• Blog - Creativity

    T Tuesday: tea and coffee edition

    November 12, 2018 - By 

    Hello and welcome to another edition of T Stands for Tuesday.

    Over the past week or so I’ve been pulling together papers from my stash to begin the process of creating my December Daily journal.

    I also dug out a set of book covers I’d been saving for just the right project. I wish that I hadn’t discarded the spine…although it may have been in bad shape. Oh well…I’ll find a way to make it work for me.

    Originally I was thinking that I’d use crisp bright colors for my journal, however I discovered that the vast majority of my papers were one sided prints. This is fine in some ways but left A LOT of blank white pages. Yes, I know…journal…but I like having color and pattern to break things up a bit. Besides…plain white pages are intimidating.

    I decided while cleaning the coffee pot (because I can’t seem to do just one thing at a time lately) that it would be a good time to do a bit of tea dyeing of some paper. I really wanted to tone down that white and give a more cohesive look to the journal.

    After soaking the papers in the tea solution I baked them in the oven. Yep…Mr. G came in from the garage…asked me what I was doing. “I’m baking paper.” He shook his head and told me that he was going to pretend he didn’t hear me. I chuckled to myself thinking about the fact that I’d be ironing them too.

    I wasn’t happy with the level of aging from just the tea staining. I added some instant coffee to the mix which definitely did the trick. My papers where a lovely shade of brown…perfectly aged.

    Would you like to know the most important thing I learned through this process? Caffeine absorbs through the skin. I spent about an hour with my hands in and out of the tea/coffee water. I didn’t think a thing about it until I realized about 100 pages into the book I was reading in bed that I wasn’t a bit tired.

    Not….one….tiny….bit.

    Typically I can get through about 10 pages before my eyes start to slam shut and I read the same paragraph over and over. Nope not Saturday night. I read the entire book. Seriously…the whole dang book. Finally I got up and took some Benadryl to make me sleepy…even though I knew I’d have the dreaded brain fog the next morning.

    So let this be a public service announcement to all of you…wear water proof gloves of some sort!!

    Sticking with my caffeine induced post…Mr. G bought me some coffee beer. 

    It was pretty good. Just one though. Definitely not one I could drink more than one in an evening…or even in a week. That 4 pack will last a while.

    T stands for Tuesday
    What are you doing today??
  • Blog

    Friendship

    June 4, 2014 - By 

    I spent some time on YouTube last week….likely sent there from Pinterest.  (See why I try and stay away from the screens…I get lost…sidetracked…and waste oodles of time.)  I often like watching “fast forwards” of journal pages, collage and painting. I’m most interested in seeing how people go from blank page to competed project. Not the particular products they use. Not to emulate what they did.  Just the process. The stumbles.  The bad choices of color or image and how they kept going and turned it into something amazing…or not.

     I often search out new unique ideas in an effort to continue to use the stacks of book pages I’ve torn from my journals and salvaged books. Since I’d been using some paper flowers on my cards and other projects recently, I thought I should potentially make them from book pages myself.  I found a rolled rose tutorial. The technique is very well explained yet I immediately deviated a bit from what she said. I’m not big on following the rules and directions. I prefer to make it up as I go along. 20140603_5026This first one is made mostly like the tutorial states…so it’s a tightly rolled flower.

    20140603_5025

    These are more my own style and lay much flatter…more useful in a variety of projects.

    But the ones used in the project below are my first blossoms. I just had to see how some spray mists would look on them. Gorgeous! Now what…20140601_4994Well…I had picked up a bunch of embroidery hoops at a garage sale a couple weeks ago to add to my ever growing collection. I have a thing for circles. I can’t seem to pass them up. This hoop happened to roll onto my work surface and land on some glimmer mist splattered paper. The idea I had seen on YouTube popped into my head. An embroidery hoop as a frame. Of course, that video used 3 hoops and was a wall hanging scrapbook layout. Like I said…I use videos as inspiration…not copy.20140601_4995It’s a little bit vintage… a little bit shabby chic…and a whole lotta me. 😉

  • Blog - Outdoors

    T Tuesday: cursed journal edition

    May 27, 2014 - By 

    Hello, hello! I’m feel a little thrown off this morning from the Memorial Day holiday yesterday. Today seems like Monday. Waking up late didn’t help matters any.

    But today is Tuesday… so that means it’s time to join Elizabeth and Bleubeard for T stands for Tuesday.deck box gardenI brought my coffee outside with me to check on the gardens. I won’t bore you with a bunch of pictures of mostly dirt. I have 10 tomatoes planted…4 yellow pear plants and 6 Thessaloniki(Greek heirloom)plants. My beans are sprouting. The cucumbers are planted. Hopefully the leaf lettuce seeds I planted will sprout soon form the galvanized bucket in the deck box garden.

    It’s misty raining so I’d like to show you my before and after on my cursed journal. After completing the journal I assumed I would leave the outside unadorned. The cover graphics and color was what made me choose this book in the first place. cursed journal beforeBut the spine left something to be desired. It kept bugging me as it sat on the bookshelf. Since my art space is currently out of commission…there wasn’t a whole lot I could do. Then my tea dyed curtain scrap came to mind. I could have the best of both worlds…pretty graphics and the ugly spine covered.cursed journal afterI decided to add the little bits of chain and charms at the last minute. charmedThey add a little movement and bling.  Now I’m very happy with the journal that caused me so much grief in the beginning.