Jingle Bells! Christmas packs are here!

 I kinda went crazy. I'm not going to lie! I put together Christmas packs and went crazy doing it and now they are almost 1lb each and over 80 individual pieces (that includes book page folios!)

This is the only picture that I could get ALL of it in and its stuffed in there, trust me. The greeting cards, papers, ephemera, napkins, and everything else included are perfect for your December Daily journal or your Christmas junk journal. They are tons of amazing goodies to make your own cards with, also.

There are also pages from adorable kids books and Christmas crafting/cookbooks with awesome images and fun content to use however you wish. 

I spend all year looking for fun Christmas ephemera and bits and bobs on all of my trips, so I've curated quite the collection of Christmas paper goods. And I'm having so much fun making them into packs to share with you!

I included a stack of my hand painted painty papers to use in your art projects, also! Trust me, this pack is not something you want to miss out on!

These will definitely be an awesome addition to your Christmas scrapbook layouts or your gluebooks, journals, cards, etc. I know I will be making my annual Christmas journal this year and you better believe I'll be using these same goodies in it!

Afraid some stuff might not be your style? That's the great thing about these packs! They include a small "taste" of many different styles and themes, so you'll find lots of things you can use and some things that might take you outside the box and give you a little nudge into new styles and territory. 

Get yourself one and give it a try! Let me know what you think! They are available for sale here

Much Love,

M

Happy Falloween Season!

 

Falloween is upon us!

I love the when the "journal seasons" start. You know...Fall and Christmas - it gives me an excuse to spend all my time thinking about ONE theme because my time is limited and I want to art with all the seasonal things! My Falloween and Christmas journals are some of the most fun things I play with!

What is a Falloween journal?

Well, I have an entire youtube playlist dedicated to the pages I create in my Falloween journal. I think I'm on my third or fourth one since I started making one in 2018. 

Check out that playlist HERE (not gunna lie, I even rewatch my old videos at the beginning of the season to help with ideas! There's lots of great inspo in that playlist! {{Not to toot my own horn or anything}})

This is an example of the themed page I like to shoot for every year. So far, I've done pumpkins, spiders, and skulls! This one is the skull page (obv!) that I did last year!

On this page - napkin, Dollar Tree embellishments, stamped skull from happy mail, packaging, magazine images.

Fall painty papers are one of my favorite things to play with, too. I take a few days and I make a bunch of colored, patterned, and textured papers in fall colors and I stamp, stencil, doodle, etc. all over them. You will find videos of my painty papers in my Falloween playlist above.

One of my favorite painty papers that I created was my blood drip papers (on the right side). I'll be making more of those this year and my Falloween kits will include some blood drippings!

Falloween Kits

I have created Falloween kits that you will find HERE that include goodies like you see all over my pages and in all of my videos. There is a HUGE variety of papers and embellishments in both kits (one kit is large and one is small).

They have everything you need for your own Falloween art including art journals, card making, scrapbooking, junk journaling, etc. They are perfectly autumn with a touch of creepy! Head over and check them out!

Happy *almost* Fall!

~Malia

#AlteredCookbookProject Good Housekeeping Cookbook Altered Book- The Start

 I came up with an idea for my Good Housekeeping cookbook that I was dying to turn into something magical. Alter it! But I didn't want to alter it alone, and since this is a pretty common cookbook and I know lots of us have one, I figured we could do a collaboration of altered Good Housekeeping cookbooks!

This is the book I'm talking about. Now, I know that BH&G has a similar one and so does Betty Crocker and you can definitely use those or whatever other cookbook you have and want to play along with! That's why I made the hashtag kinda vague - in case you didn't have this exact book but wanted to join the rest of us altered cookbook peeps!

The Ripping

This is a folio that I took from the middle of one of the signatures of the book. The book has a bunch of signatures (no, I didn't count how many exactly) and you want to remove some of these folios from the center of each signature in order to free up space in the book so we can fluff it up with fun art stuff.

When you are done yanking folios, you'll want the signatures along the spine to look like this. I ended up pulling out 4 folios from each signature. I started with 3 but realized that it didn't give a whole lot of space for fluff but once I pulled out that 4th one, it gave me a decent amount of space.

Now, a lot of books are pretty easy in identifying the middle of the signature. Sometimes, these older better built books can be a bit of a trick and this book was one of those books.

The center of the signature once I pulled some pages.
Below you can see the image pages - they aren't sewn in, they are glued so I yanked them out.

Sometimes, a little bit of paper will be stuck in the book after you tear out the folios - and that's ok. This is for fun, not for perfection!

The Gluing

I started by gluing 2 pages together (using a gluestick - use whatever you want. I go into detail about glue in my process video below). And I'm sure 2 pages probably would have been ok, but I wanted a really thick, hard page so I ended up gluing a third page to it...so every 3 pages are glued together to create one page.

Yes, you will go through a lot of glue so be ready! And it may seem daunting to do all that gluing but you'll get into a flow and it becomes almost therapeutic...trust me, you'll find it relaxing after a few pages.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I created a YouTube video on this beginning process:

CookBook Vid

If you're interested in playing along, let me know! Also, let me know some ideas you might have for pages we can make! I was thinking of using my prompt cards and pulling 5-6 and creating a page using them so each of us can interpret it in our own way...? Input definitely welcome!

And there's no limit on what you can use - I want it to be friendly to every artist so you don't feel like you have to buy stuff...use your markers, paints, watercolors, scrapbook papers, magazine images, etc!

Can't wait to start!

~M

Little Golden Book Junk Journal Kits! and a little update

 Over the last few weeks, I've been kind of quiet and I apologize for that. I'm dealing with some health issues (nothing that will kill me so don't worry) and I'm facing a few surgeries this month so I'm hoping to get some things done this week before I go in! Don't be afraid to keep ordering, though...I'll still be shipping orders - I just might be quiet for a bit.

So, the first thing I want to talk about are my Little Golden Book journal kits I've been listing!

This kit is an Alice in Wonderland kit (not the original Alice story) and I tried to coordinate some images/papers and embellishments to go with the story. 

So, let's talk about what you get...

Over 30 unique papers and ephemera pieces

2 rings to make a ring bound journal

A bag filled with embellishments and little ephemera bits

​You don't have to use the pack as it is - add your own bits, completely overhaul the papers, add this stuff to your stash and start from scratch - the possibilities are endless!

The books/kits I have and will be listing are:

​Chip N Dale

Old Mother Hubbard

Ten Little Animals

Sesame Street The Together Book

Alice in Wonderland Meets the White Rabbit

Little Red Riding Hood

Dogs

The Three Bears

Home for a Bunny

Cinderellas Friends (Not original Cinderella story)

Riddles, Riddles A to Z

Whales

​Picture Dictionary

The majority of these books are from the 70s-80s. A few are from the 50s-60s. If you want to see the pics of one of these kits that I haven't listed yet, shoot me a message!

Embellishment bags with goodies to make into ephemera or to decorate! Your book rings are also included in this little bag.

Making Ephemera - Clusters!

 Clusters are some of the most relaxing little journal bits to make. The repetitive motions of laying out your strips and attaching them all in the right place just feeds my soul.

I like to make clusters out of scraps - scrap fabric, laces, papers, etc. Then, I tend to find a focal image (smaller things since my clusters are usually pretty small - meant to embellish rather than be an ephemera piece on their own) and attach that piece to the top of my little meticulously placed scrap pile.

*End cuts of paper (think journal pages being cut down to size)
These are just a few scraps from a very large collection of scraps. The good part about clusters is that you can use these smaller bits and strips that are otherwise too small to turn into anything else besides collage.

                                    I usually have shorter pieces of lace - 2ft and less - that work great in these because you don't need a set amount. A small triangle of lace? Perfect. Long strips flapping in the breeze? Looks great. No one has ever looked at a cluster and said, "this cluster looks awful," Every cluster I've ever seen is beautiful in its own way and you definitely know where it belongs and how it should appear in your work. That's what makes you an artist.

Larger pieces of scraps and book pages work great as bases.  A few other great base ideas:
*Playing cards
*Corrugated cardboard pieces
*Game cards of all kinds
*Index cards
*Guest checks
*Post cards/greeting cards
*Packaging


I always keep a bag of eyelash trim handy. All colors, all styles...I keep a bag nearby. This stuff really works wonders on all kinds of projects and clusters are no different.

* Ribbon, Lace, Trim (eyelash trim is awesome!)

*Fabric bits

*Scrapbook papers

*Dyed, stamped, stenciled papers

*Painty papers

*Wallpaper/wrapping paper (these add some fun texture/color to your projects!)

Here are some of my completed clusters. I got really into the small yearbook images as my focal points. I sell a packs of yearbook portraits (small ones to large ones) in my Etsy store (here)  Follow that listing on Etsy so you will be notified when I add other fussy cuts. 

All kinds of fussy cuts work great as focal points in your clusters.

Never underestimate book page images, either. They are some of my favorite pieces of ephemera to use. I love repurposing books and being able to use as much of it as possible.

My little flags you see...I made those using scraps and cutting a triangle out of the bottom after folding it in half. You will see that in-depth on my Youtube video of my cluster process.

Doilies are awesome to use, also. You can tear them into pieces or use them whole as the focal point. They add a lot of texture and interest to a cluster regardless of how you use them.

Here are a few more finished clusters. A lot of my focal points are pieces I received in happy mail from others. Some of them are printables.  

Buttons work great on clusters, just keep in mind they are dimensional and can be difficult to write over if they are in a journal. I tend to use buttons on my greeting cards and covers.

You can cover your staple on the cluster and I have done that numerous times, however, its not necessary. Its all a matter of personal preference. If you choose to cover it, you can use things like buttons, sequins, flat-back gems and such, etc. Just make sure it doesn't take away from your focal image. 

ORRRR...use your staple cover as your focal point. I have done that numerous times.

Are you interested in a craft-with-me? Check out my YouTube video of cluster making that I made!
Cluster Vid

Have fun creating and remember...scraps are beautiful, too!

~M

National Geographics pre - 1960s

I have no issue coming across National Geographic magazines 1960s-current. I dismantle them and sell them in my Etsy store as page packs - you can get a random pack or a themed pack with a few themes of your choice and the page choices are at my discretion (I like to think I'm pretty darn good at picking them out, though). But earlier than the 60s were always difficult for me to find until recently.... I came across a few different lots of them and I spent a good few hours flipping through them last night and let me tell ya.............they are awesome!

None of them are perfect. They are blemished, stained, marked....but they are so much fun to go through. The black & white images are wonderful. I mean, they were state-of-the-art in their day and the image quality is terrific, Not to mention, most of them have illustrations that are rich and gorgeous. Once you get into the 40s, colored photos start to appear more and they remind me of an old black & white that was colorized after the fact. And who knows? Maybe that's how they did it then. I've never really researched the behind-the-scenes work of these magazines.

These photos here are a little better quality from being 1950s, but they are still a lot of fun to look through. The cultural differences of our history and the ads make these books a real treasure.

So what do I have? I have a handful from the 30s, a lot from the 40s, and a handful from the 50s. But they are all wonderful in their own accord. I have them listed in my Etsy (a portion of them anyway. Etsy has variation restrictions so I was only able to list through 1946) but if you are looking for themed (I saw amazing floral illustrations, fish illustrations, etc), feel free to contact me. Again, Etsy only lets me upload so much in the way of photos.

Just a few other examples of pages from some of the 1940s mags! Head over to my Etsy to check them out!

Here

~M

 

Book Page Ephemera

After every live sale, I have a major decision to make - what do I do with the leftover books? Some of them get resold at the next live sale or in my Etsy shop but there are others that I hold on to. Those ones, I generally cut up to make into book page ephemera!

Books have so much more potential than just journal covers or altered books that you tear pages out and glue others together. They have the potential to become journal pages with its text and beautiful end papers (usually pretty thick and great quality, too!) and if you are lucky, you will come across a book with some beautiful images, quotes, poetry, and other content.

This book didn't sell at a few live sales in a row. The yellow end pages and illustrations are beautiful. After cutting most of it up without reading any of the content, I realized I missed out on some beautiful poetry so I did try and save a few pieces as I went along.

Here are some examples of the beautiful images througout the book. Yes, they do have a gloss to them, however, that doesn't bother me much. There are ways you can dull down the shine, however - matte mediums, clear gesso (lots of homemade recipes for gesso online), and even scuffing it up with nail files and sandpaper. Sometimes, if the gloss clashes with my project, I will use one of the white napkin backs and glue it to the image with Elmer's. It dulls down the shine A LOT and it also gives an opaque look to the image.

I feel like the Great Repurposer whenever I gut one of these books and harvest its bounty. Covers can be so beautiful, like this Audubon book that also didn't sell a few months in a row at my sales.

The cover has faded with time but I might paint over it and repaint the birds or I might just use it the way it is! Maybe I will add to the color with some ink...who knows!

So, the next time you visit my live sales on Youtube (first Fri of every month), take a look at the books I have...maybe you will find some that you'd like to cut apart and use piece-meal.

Now, the question I have for you..... What do you suggest I do with the thousands (and counting) of images I harvest from these books? Should I sell book page ephemera packs? Include them with my general fussy cut packs(right now are mostly magazine images)? Should I back some of these with a tea dyed or graph/ledger/lined paper to create journal cards and tags? Any and all opinions are appreciated!

Thanks for reading...I hope I gave you a little inspiration today!

~Malia