Library Pocket Books

One a year Heirloom Productions brings their rubber stamp/paper arts show to Allentown.  Last year was the first year I went.  I returned this year.  My favorite vendor is The Paper Cut (and their sub-company Paper Creations).  They produce card die cuts, have tons of brightly colored papers, and sell book kits.  Accordion book, concertina book, flip books and my favorite the Library Pocket Book.

The first year I bought two of the pocket books, two concertina books and a flip book.  This year it was a mini memory book, and two more library pocket books.  These Library pocket books are awesome.  So here is the beginning of my project:

My Materials List So far:
COVERS:
Ranger Distress Inks in walnut stain and forest moss
Tsukineko Tuxedo black and Encore Ultimate metallic Gold
Spellbinders Donna Salazar - Sprightly Sprockets
Paper Creations Library Pocket Book Kit in Harvest Variety
Close To My Heart Stamps - Key Moments set.
Avery Dennison Reinforced Hole Shipping Tags #5 tags (4 3/4" x 2 3/8" )

Library Book Covers

Covers, a photo by jdkcubed on Flickr.

Took me about 1.5 hours to do the covers.

Lapbooking for fun and knowledge

One of the 1000 hobbies I like to indulge in is scrapbooking.  It started when my niece was born as a way to preserve history.  But then it grew and I enjoy messing with paper and glue.  I like to make and hand bind my own journals (and have sold a few).  So I am always on the lookout for new ideas.

This year I have been part of the One Little Word project over at bigpictureclasses.com. And while it has been fun, I found it too be too little each month.  I personally think its hard work to find the focus on a particular word for  a year with one or two exercises a month.  So I have been adding more stuff to each month to better keep my focus!

So on to lapbooking.  Lapbooking is a method used mostly by home schoolers for children to focus on a particular area of study.  It boils down to a portfolio of journaling, scrapping, illustrating using muti-media, collage, writing and other techniques to illustrate what they learned about a particular subject.  Then when finished they can always go back and peruse their work.  It helps to re-enforce what was learned.

I think it is the perfect medium for scrapbooking.  Particularly if you are focusing on a specific event, trip, time period or other singular thing you want to incorporate into your scrapping and or life.  A google search on lapbooks will get you hundreds of links but the gist is the same:

• Make a portfolio.  Typically using file folders or poster board or whatever.. Skies the limit
• typical with fold outs, envelopes, pictures, drawings whatever ephemera you would like
• Ability to add small flip book, step books any thing as long as you can access it
• Make, gather or otherwise come by "CONTENT" for your folio based on your focus
• Assemble your content into your portfolio.  When satisfied, move on to the next one.
• Enjoy it.

My idea is to spend a year working on these.  One a Month, with a unifying theme...So...Join me on the adventure over at Lifebooking

One LIttle Word Album

One LIttle Word Album, a set on Flickr.

Here are the pics from my album construction for my previous post!

One Little Word Album

I have joined a class over on Big Picture Classes called One Little Word.  The gist is to pick a single word that is the focus for the year.  Every month there will be exercises and other activities to help you work the word into your life.

The materials for the calls for an 8 1/2 x 11 photo album.  I have looked and searched and found the whole genre wanting in the extreme.  So I decided to make my own album.

Originally I took an old literature binder from work.  Standard 3 ring binder. But the covers were longer so I had hoped it would cover the addition width of the pages (protectors) for the class.  My goal was to uncover the cover boards and recover them with some of the Close To My Heart papers I had planned on using during the class.

No dice!  They were just too small.  So I measured them out made them appropriately bigger and cut them and the spine from some nice Davey Board.  I went to Hobby Lobby and chose two fabrics for the covers and the spine.  Turned them both into book cloth.  Made some book paste.  And pasted the fabrics to the outsides of the covers and spine!

Next I will mount the ring binder to the album, add inside cover papers, Cover the spine with a nice facing of the same color.  Maybe do some corner cocers in the spine color we'll see what I have left!

Here is a link to my flickr gallery for the project!

Related articles

• One Little Word 2012 (aliedwards.com)

Haruni

Image by jdkcubed via FlickrBeing a member on Ravelry has its advantages.  One of those advantages is exposure to projects you might not otherwise do. Case is point is my current "hot" project.

I started a knitted lace shawl.  I am a big guy with, as I term them, Ham Hands.  I cannot work with things that are too small or it is just to hard for me.  Lace has always fallen into that category.  My impression was very, fine needles, very fine yarn, tiny stitches..you get my drift.  Just to small to fiddley or me to manage.

So back to Ravelry.  I associate with a local group called Pints and Purls.  They meet on Monday evenings at the local brew pub and work on our current projects.  Some knit, some crochet.  This group maintains a group/forum on Ravelry of the same name (Pinst N Purls). One of the recent discussions was about maybe doing a small simple knit along project for beginners and experts alike.  Out of this conversation came the fact that a couple of folks had planned their own knit a long for october of this knitted shawl.

The name of the shawl's pattern was Haruni.  it was a freee pattern available on Ravelry.  So I checked it out and immediately though no way, lace, small needles, ham hands, no no no....Then I downloaded the pattern and read through it.  It used a light weight yarn (lace or fingering or....you got it SOCK YARN) and size US 4 needles!!!

I make socks with size US 3!  With SOCK YARN...I theoretically could do this shawl!  So I saved the pattern, bought some nice paton's lace yarn (which is "bigger" than sock yarn LOL).  So the point is don't build walls for yourself.  This shawl is doable by me but only because others made me look into it, pay attention to the details long enough to realize I was more than capable of it.

The top photo is MY yarn.  The lower photo is my current progress on the shawl.  Should be done in 6 weeks!!

Bread School - Hints tips suggestions!!

Image via WikipediaBelow are some initial questions about the possibility of forming a bread school.  I have had several people ask me for "lessons" on baking bread.  I have not determined what that will look like yet (let alone any kind of pricing or format)  So, I am just interested in your ideas or suggestions based on the following questions:

1. Would you be interested in a class on learning to make bread the old fashioned way BY HAND (no cheeky bread machines)

 your thoughts on:

1. More scientific based class (a.k.a Alton Brown Style)
2. Just cover the techniques/basics needed, provide some practice.
3. Single nite class or
4. Multiples nites focusing on the parts that are important (maybe flour one nite, kneading technique, baking/crusts, forming) that type of thing
5. Classroom style class or informal?
6. Hosted in your home alone or with others?
7. Availability of tools/accessories to order for your own use (think pampered chef but with a direct focus on bread)
8. Types of bread your interested in.  Just sandwich breads, rolls/buns, sourdoughs etc)
9. If you considered taking this type of class what would you be looking to get out of it?
10. How many of your friends would be interested you think?

Answers to jdkcubed@gmail.com