Pocket Scrapbooking - Blank Journal Card pfffjazzled (new word - made that up!)

Pocket Scrapbooking with Blank Journal Cards

I know it kind of goes against the whole grain of the pocket scrapbooking ethos, to decorate your own journal cards. It kind of is putting the work back into something which is designed to take some of the work out of scrapbooking for those like myself who have zilch time. However I must confess to feeling excited when I saw that Blank Journal cards were available. In my last pocket project you saw I altered a ready-made card from the colours of it's theme to suit my spread. This time I have been able to totally make my own creation for a journal card and as a little mini project in itself just making the card was quite fun!

Blank Journal Cards from Becky Higgins Project Life.

Miss Crafter's journal and pencil case in the grass.

I started this journey in the grass outside my son's piano lesson where I have to wait for 45 mins and hence there is time to craft and no excuse not to. I bought along my pens and journal and some blank journal cards to decorate. This was my first experiement and imagine my dissapointment when I discovered my mini mister was missing from my pencil case! How was I going to wet the distress marker marks and get a lovely Tim Holtz effect? The school drinking fountain of course! The other mums may have thought I was nuts but who cares.

Wetting journal card distress ink with school fountain.

Using a Tim Holtz, Ranger stencil to add a layer of distress paint.

This stencil by Tim Holtz is called Schoolhouse and it's a good flexible one because it has alphabet and numbers.

Using the Scotties Pink heat gun to dry my stencilled paint.

Add ink to a Mini Mister using an eyedropper.

Couture Creations finger dauber adding distress ink.

Using another Tim Holtz stencil with the ink sprayed from a mister.

This stencil from Tim Holtz is called Dot Fade.

Finishing touches. Couture Creations stamps and Archival Ink.

Xyron Sticker Maker and Blank Journal Cards

Did you know a philatelist is not quite the term for a stamp collector it's more accurately used to describe a person who studies stamps. A philatelist may or may not also collect stamps. I was a bit of a stamp collector as a kid, a hobby picked up from my Dad. My Grandmother was one also and in the picture is a recently inherited box of some of her collection. I have two new aquisitions to my crafting arsenal this week, a Xyron Sticker Maker and some Becky Higgins Project Life blank journal cards. The stamps seemed like the perfect thing to turn back into stickers since they originally were! I love the idea of using some of these in scrapbook layouts.

Xyron Sticker Maker

Make your own stickers for your scrapbooking

The Xyron Sticker Maker is a nifty little gadget that allows you to make stickers out of ...well...things that aren't! I was dying to try it and this week I finally did. At first it took me a little while to figure out which way up to put things to get them to come out with the sticky on the correct side and that is why reading a craft blog will save you a few precious inches of your own sticker reel. You allow some other chimp to waste their stuff then tell you how to do it properly. There are very few instructions on the packet which is either because it is very simple or because it's made in China, I'm not sure which.

Basically you pop your item in facing up, pull it through by tugging out the paper at the other end,and tear it off the device.  Give the paper a bit of a rub to make sure it's adherred properly, remove the backing paper and stick to the object of your choice. Not much to it. The glue is non toxic and adjustable. 

The other object in my haul is a lovely thick stack of blank journal cards bought out by Becky Higgins for Project Life. Keep an eye out for an upcoming blog post more about those but I have to find the cable to get those pictures off a particular camera so for now you can see that I have used one here and the box can be seen in the background of this photo. I sprayed some ink on the journal card, stamped it with Kasiercraft's Now Boarding stamp and stuck on my newly created New Zealand stamp sticker and voila I have a self-made journal card for my pocket scrapbooking.

The ink I used to spray the card was Windsor and Newton which is artists ink that I have always loved because of the cute little pictures on the boxes but you could use Tim Holtz distress ink and a Mini Mister. (See my blog post I love my mini mister).

I also tried out making a sticker from a cut out butterfly from a piece of scrapbooking paper. I say tried because that was one of my early experiments where I got the thing the wrong way up but in theory this will work fine. I also experiemented with thicker objects like a felt flower I had cut out with the cuttlebug and a Sizzix die. You can see that in the background of the top photo stuck to my brown paper. Perhaps there are easier ways to stick felt to a layout but this did kind of work and I was impressed that I could put a thick object through the Xyron Sticker Maker.

The end result. A stamp sticker made using a Xyron Sticker Maker and a blank journal card decorated using inks and a Now Boarding stamp by Kaisercraft.

by Miss Crafter of Crafterlala

Pocket Scrapbooking - One mum's second attempt

Ok it's not my favourite attempt but it should be testament to how easy pocket scrapbooking is that I could pull it off (all be it a little late) while recovering from Noro Virus. This time I used pockets from the Becky Higgins Pocket Scrapbooking range along with the same We R Memory Keepers journal cards as in my last post. 

Here are the pockets and journal cards all laid out.

Here is me arranging and choosing photos and cards.

I cut the corners round using the EK tools corner rounder one inch.

My crafting desk and the layout I started with.

I stamped some distressed edges with the Kaisercraft stamps ....

I used a heating tool to melt some embossing powder over where I had stamped.

Distress ink in Victorian velvet was applied to the wooden embellishment and all edges of cards and photos to create a unified effect in the spread.

I used the film edge strip from these Kaisercraft clear stamps to cover over the edges of this photo that I had printed off my ipad. It had some extra margin for some reason. 

I used my Tim Holtz stencil in dot fade and my Adirondack blending tool along with more of the distress ink to make some interesting edges and corners on my journal cards.

Well that's about it folks. I hope there might be some ideas in there for you. Remember the KISS principal. Keep It Simple Sweetheart!