THE ''PRE-JOURNAL' JOURNAL

PRE-JOURNAL 

PRE-JOURNAL PAGE EXAMPLES

Not exactly a technique this week, but........
Popping photos up on a blog is one way to keep a track of various papercraft techniques but nothing quite beats the real thing......so I've finally started to organize all my little examples by sticking them into a sketch book and adding captions, to remind me what they actually are.

Its not a fabulous art journal.....more a scrapbook in the old-school sense of the word, full of bits and pieces to provide inspiration for when I do get the time to make something fabulous....sort of a pre-journal journal if you like.

Its turning out to be quite a fun activity in itself.  I don't aim to "finish" a page......just stick things here and there until there's no more room left.  No rules, even about which way is up, a great way to pretend all those little scraps of paper that used to live here there and everywhere, were always destined for greater things than the rubbish bin!!!!

ALL SORTS EMBOSSING

ALL-SORTS EMBOSSING

Following on from last week's theme of using what you already have, is this week's example of some of the things you can use to emboss in your Cuttlebug/Bigshot etc.
The possibilities are endless but from the few things I tried, I'd suggest that best results are obtained with low, stiff items such as the mesh, second best with low stretchy things like the rubber bands, and less successfully higher things like the paper clips and coins.  The latter tend to tear the paper.  I used 200g card, but imagine that if you used a softer handmade paper and perhaps made it just a little damp (not wet) you'd probably have less tearing.
To emboss "all sorts" in the Cuttlebug you need a rubber embossing mat, which goes on top of the paper.  The items go underneath.  You'll also need at least one plate (probably your white A plate), if not two (B or C plate) on the very bottom of the stack, and ideally another plate (B) on the top.  Its a matter of juggling the plates (possibly with the addition of cardboard shims) to make the right combo that is thick enough to have the desired embossing effect without endangering your machine in any way.  Cuttlebugs are tough little machines but they will break if you force things through so proceed with caution!!
I've also used white card for these examples actually didn't think this would work anywhere near as well as it did.  As I'm a bit overly busy at the moment I don't have time to repeat using a core colour paper and sanding or even inking over the design, but I think both would enhance the effect. Mind you, this does give me something else to post when I do have more time to play!!

PAPER LEAVES

DIY LEAVES

Now that we have access to all those lovely dies and hole punches its often easy to overlook things that are right in front of us.  This is an example of one thing I did manage to notice.......

The leaf at the top blew in through the door at work.  The leaf at the bottom is some of our packing card with under 5 minutes "work".

I used the real leaf as a template, and cut out the other with scissors (yes...they're still useful).  After scrunching it up a bit, I added some "veins" with a coloured pencil (there was only one brown one in the cupboard so I didn't really chose the shade), then dabbed a bit of distress ink here and there.  A little bit more scrunching added extra shape.

A bit more time, and more careful selection of colours would do wonders!!!  In the meantime I'm waiting for summer so I can acquire a new range of "leaf templates"!!

PARTIAL DIE CUTTING

PARTIAL DIE-CUT

 You might have noticed that I'm having a bit of a Cuttlebug thing happening at the moment.  It is work-related, but even so, I've been discovering and rediscovering lots of techniques that I either haven't tried or had all but forgotten.  The trouble is, Cuttlebugs are just so useful without even trying to do tricky things, its easy just to stick to straightforward die-cutting and embossing.

TAGS FEATURING PARTIAL DIE-CUTTING

This week's technique is simple but I hadn't really played around much with it until recently, and I've added "play more soon" to my "To Do" list.  Dies obviously only cut where the cutting ridge is in contact with the paper/card, so by threading the paper (or in this case a thick tag) through the die, a decorative edge is added using a bracket square die.  I've also done some partial cutting with the little Marianne bird die into the bottom of other tags, and then used the cut-puts as extra decoration.

I'm now starting to look at my dies in a whole new way, when I consider all the different sections that could be used in different ways.