Notebook Wall Hangings

I came up with the idea for the notebook wall hangings when I came across a project in a magazine. I also used to own one when I was much younger and I think it's always handy to have a notebook on hand. They are also very decorative (and perhaps a little too nice to use?) but they would make great presents.

The first one I made was this 'To do List':

The main notebook is made out of A6 card blanks and scored and taped together. I then covered the front with patterned paper and wrapped some coordinating paper around the top to hide the joins in the layers.

The backing was made from a chipboard album page and covered with patterned paper with the edges inked. I cut out a lace effect border for the bottom strip and used some adhesive white letters for the words. To emphasise them I outlined each letter with a brown fine liner pen.

The roses are made from embossing powder, heated up with some mica powders thrown in, and poured into a mould.

The next one I made was this flowery plain one:

I wanted to make it as girly as possible and I added some vellum heat embossed butterflies.

The notebook on the next one was made using a lacy die. It was quite time consuming as I had to cut each page individually, and then poke the holes out from the decorative edge as they didn't all come out when I took it out the die cutter:

I really like the Wellington Bear range that Papermania have recently brought out and this image was so cute. The letters on this one are chipboard letters which I them heat embossed in blue.

I made another Wellington Bear hanging also in blue but this time I decided it was easier to make the notebooks using the card blanks

And finally another girly one:

I have lots more ideas and things to put on the notebooks so there will be more shortly. I (might) also try and make some more using the die cutter because even though they are quite fiddly I think they look very effective!

Claire

Quilted Hot Water Bottle Covers

Spotty things are 'in' at the moment and I found a bundle of spotty fat quarters in various different colours and just had to have it.

I then found some instructions on how to make quilted hot water bottle covers and decided that the spotty material would make great covers. So I set to work......

Here is the first one I made in blue:

They all have a contrasting handmade binding on the back, with the same colour material used inside. Once I got the hang of it, they are very easy to do.

I created a template on a large piece of card for the three pieces. I then pinned these pieces to the spotty material and cut around the edge.

Then I used a white gel marker (which washes off afterwards with a damp cloth) and a ruler to mark out the lines for sewing. I thought the diagonal quilting would add a quirky touch.

Once the lines had been ruled I then laid each piece onto some wadding a cut around with a 3cm excess around all sides. I then laid this onto a piece of co-ordinating coloured material and cut this to the same size as the wadding.

Then I used the sewing machine to sew the quilted lines. I then trimmed each piece down to the size of the spotty material.

The edging was made using a strip of the co-ordinating material, folding each side into the middle and pressing, then folding it around the edge and sewing in place.

Once this was done, all three pieces were assembled with right sides facing and sewn together. They were then turned into the right way and pressed. The white lines were removed using a damp cloth.

So far I have made three, with a fourth, light blue cover almost ready. I still have another 13 different colours to go so there are plenty more in the making.

Heat embossing and Fran-tage

I recently came across the Fran-tage embossing enamels from Stampendous, and being the avid heat embosser that I am, I had to try them out.

These powders are made up of different fragments or various different sizes, which melt into different shapes when heated. There is also glitter in each pot and the enamels come in a range of colours.

The card below was made using a large chipboard flower which is inked with versamark ink and sprinkled on the powder. (sorry the picture hasn't come out too well). The powder used was shabby pink.

You can just about make out the gold flecks in the flower which creates a slightly aged look, and a finish that would not be achieved with normal embossing powders.

Below is another card that I made in the same way.

Because the chipboard was covered with the versamark ink before sprinkling on the powder, you get a thin coverage over the flower and the gold flecks aren't as prominent. For the centre of this flower I used the shabby white powder and didn't use any versamark ink.

After cutting out the circle, I sprinkled the circle with the powder and laid over some shaved ice flakes. Using tweezers to hold it and being careful not to burn myself, I heated the circle from behind. You need to do this from behind otherwise the powder and flakes just fly off. Once the powder starts melting you can then move to the front if you wish. The flakes use the molten powder to adhere to the card. This gave a contrasting, shiny centre to the flower.

After attending a heat embossing workshop, I learnt about the sprinkling technique and had an idea about using the white powder as snow. The below card illustrates my idea!

For this card I first of all stamped and embossed the snowman in ordinary white powder. I then used my mica powders to add a bit of shimmery colour to him.

Then I swiped my versamark ink pad along the bottom of the card and sprinkled a generous layer of the shabby white frantage powder so it stuck to the powder. I added some of the shaved ice flakes on top of the powder and heated from behind. Because of the amount of powder added, this really goes molten when heated and the flakes adhere nicely.

I then took a pinch of the embossing enamel and scattered it randomly over the top of the picture to create falling snow.

I love the shaved ice flakes with the powders and decided to make a sparkly girly card for a friends birthday:

For this card, I first of all I used my spun sugar distress stain to colour the card and then sponged some tattered rose distress ink around the edges. Then I randomly added pools of the shabby pink embossing powder with shaved ice flakes in each pool to give a nice sparkly background.

The large butterfly was made with fusible fibre and the petals were embossed onto vellum. The two blue butterflies were embossed onto acetate and adhered with clear glue dots.

I am planning on getting more of the frantage powders. I had a play with the aged black powder in the workshop, combining it with some gold mica flakes and this looked very effective. So watch this space for more projects using frantage!