes a nice book, but any odd number works well.

Step three – binding the book

First you need to make yourself a guide.

Take a scrap piece of cardboard, the height of your book (in my case, 7.5”), fold it in half, and mark a cross on the fold half an inch from each end.

Then divide the distance between these two crosses into 5 and mark 4 more crosses equally spaced along the rest of the guide, as below:

Use an awl or other similar sharp pointy tool (a needle or drawing pin would do the job at a pinch), to make holes through the centres of the crosses. 

Use this guide in the middle of each of your signatures in turn, to make holes in the right places in the folds:

You will end up with a stack of pierced signatures like these:

Next, cut a section from whatever you are using to cover your book – I am using an offcut of leather – but any strong/durable yet flexible material – eg grungeboard/grungepaper, leather-like vinyl, upholstery fabric- will work well.  This needs to be a little taller than your book, and wide enough to loosely wrap around your full set of signatures with a generous overlap (see below):

Place your stack of signatures on the cover material in such a way that the front cover piece folds over with around half an inch overhang, and then carefully open it up leaving the signatures in place, and use a ruler to mark the left hand edge of your bottom signature:

Mark a line along the right hand edge of the ruler, and use your guide, folded, to pierce six holes.

Work along to the left, piercing a set of holes for each of your signatures, just under quarter of an inch apart:

Once you have pierced all of your binding holes – in my case I decided to go with 11 signatures in the end – so I pierced 11 sets of 6 holes – you might want to cut a slit to put your closure ribbon/cord through later on.  This is entirely optional, but if you do want one it’s a lot easier to cut it now than after you have bound the book!

Cut two slits with a sharp craft knife about half way down what will eventually become the spine of the book (in between the 3rd and 4th holes heightwise, and in the middle of your signatures widthwise)   

You can see the positioning on this picture of the finished book:

Now you are ready to start sewing.

Place your last signature (the one that will end up at the back of the book) against the right-most set of holes in the inside cover (where you made your ruler mark), and thread your needle with a manageable amount of waxed thread.

Start sewing from inside the book, at the second from bottom hole – and leave a tail of thread a few inches long:

Sew with a simple running stitch (out one hole, in the next) up to the top hole, keeping the thread pulled tight as you go.

Then introduce your second-from-last signature, and sew to the left and into the top hole of the new signature, and use running stitch all the way down this new signature to the bottom hole.

And carry on running up one signature, over to the left, down the next signature, over to the left, and so on, remembering to pull the thread tight as you go.  You should see this pattern emerging on the outside spine of your book:

At some point along the way, you will probably run out of thread and need to add a new length in.

To join the new thread, make a weaver’s knot, which is very secure and can be positioned precisely (this is best done inside the book, not on the outside):

Make two loops in the new thread:

Put the right hand loop through the left hand loop as so:

Tighten the left hand loop, but not completely:

Put the old thread (B) through the big loop in the new thread.  Tighten the knot at C by pulling the new thread at A.  Trim the ends leaving around a quarter of an inch.

The final knot looks like this:

When you have bound in all of your signatures, sew back the other way, filling in all the missed stitches at the ends, and doubling up all of the stitches in the middle for all but your first and last signature.

The completed bound spine will look like this:

Your thread will emerge at the end back where you first started, where you left the tail of thread in the first signature you sewed.  Tie the two loose ends together with a normal double knot and trim the ends to complete the binding process:

Step Four: finishing touches

Use strong scissors to carefully trim your cover material to size at the top and bottom of the book, and the front cover, leaving approximately quarter of an inch overhanging the pages:

For the back cover, we want a generous amount of overlap for the book wrap, as trust me, once you start art journaling in this book it will grow and grow!

So leave more than you think you need, and then cut the edge into a semi circular shape using a small plate as a template:

Add a leather cord or ribbon to keep the book closed, and that’s your new art journal built, and all ready for you to fill it with pretty :) 

New year, new journal

 

Last year I did all my art journalling in Moleskines, a little notebook sized one for my main journal, and a landscape watercolour one for trips and holidays....but this year I thought I'd make my own book from scratch

So here it is!

I've used all sorts of different papers, I think it's going to be fun to work in - it should help to combat the old white page syndrome, anyway.

The binding is long stitch, similar to the book I made for Alison's christmas pressie, but bigger (the pages are roughly 7.5" x 5") and with a lot more pages (11 signatures of three sheets each)

 

I just wish I some time to actually DO some actual art journalling in it!  But I need to get my Sketchbook Project book finished first.....deadline looming.....eek......wish me luck!

Rocking Your World Friday - week 1

So….what’s this all about then?

All last year I enjoyed reading Virginia and Carmen giving a regular run down of what had been Rockin’ Their World that week – those little (or big) things that had put a smile on their face or a spring in their step. 

I don’t think they will mind me saying, but neither lady was having an easy time of things, especially in the second half of 2011, but still every week they managed to find, and focus on, so many positives. 

They really set a fantastic example, and this year I thought I would join in.  It will help me stay focussed on the good stuff all year, and also it will be fun for me to sit and re-read all the posts next New Years eve and remind myself of everything I have been grateful for along the way.

So here goes….what’s been rocking my world this week?

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The biggie is that my house is WARM again!

A few days before Christmas, our boiler went boom!  And ever since then, we’ve had no heating, and no hot running water.  It has been no fun at all.

But like knights on white chargers, British Gas turned up this week, and three days of hard work later, they have installed a brand spanking new combi boiler and we are, quite literally, running on gas again.  Woohoo!  I had an hour long super soak in the bath last night, and it was wonderful!

You don’t half appreciate things when they’ve been taken away from you for a while…

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The next thing is kind of related to the boiler dudes’ visit.  Of course they needed access to every radiator in the house.  And you know what that means.  It means that BEDROOMS have to be clean and tidy!  Eek!!!!  We don’t usually let people upstairs J  We spent a solid two days tidying up the bedrooms – but it was SO worth it.  My en suite bathroom is now so bright and decluttered that you need sunglasses to avoid the glare from the white tiles.  My bedroom is so lovely I just want to live in it 24 hours a day. And, most exciting of all, we discovered that Connor, my 9 year old, not only has a CARPET, but apparently there was a RUG under there too!  Who knew?? :D

We had a big clear out downstairs too (bye bye to my ten-years-in-the-making collection of jiffy bags from behind the big sofa, I’ll miss you, all my little envelope pals!), and two trips to the local tip later, the house was more presentable than it has been in years.  And I love it!  Now I just need to keep it that way J

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Other miscellaneous things:

No, this isn't me...my arms aren't that hairy!

• My middle son bought me a FAB Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock t shirt for my Christmas (slightly belatedly, it turned up in the post yesterday), which I’m currently wearing at work and which has already attracted a loud Bazingaaaa! :D
• I got an extra day off work this week due to it being the boiler dudes’ first day working and wanting to be there to show them where everything was and offer them lots of tea and biccies and stuff – so I have only had to work three days this week, yay!
• Thanks to that extra day off I actually got an art journal page done for the first time in a while
• Plus, I feel like I have finally broken the back of my Sketchbook Project book, and for the first time I believe that I can and WILL get it finished in time for the January 31^st deadline
• I got an extension on the bookbinding tutorial I am working on for the new Art Journey series over at UKScrappers, and am on track to finish it in plenty of time, so I no longer feel like I’ve let Mary Anne down (HATE letting people down!)
• While tidying earlier in the week I found a fab old photo (see below) – we think it’s from 1999-ish – of my old team from when I worked at WHSmith.  I wish my hair was still that colour!  This caused great amusement at my new job as the chap on the bike works here too, and both he and I have changed in appearance a lot over the years!  I love coming across forgotten gems like this J
• I’ve bought myself a little pocket diary and am writing myself small bite sized daily to do lists and it’s really helping me feel in control and on top of stuff
• I’ve also started taking photos every day for my “Project 366, a (leap) year in pictures” – having fun with it so far, no masterpieces yet but I’m hoping it will eventually provide an interesting (to me, anyway!) retrospective of the 12 months
• Grapes were half price in Tesco today and I am thoroughly enjoying munching my way through a huge bag of them, they are DELICIOUS!  (I might have a tummy ache later though if I don’t stop soon!)
• I learnt this week that ESPN America are now starting to broadcast AHL hockey – which is fantastic news for me as I will be able to follow the Chicago Wolves – my main team’s farm team – and also other teams I am fond of such as the Hamilton Bulldogs and Hershey Bears – AND I can follow James Wright’s progress now he’s with the San Antonio Rampage.  (I fully appreciate that this last bullet point will mean absolutely nothing to 99% of the people who read my blog, sorry! J )

So, there you go - LOTS to be happy about this week!

See you again same time, same place next Friday?  Oh, and if you’d like to put together a Rockin’ post of your own, head on over to Virginia’s blog to find out where to link up and stuff…

Rock on!