Does Size Really Matter?

It seems in notebook and planner terms it really does, especially when travelling with art and craft supplies, when you need to justify every inch!

I’ll admit it takes me a long time to warm up to something and I’m quite sceptical about most things in the craft industry, putting them down to fads and phases. Micro and tiny sized travelers notebooks are nothing new but have been something I’ve wanted to explore for a while now and a recent flood of pictures on social media recently of cute mini tn’s had me longing to make one of my own!

Yesterday the weather was so awful, gardening was off the menu, so I was forced to spend the day in the basement studio making scrapbooks for my up coming KUKI stand. The materials were all out on the table and a little pile of discarded leather pieces sat looking at me so I decided to cut a micro sized piece just to see how it looked. Of course one thing led to another and I had to make inserts too otherwise how else would I be able to test it out? An hour later I had my micro and four inserts made from scrap papers and sketch paper.

I have a book of sketch paper, one made from mop up and scrap papers, one in watercolour paper and a fourth, the blue backgrounds all from a large piece of pre ink sprayed paper.  So plenty of choice of backgrounds depending on my mood and where I am and this little chunky will travel with me when I’m away this Summer.

Using scrap papers and my ready made background papers makes it already feel familiar to me so I won’t have any trouble filling it.

Here you can clearly see the progression in sizes, from my Carpe Diem by Simple Stories at the bottom which is my every day planner, Prima Jet Setter for journaling in, Prima Misty Rose for my hand bag planner and now the micro for on the go journaling. Simple Stories and Prima are found at Paperpenandplan on Etsy as well as the planner accessories.

Have a good weekend

Jaine x

Acrylic Albums

I love working with transparency, it creates so many interesting possibilities and layers. Making acrylic, transparent albums is especially interesting as I really have to think about the album as a whole when I’m putting it together.

These two I made recently and love them.

The Unicorn Album

Most of the materials for this one came from my January Sweet Treat Box from Paper Pen and Plan which I didn’t have an opportunity to use since it arrived. The Unicorn theme seemed to be a perfect fit.

The White Album

The white album was a joy to put together but a pain to photograph. I either managed to get reflections of me or the dog! It’s hardly there at all which is what makes it so pretty I think. There’s room for a few photos but honestly I wouldn’t want to put too much into it.

They’re going to be on my table at KUKI in May alongside a few other acrylic albums. I hope the public like them.

Have a great weekend, I hope the sun shines on you all.

Jaine xx


Pastel Love

I’m not sure the words ‘pastel’ and ‘love’ have been used much in my vocabulary but when I saw that the theme for the month at WOW! is Pastels, of course I had to embrace it.

I created these two projects, the second one up on the blog as a tutorial, and I think I can honestly say, pastels are my new love – well until the end of Easter anyway!

Catch up with the latest pastel creations and find out how I made the above decorated eggs by visting WOW! Embossing here.

Jaine x

WOW! Fab Foils

The theme this month on the WOW! blog is all about Fab Foils and ways of using them.

I find that the results of my foiling are not always perfect so I used that to my advantage and went with the flow so to speak, finding creative and abstract ways to use them. In the Dandelion card above I’ve stamped onto textured watercolour card which I knew from the beginning wouldn’t give me a nice perfect impression. You can see that in the foiling over the top of the Bonding Powder but I think it matches the random watercolour background, creating something light and delicate.

On the red and purple card, I chose to use the stamp in parts, stamping Embossing ink without using an acrylic block. This gave me the nice randomly foiled background which you can see above.

The butterfly here above was stamped with Embossing ink and Bonding powder in the traditional way before adding Silver Fab Foil. The butterfly below however was die cut from sticky double sided sheet and some of the excess pieces of foil pressed onto it randomly. This resulted in a colourful, foiled image. A great use of the offcuts!

Happy Sunday everyone

Jaine x