How To: Altered Book Inspiration Journal

I woke up this morning super tired and not feeling quite up to my schedule of cleaning, laundry, diaper changing, cooking, and designing in the free moments between it all. My boy was up last night what felt like about 40 times an hour, but I won't complain.

So, this morning when I woke up from a practically sleepless night, I just wanted a little change, some sort of project I could do in a very short amount of time. At the same time, I've been admiring some photos in a magazine of antique Halloween items. I wanted to save them but didn't really have a feasible, neat way to do it... Until now.

If you want some sort of journal where you can just paste in bits of inspiration, photos, or notes, this would be perfect. First, you need a book. One that you won't want to read later on.

Mine is a 1941 Brazilian book, entirely in Portuguese, and seemingly having to do with the socio-economic future of Brazil... I think. I got it a few years ago at my college library's semesterly book sale for like 10 cents or so. I liked the spine of it, and figured I'd do something with it someday.
It isn't in super great shape. But for my purposes, it'll work.
After you've gathered your book, you'll need to cut out three shapes, each slightly larger than the next. I freehanded these--But feel free to use circles or squares or hearts or whatever you want.


Then I glue 'em all together. The smaller shapes go on top. I used Mod Podge for this project, but I don't know why Elmer's wouldn't work, too.

Then I put another layer of glue on the bottom shape and slap it on the book:


You might have to rub it down a couple times until the glue sticks.

Next, grab your trusty Micron pen. I love these pens. They're awesome. They're also about $3-$4 apiece so if you feel like you don't want to spring for the Micron, you can also go with your computer and printer, or a Sharpie. Either way, it'll look great.
Then write whatever you feel like on the cover. This cover may become more and more decorated as time goes on. It just depends.

It was a little bit of an off day for my handwriting. Oh well. I'll probably eventually doodle on the cover of the book until it becomes unreadable.

Next, pasting things INSIDE...
Grab your magazine clippings, and cut them up.
Then grab your Zig 2-way glue pen. I know I'm using a lot of brand names in this post, and even if you don't want to do the Micron thing, I'd really recommend a Zig for the inside pages of your inspiration journal. It's not messy, it won't bleed out, it dries fast, it stays sticky, and it doesn't warp the paper. You can get them at any craft store in the scrapbooking section.
And glue to your heart's content!
I'm pretty sure I'll have this filled in no time, especially since I always end up ripping pages out of magazines every time I go to the doctor's office.

I'm terrible. I know. It's terrible. I guess that's the price that my doctor pays every time he makes me wait in his waiting room longer than 30 minutes. I start to get antsy. My eyes get shifty. I pick my nails. I look at the split ends in my hair. It inevitably spirals out of control until finally I'm surreptitiously tearing pages out of the waiting room magazines and stuffing them into my purse until I hear my name called.

And no, the pages of this particular magazine were not stolen from the doctor. They came from a magazine that I actually own. Just thought I'd clear that up.

Please don't be a thief like me. Do make the inspiration journal, though. It's awesome, neat, and it'll keep your baby from eating stray magazine cutouts that fall out of your purse and into your kid's waiting hands.

New Alphabet Poster

Another fun Alphabet poster that I did today. Have I ever mentioned that I'm a huge fan of retro color combos? My favorite "retro" colors are light blue, orange, mustard,and olive green. The 50's and 60's are where it's at, design-wise. The basic shapes, clean lines, and the colors, I just LOVE. And those two decades are probably where I like to go most for inspiration. Good stuff.

Baby Silhouettes

HI! It's been a while since I posted. Turns out, taking care of a 10-month old, turning berries into jam, cleaning house, and setting up an Etsy shop is *kinda* time consuming. I have to say, I have not had tons of time to just sit and dream and sketch and do personal work lately.

Finally, though, I sat down tonight and fleshed out an idea that's been floating around in my brain for a while.

Remember those silhouettes that your kindergarten teacher did of you? Where you sit in front of a light and the teacher traces the outline of your head and shoulders in profile? And then you took the paper and cut it out and glued it onto another paper? No? Oh. Darn. Well, I remember my kindergarten teacher did that for my class, way back when. I thought it was the coolest. I still think it is pretty awesome. But, I thought, what if you could create something really pretty, something that kind of harks back to those silhouettes of the 1800's, but is still modern, so that you could have something gorgeous to preserve the memory of your kid while he's still little and slobbers and smiles every time he sees you and can't sass? (I like run-on sentences.)

Well, here it is, my glorified Kindergarten project:



I love, love, LOVE this. It's my son's head, but I'm still fleshing out the boy pattern and I had the flowery girl one all ready to go, so poor JC got renamed and had flowers put on his head.

Oh well.

Look for it soon in my Etsy shop! This might be my favorite project of mine so far. What do you think of it?

Right now...

A big thank you to everyone who voted for my designs! Your input was very helpful!

So, I chose 3 designs to put into my Etsy shop to start. I am nothing if not cautious...I am not one to dive whole hog into something new. I plan to add some custom listings as well, but as far as tangible prints, it's these three! I thought for those of you who voted, all 5 of you, you might want to know what I ended up with!
I'm really happy with the quality of the prints, which I ordered from iprintfromhome.com.




The photos really just don't do them justice. The colors are nice and rich and pretty. Perfect!

My Big Announcement!

If you've read this blog at all, it's probably pretty obvious that I haven't been doing all these posters and illustrations just for kicks. Well, I've been doing them partly for kicks. Maybe mostly for kicks. But there's a larger goal, too, than just exercising my design muscles. Something I've wanted to do since I sold my first prints in my college's end of semester art sale. And now that I'm so close, I can let the cat out of the bag!

I'm opening my first ever Etsy shop!

I'm opening my first shop, and I need your help deciding what to put in it. I've decided not to go whole hog all at first. I'm going to start off with about four prints, but now I have so many to choose from, I'm a little bewildered. I don't want to randomly throw things to the wall to see what sticks, so I'm asking your opinion.

I'll number all the prints,just tell me in the comments what numbers are your favorite, up to four of them. If you like something but wish it were a different color, list the image's number and then say what color you'd rather see.

I totally welcome all your other input as well! I'm so excited for this new venture! Thanks for your comments!

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Jellystone

Last week JC and I took a little vacation up to Yellowstone Park, one of my favorite areas.

One of the spots we visited was the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. It was a fantastic museum and I'm really sorry that I didn't take more pictures! I really enjoyed the museum's display of antique posters from Buffalo Bill's show. I also enjoyed the fine art section of the museum but I was so busy keeping JC entertained in that section that I didn't take any pictures.

At any rate, the BBHC is totally worth a visit. The curators have done a great job there collecting a huge variety of pieces. There's a lot more artistic value than you would think from a museum about the wild west--I know I was very pleasantly surprised.
Can I just say, I love, love, love old typography. Who would have expected that awesome headline lettering 130 years ago?
JC even found something to do. I think he had fun practicing his cowboy skills. Not that he'll ever use them. I'm going to heed Willie Nelson's advice on this one. I don't think that I could mentally survive having a bronc-bustin' son. Let him be a doctor and a lawyer and such.
We spotted this elk by the outhouses at Tower Falls...
And here's my brother, my son, and my dad standing by a geyser that smelled like rotten eggs. Being the mature woman that I am, I teased everyone in my family about letting such stinky fluffies.
All sophomoric joking aside, Yellowstone was great. The photos don't do it justice.
It was a hot trip. I got burned. Made sure to put sunscreen on my tyke, though. My JC baby is such a mama's boy. After about the second day, he staged a massive stroller rebellion and ended up being carried around most of the time.

I was OK with that.

Obviously being in Yellowstone last week I didn't get any new posters or anything... Plus I've had a couple design jobs come my way and between that, mothering, and putting up raspberry jam, I haven't had much time for other stuff. I will soon, though! Just keep checking back.

Happily Ever After

Being a hopeless romantic, I love the idea of happy endings, no matter how often they do or don't occur in real life. When I created this poster, I was thinking of all those old Disney films where they start the movie by narrating out of a huge, fancy, bedazzled book. I wanted this poster to have an illuminated feel. Of course I made a few different colored versions (Although I think the blue and the orange are my favorites):