Travel Treasures to Inspire

One last post about my travels. This time with just a few inspirations I found along the way.

As I was strolling through Brooklyn, I stumbled upon some graffiti that caused me to stop and take a picture. It was so simple and yet so eye catching. I like you.

I think this would be a great image to centre some craft projects on! Any ideas?

When I was in Nova Scotia, after walking down a very foggy Lawrencetown Beach, my friend and I stopped by the seaside vintage store Fancy Lucky. Lots of precious vintage clothing and accessories in there, but this is what captured me.

I aspire to this!

Turns out that this little unsigned gem was made by the girl working the shop that day. She was charging a whole $1 for this hand drawn piece. She does these 'just for fun' but she did admit she hadn't had time recently to create more. Needless to say, I encouraged her to raise her prices! So to that shy artist in Nova Scotia: I hope you keep creating art and loving what you do! Who knows, maybe someday I can link this post to your site!

Belated Valentine Cheer

I really want to be faithful in posting regularly each week, but this week was tough! My project was maybe just a little bit ambitious in the first place, but then throw a wedding, some flu-ish version of a bug, a charity walk, and a 5-hour midnight visit to the ER into the mix of a week and I don't stand a chance!

My embroidered pillow is coming I PROMISE, but you'll have to wait just a bit longer to see the finished product.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share a pic from Valentine's Day. This year I participated in Aunt Peaches' 3rd Annual Valentine Swap. The gist is you make 3 cards for 3 strangers and [ideally] receive 3 cards from 3 different strangers. Ok, so I'm still waiting for that 3rd card...but I really enjoyed the 2 that I did receive and I had such a blast making my cards.

Handmade cards for strangers

Even though I was sending 3 cards in 3 different directions, I wanted them to be similar and sort of go together somehow. I decided on a large heart as the general theme, but used very different mediums. The first one is embroidered on cardstock. The second I call 'Chevron Ombre Heart' made with paintchips. And the third is a paisley doodle in red ink. I'd totally sign up for something like this again in a heartbeat!

Week 1: Notepads complete!

Step 1: Acquire “padding compound.”
Being frugal, I decided to explore other options. I did 2 small test notepadss: 1 with rubber cement and 1 with Mod Podge. The rubber cement felt sticky even after it dried overnight and the Mod Podge made it too easy to tear the pages away. I would have ordered some padding compound online, but I wasn’t sure if it would arrive in time. The internet was all like: “Its so hard to find” and “Normal stores don’t have it.” And I was like: “I’ll call my local art store!” And they were like: “We totally know what that obscure item is” and “We have 1 bottle left.” And I was like: “Thanks super awesome local art store!” Take that internet!

Step 2: Cut pages. 

I precisely cut some linear-themed scrapbooking paper in a 3 1/2” x 5 1/4” rectangle and used a corner punch to round out the bottom edges. 

Step 3: Cut a sturdy back. 
For the back I used chipboard that I had on hand (I think I got it from the Reuse Centre a while back). I used my precision knife to round out the corners because it didn’t fit in my corner punch! 

Step 4: Cut and create a cover. 
I selectively cut out a cover from heavier weighted paper. And if you are psychotic like me, you’ll decide that you want to stamp a word across the front page despite not having any letter stamps and proceed to create your own using funfoam, a stick and some double-sided tape!

Step 5: Line it up. 
I sandwiched my notepad in between 2 scrap pieces and lined it up neatly by tapping the the top edge on the table. I found it worked best to cut the scrap pages the same size as my notepad, it was a lot neater that way. 

Step 6: Clamp it up.
I used binder clips during my test-books, but desired something larger to secure my notepad. I ended up borrowing a wooden pant-hanger from a roomie. This worked pretty well on my first one, but for my 2nd and 3rd, I stepped it up and added some clamps. It was way more secure. It took a couple tries to enter my neat stack of paper into the clamp contraption without messing up my straight edge. And I accidentally clamped the 2nd one too tight, so it sort of left indents in my notebook. 

Step 7: Glue! 
The lady at the super awesome local art store warned me not to use my favorite brush with this product, so I opted for the elementary school variety with plastic bristles! The first coat was thin and the second was thicker. I didn’t need very much and it dried super quickly! 1/2 hour tops and 5-10 mins between coats. I’m happy I purchased the padding compound -the results were much prettier and stronger.

For my second one, I opted for lined paper that I ripped out of an outdated agenda and a brown paper cover with fabric and embroidered monogram. I originally planned to embroider the fabric, but my stash of scraps revealed something much better, so then I embroidered the cover itself. This one is my favorite.

For the 3rd one, I was inspired by my scraps to create a longer skinnier list-making notepad. For the cover, I glued some patterned paper onto some cardstock for a strong cover and added a complementary paper band over the binding.

What I enjoyed the most: 

I liked rummaging around in my paper scraps and coming up with various combinations of colours, styles and shapes. I also really enjoyed embroidering on paper -I had never done that before. It was lots of fun and I was super pleased with the result.

Next time I would...
Be more creative in using recycled pages. I thought my old notepages rescued from an old agenda were a good start. I would also love to play around with different shapes, like circles!