ROD journal #1

I signed up for Mary Ann Moore's 2nd class - Full Tilt Boogie - a few months ago and it was pretty cool, so I signed up for her first one - Remains of the Day - a couple weeks ago. Equally cool. This one has a cloth cover and since I have tons of upholstery fabrics and laces and doilies, I had a really good time working on it. The pages are sewn together using the remains of your day, or whatever you feel like incorporating. I used practically everything I had in the studio - scrapbook paper, old envelopes, ledger pages, paper bags, lace, old photos, pre-cut frames, part of a small folded book I made as a sample - all sorts of stuff.

This journal falls right into my liking of variety - I love a deli where you can have a little bit of a whole bunch of things, I like scrap quilts because of all the fabrics, I like thrift stores cause there's some of everything. So what some might look at and see a total hodge-podge of stuff, I am fascinated by the endless new bits to see every time I flip thru it. I haven't journaled in it yet. I might make it my Australia journal, long after the fact since we were there in 2005, but I have lots of pics and notes, so I'll be able to make a cool memory book of the trip.

Anyway, here are a bunch of pics. It has a total of 48 pages but I'm only making you look at the more interesting ones for now. If you think it's cool, I strongly encourage you to go sign up for her class. It's well worth the money.

back cover

front cover tied

front cover without tie

inside cover and 1st page

fragile

DH was out of town yesterday and today, so I've spent the day:
1) walking the dog in the cool of morning
2) browsing the bookstore with a mocha and a cinnamon scone
3) watching the last day of Le Tour as marvelous Cadel wins for Australia and Cavendish demolishes the sprinters
4) playing in the studio
However, don't be too jealous because in the hour before he gets home I'll be:
1) doing the pile of dishes that seems to always accumulate no matter whether anyone is eating at home or not
2) sucking up the dust bunnies who thrive under my furniture and occasionally have the bad manners to waft into view
3) shuffling the mountain of art supplies on the kitchen table back into the studio

BUT... meantime, I made another journal page using fabric and lace. I really enjoy this process, and was more confident making this one. Didn't bother Tacky gluing things in place, I just started stitching.

That's me at around a year old, I suppose, toddling around the married student housing that my parents lived in while attending Purdue University. I aged it a bit with Distress Stains, then lots of sprayed water until it ran and softened.

I used cross stitch fabric as a base. It's kind of stiff and I thought it might work well, which it did.

I lay down a couple pieces of flat lace, then the image printed onto fabric. Once those had a few seams in them, I dug around and found the very fine lace on the right edge. It was fairly long, maybe a baby dress hem or something.

Then I looked over the stamping I'd done earlier and settled on 'fragile.' Cut a bit of fabric to put to the right of it, and added some crumpled trim and some old buttons.

The bottom needed something, so I cut a point off a tattered old crocheted doily. I like the shade of it with the rest of the fabrics.

I like this a lot but it still isn't the heavily layered look that I so admire. I'm not sure I can do that LOL. It just isn't me, so I'll be happy with this and maybe try to add a bit more stuff on the next one.

This will be the right side of a spread. No idea yet what will be on the left.

mom in fur and lace

I like this picture of my mother. She has a fur coat on (beaver?) and it's snowing. I suspect it was taken in Dayton OH where she lived after high school, working at a newspaper, and she's maybe 20 years old. Hard to tell and it's not dated.

I've been admiring the wonderful lacy fabric journal pages done by this artist and this one for quite a while now. I have all the stuff to do this - fabric, lace, buttons, old photos - just needed to wait for the right moment to come along, I guess.


This afternoon, after the dog park, after two loads of laundry, after baking gingerbread cupcakes and chocolate chip craisin oatmeal cookies, I finally felt like giving it a go.

I used a page from an old book that I'd painted green, then played around layering tea-dyed fabrics and bits of lace until I liked the look. I stuck each piece down with little dots of Tacky Glue so that the whole thing wouldn't shift around while I was sewing.

The image of my mom was printed onto really thin fabric years ago, literally, and I didn't bother trying to peel the paper off the back, or she would have been too transparent.

The lace that's sewn around her is from a big old ball that I bought probably ten years ago and have used steadily ever since. I never measured how much was in the ball but it had to be twenty yards cause I've been using it forever. And I paid a buck for it. I remember cause it was the day I bought home a big old bag of stuff, none of which I paid more than a dollar for. Don't find deals like that much any more.

Added a few mother of pearl buttons and called it done. It'll be the right side page of a spread in the journal I started for the 4 Artists 4 Ways class, which you can see here, here, and here. It features me, my mother and her mother, and I did multiple spreads using each of the four artists' techniques. This will be the first spread using Lisa's lessons. I'm quite happy with how it turned out and will be doing more of these soon.

I have to admit that while looking thru my laces, at first I had the thought, 'oh, this is too good to use.'

Really??

No, not really. As soon as I thought that, I grabbed the piece and used it. I absolutely refuse to die with all this wonderfulness and have someone pawing thru it at a yard sale going, 'I wonder why in the hell she didn't use this stuff when she had the chance?'