Speaking of Butterflies...

I am not a scrapbook person, so I have never invested in a die-cut machine.  However, I recently inherited a Sizzix Big Shot Machine and finally had some time to play with it.  I took my butterfly die and a bunch of my scrap papers and started cutting out butterflies.

I have a stash of blank stationery which was screaming for decoration and embellishment.  For fun, I made a few pop-up butterfly cards.  Next, I took out my other new toy, a battery-operated sewing machine!  It only makes one type of stitch, and it doesn't have a very fine touch, but it does the trick.  Look how I sewed paper butterflies onto my blank cards!

The card in the middle photo will be a graduation card.  I cut out a bunch of words from assorted magazines and glued them to the paper butterfly.  Then I sewed the butterfly onto a blank card and embellished the head with a single Swarovski crystal.  I really liked how this turned out.

I can't take much credit for the card in the bottom photo.  It was created from a shell ornament I found at a rummage sale for 25 cents! 

Wings

Whenever I pick up my next (and in this case, my last) book in this AB RR, I find myself always wanting to experiment with a new technique.  However, it takes time to find a technique that 1) inspires me and 2) that I have all the materials for.  In the case of Rebecca's "Wings" book, I turned to my friend Su for inspiration.  She and I got together for an art play date last weekend and she brought out a roll of contact paper and asked me for some glitter.  Before long, she had created a fun spread in a little hand-made book that she was collaborating on with a group of friends.  I liked the "see-through" effect that the clear contact paper had if you placed it in a cut-out shape.  I thought they would make pretty butterfly wings.

So that got me thinking of making a butterfly...but I can't tell you how many butterflies already made their way into Rebecca's book!  So then I wanted to do a completely different take on the "wings" theme--like doing a spread all about airplanes or something.  I thought about angel wings and even envisioned the gossamer wings of a dragonfly.  I really tried to get away from the butterfly idea, but when I went to look for outlines of different kinds of wings, it was this (butterfly) style that caught my eye.  Oh well.

I created a template for the wing by tracing around the edges.  I used this template to cut out a wing-shaped window in the pages of Rebecca's book.  Since the wings are mirror-images of each other, I reversed the template to create the other side.  Next came the fun part.  I printed the wing pattern onto a transparency and cut it down to the size of the book page.  Then, I cut out a piece of the contact paper (also the size of the book page) and started to decorate it with different types of glitter.  I found that placing the transparency of the wing underneath the contact paper gave me a guide where to place the glitter to fill in the wing shape.

When I was done with the glitter, I placed another sheet of contact paper on top and burnished it to fix the glitter into place.  I positioned the decorated contact paper between the pages with the wing cut-outs.  I lightly colored the background with pink and purple inkpads (since those are Rebecca's favorite colors) and added the pink ribbon trim to the edges of the pages to frame the butterfly figure.  I love how this contact paper-glitter technique gives the wings a truly delicate feel.

Tick Tock...Tick Tock

Ooh, what fun I had making my "Time" chunky pages!  I have to admit, it took me FOREVER to figure out what I was going to do.  Then I got this idea--I wasn't quite sure it was going to work.  When I assembled my prototype, I was so happy with how it turned out!

I had seen these plastic bubble-like containers that are made primarily for party favors.  For example, you can fill the bubble with M&Ms for candy favors.  I decided I wanted to fill the bubble with watch parts.  I had some watch parts laying around but not enough to make seven pages.  So, I called my girlfriend in LA and asked her to go to Jo-Ann's and pick up some Tim Holtz embellishments for me.  It was definitely my lucky day--40% off sale!!  She got me more clock faces, sprocket gears and "spinners" which look just like watch hands! 

I began by placing various watch parts into the bubble for each page.  Next, I pulled out all of my jewelry catalogs and started to cut out pictures of watch faces to use for my backgrounds.  I cut the watch faces down to the size of my chunky pages and adhered the watch images to the backs of the plastic bubbles. 

The top photo shows the front of all seven of my pages.  The middle photo is what the backs look like.  The third photo is a close-up of one of my pages.  Don't you just love how they turned out?

Magic and the Supernatural

My Dark Side AB RR is winding down this month.  To finish the round, I worked in Becky's book.  Her theme was Magic/Supernatural.  I didn't have a specific idea in mind, so I took two figures that are often associated with the occult (the black crow and a spider) and created a spread incorporating these two images.  When I started to research the symbolism behind the spider and the crow, this is what I found:

The Spider is an ancient symbol of mystery, power and growth.

Her energy is feminine, one of the creative forces weaving life’s designs. Spiders maintain balance between physical and spiritual, past and present and feminine and masculine. Her expressions of magic are that of creation, creative power and the spiral energy linking the past and the future.  (I love that!)

Crows are messengers, telling us about the creation and magic all around us.  They live in the void and have no sense of time, therefore they are able to see past, present and future simultaneously. They unite both the light and the dark, both the inner and the outer. The striking black color of the crow represents the color of creation.

The more I learned about the spider and the crow, the more I realized my spread fit right in with Becky's Magic/Supernatural theme.

Lines, Lines, Lines

My inspiration for Pam's "Lines and Angles" book came from my 12 year old niece, Lailan.  Our family traveled to Ireland in 2009 (when she was 9) and she wrote a poem about the things she remembered and loved about Ireland:

I Remember

by Lailan Uy

I remember the lush green gardens

The cold stone floors of the castles

The white sand of beaches

I remember the smell of smoke coming from the chimneys

The beauty of the flowers

The delicious and exotic foods

I remember my peaceful place

I remember Ireland

To showcase the "lines" of Lailan's poem, I pulled out different shades of green colored tissue paper.  I tore the green tissue into long, thin strips which I glued down with watered down Elmer's glue.  As I arranged the tissue from dark (bottom) to light (top), I realized that I was creating a background that resembled the Irish landscape. 

There, it is green as far as the eye can see!  In fact, I have heard that there are over a hundred words for "green" in Ireland...

Next, I printed out Lailan's poem onto cardstock that I colored with a green stamp pad.  I cut out each word and arranged the lines of poetry across the green tissue landscape.  I decorated the spread with fun, felt embellishments. I have to admit that this spread doesn't have the look or feel of my other work, but the look I created truly reminds me of my niece.  She will absolutely LOVE it--and be tickled that I used her poem in this spread!

Creating a personal "Bible"

My friend, Pam (from Michigan) showed me how to construct my very own personal "bible."  People wonder why it's called a bible.  My friend, Teri (from New York) found this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson which describes it quite well: 

Make your own Bible.

Select and collect all the words and sentences
that in all your readings have been to you
like the blast of a trumpet.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's basically a handmade book or journal, but instead of using blank pages, you use all your favorite papers.  We all collect and save those pretty papers telling ourselves that we will use this page for that project one day.  Problem is, that day never seems to come!  One day you realize you have a stockpile of papers that you absolutely love, but not sure you'll ever use.  That's why this personal bible is just for you!  It's the perfect way to showcase and enjoy all those papers you've been hoarding.

I made two bibles.  One measures 6" x 9" and the other is 6" x 6".  They are each made up of five signatures with roughly 15 pages per signature.  For the larger bible, two of the signatures measure 6"x 9" (each sheet is 6" x 18" folded).  The three other signatures measure 6" x 6" (6" x 12" folded).  For the smaller bible, two of the signatures measure 6" x 6"  and the other three signatures measure 6" x 3".  In the second photo, you can see how the signatures are  alternated on the accordian spine.  The last photo shows off just a few of the pretty pages in my bibles.

In the top photo you can see how I added beads to decorate the spine of the larger bible.  Now I can begin to fill the pages of my bibles with precious photos, favorite quotes, love notes, a special recipe, collected ephemera--all bits and pieces of me!

Did you see the Super Moon?

Last night, we headed to the windward side of the island to see if we could catch a glimpse of the super moon.  Once we got to Kailua town, we realized, we weren't the only ones with this great idea.  The streets, the beach parks, even the residential areas were teeming with cars and people!

We managed to find a parking spot near a beach right-of-way.  We headed down the path only to find that this particular right-of-way led to a fishing spot, no beach.  While there was no sand, there were also no crowds of people--just one lone fisherman who was trying to figure out why there were so many people on the beach at 7pm.

We told him about the super moon and asked if he had seen it yet.  The moon had not yet appeared.  Just as we turned to head back to the car, I began to see a small sliver of light peeking out behind one of the Mokulua islands.  In no time, the moon came up, big and bright.  I took this shot with my phone.  It doesn't really capture the size of the supermoon, but it trust me, it was beautiful!