Beautifying School Supplies

I am on the design team for Artistcellar for the next six weeks.  I made a back-to-school project for my first post.  I’m always looking for ways to individualize school supplies and make them more interesting.  I’m going to show you how to make a pretty cover for a composition notebook.  These directions would work for any type of hardbound journal though.

Start by laying down your notebook on a large piece of paper and making a tracing of the cover.  Trace one cover and then the middle and then the other cover.  That way you have the complete size of the cover.  Add about three inches to each end to make flaps.  This can be adjusted for personal preference.  Add ½” all the way around for a seam allowance.  Cut out your completed pattern.

Use this pattern to cut out two pieces of fabric.  I used cotton fabric that I snow dyed for the outside and a store bought piece of cotton for the inside.   Both pieces of fabric are the same size.

Take the piece of fabric that you want to be on the outside and a stencil and add a pattern.  I used black fabric paint and the rivermap texture stencil  and the cherry blossom stencil to add a random pattern and a few other stencils.  You can cover the whole piece of fabric, or you can just add bits of stenciling her and there.  Let the paint dry and then heat set it according to the manufactures directions.

Put both pieces of fabric together with the right sides on the inside.  Sew around the piece at the ½” mark.  Leave a gap of a few inches on one of the short sides open so that you can turn it right side out.  I trimmed the corners at a diagonal and the seams so that they were narrower.

Here the pieces are sewn and trimmed before turning it right side out.

Press all the seams and then turn it right side out.  Make sure that the corners are pushed out all the way so that they look neat.  Slip stitch the opening closed.  Press the whole piece again so that the edges are all nice and neat.

Close-up of slip stitching the opening closed.

Turn the flap area to the inside, the same measurement on both edges, and press with the iron.  Double check that the fit will be snug against your notebook before you press it.  When you have everything lined up correctly and have the edges even stitch across the top and bottom of each flap.

Slip each cover of your notebook into the flaps and your notebook now has a pretty cover.

You can use the inside flaps for storing extra papers.

The rest of the covers are shown here on the website on the journal page.
Now you know how to jazz up your plain notebooks and journals.  I hope that you go out and make a cover for your notebooks and journals.  Have a creative week and make some pretty school supplies.
Janelle

Life Changes

I have had all my family members home for the summer.  My husband is a high school teacher who also works part time at a local college.  He has been home this summer except for when he is teaching his college class.  My oldest kid is home this summer too.  While working and volunteering took up most of her time, she was still living at home and I got to see her a lot.  All of my other kids were also living at home.  My second kid spent a lot of time working too, but I got to see her all the time.

Now though life is changing.  My second oldest went off for her first year of college.  Moving her in and saying good bye was hard.  I will miss her even though she is only an hour away from home.  My husband went back to his day job now too, so I don't get to spend as much time with him either.  I enjoy the time that we have during the summer because I don't get to see him a lot during the school year.  He is always busy with two jobs and a lot of grading and prepping for classes too.  My oldest goes back to her college at the end of the week.  I won't get to see her until Thanksgiving.  Her college is too far away for her to come home easily for the weekend.  I know that she will be busy with classes and studying and friends anyway.  I also have two school age children that go back to school next week.  I won't have them around during the day either and the after school activities also start up soon also, so they will be busy in the evenings.

I will be at home with my little one during the day.  It is always a bit of an adjustment from having everyone around all the time, to it just being the two of us.  I adjust a bit faster than my little one though.  He goes from having a lot of people to play with to being just with mommy.   I am hoping that having less people around during the day will translate to less chaos and being able to get more accomplished.  I have to balance my working time and my mom time however.  I know that too soon he will also go away to school and I will miss our time together.  I don't want to waste these years by not doing enough with him.

I do want to focus the my time part of my day to creating.  I create all the time anyway because I just don't feel complete if I don't, but now I will have a few less distractions.  I do have some big plans and things that I want to prepare for too.  I'm looking forward to cooler weather and a time of focused work, so that I can get some of my projects done and ready to share with the world.  So with that I will leave you to a creative and productive week.
Janelle      

Journal Pages

I haven't gotten a lot of art done this week. I have been sick with a bad summer cold and I have been focused on getting my girls ready to go off to college. Starting in the beginning of September I should be able to get back on track with my art.  School starts then for two of my boys and my girls will be off at their colleges.  I will be at home with my youngest again and will have a bit more quiet.  Having three boys at home all summer really adds to the chaos of my life.  It is somewhat easier to keep one occupied than to have to deal with all of them all day. I did have time to get a couple of pages done though this week.  I will share them and hopefully soon I'll have more to share.  

This page was inspired by Donna Downey's last Inspiration Wednesday. Check out her Youtube channel for some great journal pages.

This is my latest Lifebook page. It was a lesson by the talented Tamara Laporte.

I hope that everyone has a great weekend and can spend a bit of time being creative in your own way.
Janelle

Weekend Trip

I went on a long weekend trip this last weekend with my family.  I made three journal pages from my visit that I'll share with you.  It was a quick vacation, but a fun trip anyway.  

Ode to the Lake

I have still been working on a lot of other projects that aren't ready to share yet.  I'm also pretty busy getting ready to take my daughter's to college and my son's to school.  I'm spending a lot of time with my family enjoying the last few weeks of their summer vacation.  Next month I should be able to blog a bit more and have more projects finished and ready to share.  Have a good weekend.
Janelle

Ramblings and Art

I found time this week to make some more journal pages for me and for Lifebook.  I'm glad that I am catching up on lessons that I didn't get completed earlier in the year.  I love Lifebook because there is always something new to learn and so many amazing teachers to learn from.  I have also been working on many other projects that are in various stages of completion.  I will be able to share those later after they are done.
I have been spending time this month helping my daughter get ready to go to college this fall for the first time.  She is going into vocal music, so I'm not the only artist in the family.  I have also been soaking up all the minutes that I get to spend with my oldest daughter before she goes back to college.  I'm sure that I will have some journal pages later this fall that address my missing my girls.  I will only have boys at home this fall.  It has been many years that my husband and I have had at least one of our girls at home, but I guess that you have to let them leave the nest at some point.  Now onto the art.  

Have a great week,
Janelle

New Journal Pages

I have been working on a lot of projects this week that I will show off when they are more complete, but I do have some fun stuff in the works.  This fall is going to be a busy time for me as I get ready to do some craft shows later on.  I do however have some new journal pages to show off.   I hope that you enjoy seeing them.

Have a great weekend and I'll have more art to show later.
Janelle

Journal Page with Plaster

I was inspired by Donna Downey when I made this spread.  I first collaged the page with some black and white images and bits from a phone book page.  After the collage was dry I spread patching plaster roughly over the page making sure that some of the collage still showed through.  When that was completely dry I sealed it in with gel medium and let that dry.  Next I made a glaze from glazing medium and a blue paint and covered the surface leaving in on for about a minute.  I used baby wipes to wipe it off so that it was just stuck in all the cracks and crevices.  I let that layer dry and then I painted on my roads and glued on the tag that I had written some of the Robert Frost poem and let it dry.  I filled in around the road and tag using a couple of different colors of green chalk pastels.  I rubbed them in and blended with my fingers.  After everything was dry and looked the way that I wanted it to look I fixed the pastels with a fixative and let it dry.  I added my own words at the end.  I hope that you enjoy this journal page and the poem.    

Have a great week,
Janelle

Summer of Color Week Six

This was the last week of summer of color.  The colors for this week are sage green and sepia.  I had a lot of fabric dyed in these colors already so I didn't have to make any new fabrics.  I made three cuffs since I had so much fabric. I recently bought a bag of vintage costume jewelry as well, so I picked a bit to go on each cuff.  These colors seem to fit the vintage style really well.  I want to say thank you to Kristin for organizing such a fun event.  I have enjoyed playing along each summer.  

I also had time to make a journal page in the last week.

I made a steampunk cuff in a more masculine style as well this week.  

I hope you enjoy seeing what art I have been creating this past week.  I hope that everyone has a marvelous weekend.
Janelle

Summer of Color Week Five

This week for Summer of Color the colors were Candy Apple Red and Yellow.  These are not colors that I usually work with except as accents.  But I'm willing to try any combination at least once.  I started by dyeing some fabrics red since I didn't have any fabric in that color.  I already had a couple of yellow fabrics from a previous year.   Here are the fabrics that I worked with to make the cuffs.  I have a cotton in both colors and also red silk and cheesecloth.  

I also had the chance to paint in my journal this weekend, so I'll share that page too.  This page has gesso sprayed through a stencil in the background and then I painted with Twinkling H2O's over the top and added some text.

I hope that you have a wonderful and creative week and I will post again next week.
Janelle

Summer of Color Week Four

This week for summer of color the challenge was to work with pale pink and charcoal gray.  I really love how these colors work together. I wanted to make these cuffs have a touch of elegance within the shabbiness of the fraying fabrics and the cheesecloth. I do love how the frayed edges look, so I use them in most of my textile work.  I hope that you enjoying seeing the cuffs that I made this week and stay tuned for next week's project.  

These are the fabrics that I dyed for this week.  The darker pink silk on the top was in the same dye bath as the charcoal gray cotton, but turned out very different.  I love dyeing cotton and silk at the same time because you tend to get different looks because the fibers take up the dye differently.  

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I also have a couple of pages in my journal to share again.  The first one is from a Lifebook lesson.  In the second one I was playing around with doodling on a stenciled image and making a gratitude page.  

Have a great weekend.
Janelle