Hi Everyone! I know I’ve been quiet but we have been learning and preparing materials for projects. I finally have a few things to show you!

First, as a sample, we did an Apollo Lunar Lander engraving on birch stained blue and coated in polycrylic. I frankly think the Polycrylic takes away from the effect and don’t think it will wear well. I think we will just do stains in the future. Having said that, the Pro-Tec powder fill on this in metallic gold is gorgeous against the blue in real life. We didn’t have enough paper to fill this properly (again, it’s a sample) but you get the idea. We used walnut for the back and recycled the gold wire binding from the notebook we bought since it matched the engraving.

I hand drew the vine of hearts for this version of the notebook. Cameron cut it and you can see I put pink behind the stencil. I hope she likes it! We did birch on the back. I think these notebooks make for great gifts for teachers, family, students, anyone who journals or sketches or likes to keep something to write on in their kitchen. Some people use them as guest books and memory books at special events like anniversary parties and such. People write a note to the honorees and it makes a nice keepsake. What do you think? You can have blank, lined, or dotted paper in them and though these samples are on the skinny side I’m pretty sure we can do 150-200 sheets in them given the size of the binding rings. We bought a cinching machine for the wire bindings.

I did an experiment with the wooden heart vine that was cut out of Sabrina’s notebook. I’m not sure how durable it will be and haven’t bound it yet, but here is the cover. I spray painted the heart vine in a high gloss red and glued it. That was tricky!

As some of you know, I love making greeting cards and textile art. I quilted some fabrics and asked Cameron to cut some shapes for me so I could build up my stash if cards; you never know when you’ll need one and most of my friends and all of my family live out of state, so I like to send cards to show people I’m thinking of them. Here are some photos of the pieces cut and how I used them. I couldn’t resist making a few of my hand drawn heart vines into cards by using cardstock. I cut it to size on a paper cutter and then crease it with a creasing tool. It’s fun!

There are a couple of other things I can’t post until the recipients receive them but I will, in due time! Thanks for reading; I hope you saw something you liked!