This is a mini-album I made some time ago using the BoBunny Weekend Market papers (some 12x12, some 6x6), with some of the Papermania Persimmon collection intermingled with them. I think they mix and match together well; and of course they fulfil my passion for brown and blue combinations.
I'm sure many of you will recognise the structure: it's one of the toilet roll mini-albums. There are lots of great tutorials on youtube, and that's where I first picked up the idea - crafting and recycling simultaneously, what's not to like?
It wasn't until I was nearly finished that I realised I had only silver book rings - no use at all for this brown and blue affair. And I haven't yet started to dabble in alcohol inks, though from what I've seen and read online, it seems that would be a way to re-colour metal. So I tried an experiment...
My sister-in-law had passed me some copper embossing powder which she had no use for, so I pressed my book ring into the Versamark Watermark ink pad, scattered on the powder, and heated away. (I was, of course, very careful to wait until it cooled before I went anywhere near it again!) I did the same on the other side of the ring, and had a beautifully shiny copper book ring for my efforts. Would it open and close though? Or had the embossing sealed it for evermore? Well, as you can see, it still works perfectly well. Sadly I've now no excuse to go ebay-shopping for differently coloured book rings - bah!
Obviously, all your sizings are going to depend on the brand of toilet paper you use, as the rolls inside do vary quite a bit in both length and diameter, but having gathered and flattened a good collection of rolls, I found that for a "5-roll" album, I only needed one sheet of A4 medium chipboard to make the front and back covers as well as all the tabs for inserting into my toilet roll pockets.
I like to have matching or complementary double-page spreads as you turn the pages. With five rolls, you get six 'spreads', plus the front and back covers, to showcase lots of the paper collection. The main difficulty for me is that working with such lovely papers, it's hard to remember to leave room for photos and journalling!
It always seems a shame to cover up the papers themselves, so I try to incorporate "blank" spaces, either on the pages or on the tabs, using plain cardstock. I ink, or stamp, or edge the cardstock to match whichever papers I'm using for that page, so that there's somewhere for personal additions.
I was also using this project to experiment with my new Tim Holtz On the Edge dies - the Scrollwork (on the chintzy blue page, left) and the Brackets (on the chintzy golden-brown, below). I like that with the brackets you get a 'top and bottom' when you cut, so that you can use both edges.
Can't quite do the same with the scroll work, as it's so detailed; but I was really pleased with how the vine border stamp (from a set by Recollections) fitted in to the scheme on the blue page.
There's another border from the same set visible in this close-up to the left. The vertical borders on the page and tab are from within the BoBunny Weekend Market Stripe page, and the horizontal borders are the stamped version.
Well, I did promise we'd be moving on to include some other colours soon, and we will; but it's interesting that over the last few days as I've been writing these posts, the only crafting I've been doing has been all brown and blue... it's like a spiral of b+b creativity. I'll share some of it later on (after we detour in to the rest of the rainbow for a while), because I think the work shows the trajectory of what I'm learning.
Each project moves on from the one before. This album was an early effort and, while I do like its simplicity, I've since discovered so much more of what's possible by reading the blogs and watching the tutorials of the massively talented and prolific crafters out there.
I know I'm only a beginner, but I'm having so much fun... and I'm determined to keep getting better. Thanks so much for joining me for at least part of the journey. Hope to see you back here again soon!
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao-Tzu
2 comments:
Don't know who told you that blue and brown don't go together - I think its a fabulous combination and your work just goes to prove that fact.
Gosh, this is so lovely, Alison!
The two colours go together so well - you proved it!
Greetings from Vienna,
die amelie
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