Christmas Gift Tag Book

My daughter asked for the sweetest things for Christmas.  She's away from home this year, so, I made this little tag booklet, full of coupons for the things she wanted and had to order herself.   She likes things a little less over the top than I do, so I toned these tags down.

 

Glinda's Girl Soldiers

from Ozma of Oz

When I participated in Karla's Dorothy Tag Book swap, I ran across this great graphic.  I thought it would make cool bookmarks.  I like it equally well as the front of this gift tag booklet.

This stamp is part of a collection of snowflake clear stamps I purchased at Michaels this year.  I have been using it on everything -- tags, our Christmas card envelopes, etc.  The embossing power is called "Winter Wonderland," and depending on the stamp pad, is more, or less, opaque and nicely glittery!

My girl has a real passion for tap dancing.  Last summer at the Beantown Tap Fest, she saw cool new tap shoes worn by most of the instructors.  They have a heart on the heel.  Her Grammy, who is also a tap dancer, is giving these shoes.  This tag is a reminder to send her Grammy a thank you card!

I guess she can thank Grammy/my mom for more than the tap shoes.  Mom at 82, still taps in a group.  This Christmas they have already given 3 shows and I think they have 3 more scheduled in January.  Mostly they dance at retirement homes and care facilities for older people.  I'm so grateful my mom is active enough to be up on the stage and not in such a facility.  My daughter can be grateful for new shoes and the prospect of dancing for all her life!

The last coupon is for a haircut.  Now a haircut may seem an odd Christmas gift, but her funds are tight  and she loves a good visit to an Aveda salon.  A massage is part of their service, nice!

 

She's already gotten the haircut.  She called to say she loves the new salon and the cut is good.  We actually talked a long time about haircuts, new stylists (cheaper) vs experienced stylists (more expensive) tipping and how long it's been since her last haircut.

She moved to the west coast with a friend and we wanted to get something for him.  The two of them love going to the movies.  So, I asked what movie chain was near them.  Then I went to AAA and bought 2 booklets.  They can go to 5 movies together on us.  It's a gift I would have loved when I was first on my own.

The back of the tag booklet.

I had fun digging out my old rubber stamps for this project!

I cut pieces of colored vellum to fit between the tags -- to protect the tags and because it was pretty.  I had fun with stamps and colored pens and tape.  In fact I just had fun altogether putting this gift together.  I know she'll like the gifts.  I hope she likes the packet too.

Altered Book Project . . . progressing

I'm getting ready to fly out to California for my mom's birthday party, so this is a bit of an apologetic post. I wanted to finish these two pages, but there was so much else I felt needed to get done. And some of the photos are not very clear. That said, I have made some progress and continue to have fun as I work on this book!

This is my third page and as you can see, I have cut a hole out of it to connect it to the fourth page (the pink peeking out from the circle).

Here's the pink pages looking back, with the teal page peeking through.

And here is the middle of those two page sets. I glued the pages together, adding a piece of velum with a random-dot pattern.


Here are the teal page, partially finished. This duplicates what I had originally used as my first page. Unfortunately, the book wouldn't close, so I ripped those pages out and moved the concept to these two sets of pages. You can't tell from the photo, but there is really wonderful white gold glitter on the edges of the ledger paper.

So far, these pages are my very favorites! I love the pink and I connect with the images. After painting these pages a soft pink, I cross-hatched the paper with gesso, using a dry-brush technique. It kept the gesso from getting too thick. The Victorian lady's hand with egg is from the same set as the chicken wire stamp used on the green pages. The writing, bird, and crown stamps are from Tim Holtz's new collection for Michaels.

The crown reminded me of the wonderful children's book series, My Father's Dragon. The middle book, Elmer and the Dragon, is set on Canary Island, where a community of canaries are ruled by the king and queen, whose crowns look just like this stamp! I highly recommend these books, specially if you have elementary school kids. They are a fun bedtime read. Elmer is a delightful little boy. He has all sorts of adventures with dragons and canaries and he learns a lot in the process!

The lace is part of a stash of small bits and pieces of vintage lace I have collected over the years. I love how it sets off the image of Sarah Bernhardt and well as the porthole window back to the teal pages. I think Sarah should be looking at something connected to her. Please leave me a comment if you have an idea, or are just a Sarah Bernhardt fan! I read a biography of her recently and what an amazing woman!

I will leave you with a photo of what's in store at the back of this book:

Think small treasure boxes!

~Marilee

Altered Book Project . . . continued

This is an amazing learning experience. I have discovered one of the most important things to do is rip out pages! Books are not really designed to have dimensional objects in them. So to accommodate the thickness of ribbon, brads, etc, you really need to get rid of a lot of paper. All the pages I painted and showed in my previous altered book post had to be removed, tho I kept them and will use them either in this project or another.

Here are the second pages in my altered book:

For these pages, I used gesso as a kind of whitewash over the green glaze. Then I used the gesso again over some of the images and elements. The chicken wire is part of a Stampington & Co set called Bird Santuary. I worked on these two pages before gluing them to the following pages. I knew I wanted to add brads and wanted to enclose the brads. It works better for hiding the back side of brads, but the gluing does not go as easily. If you have to see something before you know it's right, then I highly recommend a restickable glue stick. A little like post-it notes, it allows you to place your items together without affixing them permanently.

Mary is working on her own book and it is wonderful. I love the soft quality to her backgrounds. I'm glad we decided not to have a theme, cuz I'm finding each new page seems to call forth a different story. It will be interesting to see if at the end there is something unifed about the book. Will I say, "Oh, that was what I was going for."

~Marilee

Altered Book Project

A friend and I are starting an altered book project. Neither of us has done this before, so it is all trial and guess and hmmm, I wonder if this works. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have started this if my friend hadn't encouraged me. I'm a great procrastinator (I do it very well) and tend to put off things if it's just for me. But if someone else is involved, I'm pretty good about getting going and finishing. So, here's the getting going part.


This was the book I was going to alter. It has really nice rag paper -- a textured, laid finish and part one is entitled "Prelude and Spring." What could be better? Well, a book that isn't so depressing and dreary! I can't look at a book and not read what's there and this book is miserable. All Great Depression realism, death, drought, family troubles. . . I don't want those thoughts anywhere near me!


This book works great. It's thick enough for some elements I want to add, sturdy enough and I like the paper. It had some illustrations which I removed for later use.


Following Bev Brazelton's suggestions in her book Altered Art Workshop, I removed pages and randomly painted facing pages.


I tried painting with two colors. I am using Plaid Decorator Glaze paints. I really like them. They are sheer, so the printing shows through.


These pages are at the very front of the book, so I started here. I glued four pages together to make the collage surface sturdier. That way the next two-page spread you see is green.


I just started adding images and embellishments. I cut an old ledger sheet into triangles to go around the circle image. These pages need something more, maybe lots more. I'm just not sure what. So I'm gonna let it sit and get back to it tomorrow.


This is what my worktable looked like at the end of the blue page. I pull so many things out to see if they will work and I'm just a very messy worker! In pride of place is my jar of Yes! paste. I used it to glue the pages together. I really love this glue, despite the fact that it is incredibly messy.

It was fun to spend most of the day making art. I wasn't sure I knew what to do, but the Brazelton book was really helpful and once I got going it was fun! I never knew painting book pages could be such a kick!