Book Review - "Born Standing Up"

 

I'm doing something new on the blog today. A BOOK REVIEW! I usually don't read. It's horrible to say because one day soon (hopefully next year) I want to be teaching Reading and Language Arts or English! I bought Steven Martin's book Born Standing Up for 50 cents at a garage sale. I've always been a fan of his and when I started reading it on Monday while on a substitute teaching assignment (the teacher's part of the day was empty because second graders were on a field trip), I had finished half of it by the time the students actually showed up. By Tuesday night, I was finished with it.

This book is clever, well written and gives you an insight into the stand up comedy world. The first part of his life, starting at age 10, was spent working at Disneyland when it first opened! He worked there until he was 18 and in the book, he goes over all of the experiences he had and people he met while working there that led him to get into the show business. He left Disneyland for Knott's Berry Farm to work at their Bird Cage Theater. Without giving away the whole book and making this a long post, he went through his life experiences, his rough personal life with his family, how his anxiety and depression (gives you a little eye opener that celebrities are human too) effected his life, how he started from the bottom, hit the top and then just stopped. But why would he work for over thirty years to try (and succeed) to achieve his dream and just stop? Well... you have to read the book to find out. This comedic genius is a wonderful writer and it is hard to put down this book and even though you see him in the movies and on screen, you get a deeper look into his life and a world you never really knew existed.

There's a quote from the book that gave me a "Wow... that could not be more true!" and it applies to creativity. He was talking about how the sixties were a time of flower power and how it brought out creativity in people in regards to music, art and way of thinking.

"But any new social philosophy is good for creativity."

How amazing is that?!  Such a small sentence with so much meaning behind it. With everything going on the United States right now, there is another social philosophy shift happening. It's nothing new honest but new, more meaningful music is coming out, art is shifting again and I love seeing it happen.

This review probably did nothing to convince you read it but I highly recommend it. As a non-reader and telling you that this book is worth it, it's worth it. Do yourself a funny favor and enjoy!

Collage One

As promised in my post about my Collage Journal earlier this week, I am going to share with you the first collage in the book and I'm going to make it a weekly post of doing the collages. They only take about 20-30 minutes to complete which is the perfect amount of time to use up some scraps and get out the creativity.

"For the Love of Disney"

I was at my parent's house over the weekend and I had an idea in my head about a Disney watercolor piece. When I got back to my apartment I got to work. I took my idea and I sketched out two sketches in my regular sketchbook to see how I wanted everything to be laid out for the final piece on watercolor paper. 

As you can see, when I sketch, the drawings are just plain ugly little blurbs that just get the ideas on the page and the lay of the land for the drawing and what movies I wanted to incorporate into it. I chose Snow White, Frozen, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Pocahontas, Tangled, Peter Pan, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, Mulan and Lilo and Stitch. Here's the final sketch on Canson watercolor paper (after about 2 hours of messing with positioning, making sure there weren't any holes and it all flowed really well. 

Then I added in the background colors which blend from one color to the next (this. took. forever!)

I love watercolors. I do. They're my all time favorite medium and I hate waiting for these buggers to dry. After 2 hours of drying, I went in with all the final details, colors and painting until 3:30 in the morning. So worth it. Here's the final piece and close ups of each part! 

The Perfect Palette Search

Do you know how hard it is to find a watercolor palette that seals that doesn't cost $20 or more? Let me give you a hint..SUPER HARD. I set out to find the perfect one and here's how the situation played out. 

I woke up on a Wednesday morning and drove over to my local Salvation Army because they have 50% off everything in the store. I was looking for another item in particular when I came across a stack of these Mary Kay (you know. The make-up people.) compact things that had mirrors (which I threw away) in them and they seal tightly, have plenty of room in the bottom for colors and my mixin' goes in the top of the lid. PROBLEM SOLVED!!!! I bought 5 of them. Yep. All 5 that were there. They were originally $2.99 each and for 50% off they each came out to be about $1.60 a piece. Yes. I now have a seal-able watercolor palette (or 5...) for under $2 a piece.

To prep it I used Krylon brand spray paint in white. I like to use the "satin" ones because it's not glossy and it's not a matte. This one is called Fusion and it's used as a primer for plastic, wood, wicker, etc. It's perfect because it sticks to plastic and I only needed one coat. First I sprayed in the inside white, let it dry and then decorated the outside.



The outside was easy after that. I laid down one of my decorative doilies and spray painted over it with a beautiful "Lagoon" color and then lifted off the doily.

After all of my designing and drying was done I took my tubes of Reeve's Watercolors and squeezed them out into their new home, let them dry for about 2 days and voila! Done! I could not be happier with the results and I finally have my palette the way I want it and for about a tenth of the price they are in stores.

Collage Craziness

One of the hardest things for me is collage. Nothing is harder to me then finding pieces of paper and gluing them down to make them look good as one picture. You would think as an artist it would come easily to me. Nope. It's like oil and water. I decided to set out on an adventure of learning to collage and make it look nice. 

So the other week when I was looking through some old stuff and I found this pad of Newsprint paper (I highly recommend NOT buying this type of paper...ever). It is a very lightweight paper with no love for any product but pen and pencil a.k.a. not my type of paper. I like to work in wet mediums like watercolor, acrylic, markers, ink, etc. This paper isn't good for any of that. I made a sketchbook out of it following a tutorial by the amazing YouTuber Sea Lemon! I used her Coptic Stitch Binding tutorial to make the book because it allows it to lay completely flat! I've made a few using this method and I adore it. 

Here is my final book!

In the coming weeks I will share what I've put inside. The collages only take about 20 minutes to do and are super quick and fun to do. Stay tuned!

I'm back!

I am so sorry I'm such a terrible blogger. My goal for this month is to post just about everything I make (which may or may not be a lot). I figured I'd give you all a little update of what has been going on the for the last year. I know! A whole year. Here's the long story...but short. Ready? GO!

• I started my (what I thought would be) last semester of my Bachelor's Degree just after my last post. I did the classes and I was working and going to school full-time. I walked across stage for graduation in December and two days later found out I didn't pass a class by 2 points. Yep. Two points. So in January I had to retake said class and then I guess you could say graduated again (I didn't walk again though).
• I was diagnosed with something that limited me my use of my dominant hand. I didn't make anything for about 6 months just due to pain (Now you see my horror).
• Stopped working because of arm problem.
• Took up substitute teaching to make ends meet and fell in love with teaching and decided to go back to school for another Bachelor's Degree in Elementary Education. I start next week! :) 

My arm is still an issue unfortunately but I can now create in small intervals. I did a big project (Which I'm hoping to share tomorrow) two days ago which took forever because I kept having to stop from pain. I have a whole new plan for the blog and I hope you'll be here to join me! 

Christmas Mega Mini Part 3 - Embellishments and more!

This tutorial will be super easy. Not a long blog post like the others because I made a video solely for this section so you can physically see what I'm doing instead of reading it because obviously we're a visual group of people. :)

Here is the video of how to embellish your pages, add pockets, flip ups and some punch information! Enjoy!

Christmas Mega Mini Part 2 - Assembly of the Album

Welcome back for Part 2! This will be the assembly of the album. I follow Laura Denison (this is the link to her blog) and her amazing YouTube videos on mini albums. She's an amazing scrapbook artist and her tutorial for making a paper bag mini is what I followed to make this album. So if you just click the link right HERE then you can follow her step-by-step tutorial on how to put the album together. The only difference between hers and mine was that I used more bags and I attach my covers last. I believe that's it. 

For this part of the album you're going to need:

• Paper bags
• Bone Folder
• Adhesive 
• Decorative paper for the outside covers
• Paper for the inside lining (I just used aqua cardstock from Recollections to line the inside covers)
• Chipboard

So here is the video of what I did for the assembly. 

I cut my "chipboard" down to 6 3/4" long by 6 1/2" tall. When you're finished putting your "units" together, decorate your pages with the paper and then attach them to each other. It's much easier to do it this way because you're not fighting with the other bags they're attached to. Set aside 2 bags for the covers and this is what you should have. 5 units, 2 chipboard covers and your 2 set aside bags!

Then you're going to pull out those papers for the covers and linings and cut the down to the same measurements as above. The plaid is the paper for my covers and the aqua is the inside linings. The Other piece is for my spine. I wasn't sure how fat it was going to be so I cut it at the height of my book which was 6 1/2" and left it cut at 12 inches long. 

And there you have it! Let's get this step done and we'll move on to part 3!!

Christmas Mega Mini Part 1 - Materials

Hi everyone! I'm sorry that I'm a terrible blogger but I am back and ready to go! I've got my creative mojo back and I'm so excited to share this tutorial with you.

I am being obsessed with making paper bag mini albums. They're super easy and really cute. I'm getting a head start on my Christmas album this year because I made one last year and I never finished it. I made the entire outside of the album and then never put anything in it. This year will be different. Making it now (in August) so that all I'll have to do come December is add my pictures (which this album has TONS of room for because I made it too big)

Part 1 of this tutorial series is going to be your materials. So here's what you'll need.

Materials:

• Paper bags 
• In this album I used 12 paper bags. You can use less. It just has to be an even number of bags.
• There's a lot to choose from. Hobby Lobby and Michaels have their own brand. But I'm using Target's "Up & Up Giant Size Lunch Bags"
• 2 pieces of 12X12 chipboard -
• I use mat board from Hobby Lobby because it's cheap and is the exact same thing in my opinion. I can either get 35 pieces of mat board for under 5.99 or I can get a few pieces of chipboard for much much more. Hmmmm. which one to choose?!
• Scissors
• Your favorite adhesive 
• In this tutorial, I used nothing but my Aleene's Tacky Glue. 
• The paper pack of your choice. 
• I'm using "Bright Christmas" by Recollections
• Bone folder.
• This is the most important thing you'll need in my opinion. 
• Cutting board
• Cardstock for your inserts

Optional Materials: 

• Ink pads
• Ribbons/laces
• UTEE
• Puff paint
• Mod Podge
• Circle punch
• Whatever materials that YOU have that you want to use. 

Here's the video of what you'll need as well so you can see them! :D

Old Book Sketchbook - Part 2

Part 2 - Covering the Book Covers

aaaand we're back in 3, 2, 1...

Hellooo! Now that you have all of your supplies together, signatures made and your book gutted like a turkey on Thanksgiving we are ready to cover our book. 

As you saw in Part One, I have a big box of fabric that I bought at a garage sale for $4. I chose a fabric that I liked for the cover and I covered it. 

So for this part of the project you're going to need the following supplies:

• Fabric of your choosing 
• You'll need to choose a fabric for you outside covers and your inside cover (which will be in the next part of the video)
• You will want to cut your fabric like this:
• Length of the book + 2 inches (for a 1 inch border on the inside. 1 inch for each side)
• Width of the book + 2 inches (same as above)
• Glue of your choice
• I use Aleene's Fabric Fusion Glue (Note: This stuff smells to the high heavens).
• Bone Folder
• This is just to crease the spine and allow you to have unsticky fingers when putting down your glue. 

Before I get to the video, I want to add some tips for you: 

1. Please please pleaseee USE WHAT IS ON HAND. Do not go buy things just to do this project. If all you have is paper, you can do the same. exact. thing. Promise!
   
2. You will want to take the top sheet of paper and use it as a template. DO NOT flip your template or your signatures will not be the same and therefore your spine will be off as well when you bind it.
   
3. I learned the "Don't cut the edges and then put them into signatures" thing as I was doing this. Oh the beauty of learning as you go. :)
   
4. When folding the fabric over, do the short sides of the book first and then do the long sides. It'll give you a cleaner edge in the end. 

Here is the video and I hope you enjoy. As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to comment below or on the video!

Old Book Sketchbook - Part 1

Over the next week or so, I'll be putting together and series of videos showing you how to make your own sketchbook out of an old book. This first part will cover the materials you need to do this project and how to prepare your book for altering.

As I made the video it didn't cross my mind to take stills of what I was doing for the blog. I need to be better about that. But before I get to the video, I'm going to show you what's in the tool kit (I tell you about it in the video) that I have. It was a Recollections brand tool kit that I got from Michael's on sale and I ended up not using half the things that were in there so I put the stuff that I use the most in there. So here you go!

Part One: Supplies and Prep

From Left to Right: Plastic palette knife, bone folder, needles, extra Xacto blades, white Sharpie pen, my old Xacto knife, an awl and my new Xacto knife. 

The Supplies listed (without interruptions in the video) are the following:

• An old book. Pick any size that you want. If you like small sketchbooks, buy a smaller book, if you like big books, buy a bigger book. It does not have to have sewn signatures (other artist's say that it MUST have it. I call bull!). Pick the book you like. (Note: The one thing you will want to keep in mind is the size of the spine. Mine is about 1 1/2 inches). 
• Paper of your choice. For my book I am using Bristol paper. It's 100 lb paper and it's made by Strathmore. 
• Paper trimmer. 
• A ruler. 
• An awl. (see above photo) to make your holes with
• bone folder (see above)
• fabric of your choice to cover the old books
• Thread (again, personal preference. I just used regular sewing thread. Nylon thread is another option. Whatever's in your budget!)
• Needle to sew with.

Okay. So here's the video! Have fun with it and leave your questions and comments!

Update and an Introduction!

HELLO!!!

First I want to start off by saying that I'm sorry that it has been such a long time since I had a post. There's been a lot of madness going on in my life. In March, I went through a very bad Depression spell. I could barely bring myself to get out of bed in the mornings for class. Then I got the flu (which made everything worse) and I ended up missing work for 2 full weeks. Then finals in school came along, I moved into my first apartment with my boyfriend and my roommate from the dorms and now I'm finally back to feeling a little more like myself and ready to get back to creating and making things to share with you all!

So I have a new series of videos that I'm going to make for you on how to make your own sketchbook out of an old book and a pad of paper.

I have part one all ready to go and I'll have it posted ASAP and the other parts will come along within the week!

Thanks for your patience and love,

Sarah

Tracy Weinzapfel March Creative Dare

This month, Tracy Weinzapfel issued us a new DARE...DUN DUN DUN.

The requirements for the challenge were to use song lyrics that mean a lot of us and to use buttons. I am SO not a button person but I'm learning to love them after this project (because I can camouflage them!)
I thought that this Dare was going to go Titanic on me and then I would just throw it out the window like a frisbee. It started off the way that I wanted it to and then I added the buttons to it and I hated it. So I left it alone for a day or two and came back, picked a color scheme and my song.

This is a record. Yes. A vinyl record that I picked up last year at a thrift store for $1. It was extremely scratched and would never be able to play again. And since this was a music themed month, I figured I better use it. I chose the song "Carry On" by Fun because it lifts my spirits when I feel down. 

The poppies are the Donna Poppies by Unity Stamps that I won a few months ago. I stamped them down on a white 12X12 mat board from Hobby Lobby and used my blue/purple/white color scheme that I chose and used my water colors and colored them in. 

The supplies and steps I used were the following: (that you can see that is because the original stuff you can't see whatsoever:) :

*Gesso, just in spots of the record because I blended in 

• Apple Barrel Acrylic - Purple Velvet & Admiral Blue
• Vinyl record (find one that is old and unplayable, please! Save good ones for people who still play vinyls and appreciate them)
• Mesh Tape (from Dollar Tree) 
• Buttons (lower left in the picture. Well hidden because I'm not a fan of them)
• Birdy came from a 4 pack of almost velvety birds
• Donna Poppies Unity Stamps
• White photo mat board (that's what the stamps are stamped on)
• Purple and blue Koi watercolors (from my travel set and that's what color the poppies are)
• watercolor paper (for the song lyrics)
• Crop-A-Dile (I punched 2 holes at the top to be able to hang it on the wall) and matching purple grosgrain ribbon. 

Then I just added the music notes, circles and added more paint over the top of the mesh paint!

She now hangs beautifully on my dorm room wall. :)

Well. I hope you all enjoyed it and will share pictures with me if you make one too!

Video for the Pocket Album

Since I got a comment about how to fold the Simple Pocket Album, I decided to make a short video to explain it. 

Fine Tip Bottles.

I have a new thing I've come to love. These are the bottles (and how I put them together) that I used to make the lines and writing of my Tracy Weinzapfel February Challenge. 

These are the bottles that I bought from my local Hobby Lobby. They're $2.99 for the pack and I had a 40% off coupon for the 2 packs that I bought (2 packs fit my container that I have for them).

Speaking of the container...this is the container I bought, it was full of those nasty little heart marshmellows that tasted like carboard (as much as I love cardboard, not the taste). It was only $1.50 for the container and I wrote my favorite verse on the front in Sharpie Oil Paint Pen in white. 

                                     The six bottles and the 6 tips fit perfectly in the containers. 

Each pack of bottles comes with 3 tips that screw on. There are 3 different sized tips for each pack. A extra fine line, fine and a kind of thicker one. 

 To fill the bottles I did a 50/50 mixture of paint and water. When I'm making mists or these bottle type things, I always use hot water, I feel like it kind of dissolves them better and breaks them down a little better compared to cold water. 

 I used my 6 favorite colors for the bottles (and once they run out I'll alternate them). 

Then I just shake them up and they come out like this. 

 I store them away nicely in my new container and call it a night! 

I hope you all have a happy and creative day. 

Simple Pocket Book Album.

I actually made this project in January right after I bought all the supplies from my local scrapbooking store. It was sitting there on the table and I absolutely LOVED IT and the owner was generous enough to tell me how to make it without having to pay for the class (I was going back up to school for the start of the Spring semester) and I just had to share this adorable mini. You can use it for a scrapbook, put tags in all the pockets, make it an idea book or whatever you want, really!

You'll need the following:

• Six 12X12 pieces of double sided cardstock/papers (mine is the ADORABLE Cashmere Dame Collection by Glitz) 
• I used the Gingham, Honeycomb, Chevron, Floral, Cherries and Banner (the Gingham was only used to make the piece that covers the binding)
• I also bought the "Whatnot" embellishments that the store had (they were too cute not to buy!)
• And you'll need whatever coordinating binding strips you want to use (I used black because it went with the collection beautifully)
• Black stamp pad (I used one by Ranger)
• Your preferred glue (I used Aleene's Tacky Glue)

Now the directions! :)

Take you first 12X12 paper and score it at 4" across (this will fold up to make the pockets) and then straight down the middle at 6". 

Score and fold the 4" mark, fold it up and glue down the left and right sides to close off the pockets. 

Do the same with the 6" mark and do this to each of your 12X12 pages. 

Then you'll need your binding cardstock/paper and 

Cut them at 1" across and 8" down. 

Score at 1/2 inch and fold. (For my album, I only needed 4 because I only had 5 papers.)

Then you can cut your outside binding strip at 4X8 

Score it at 1 1/4, flip it and score the other side at 1 1/4. 

Now that all your binding strips are ready, take a look at the pictures of my album and you can see where you attach them. You take the back of one folded page and attach the strip to the back of the first page and to the front of the other. 

I kept the pages simple and only used the embellishments that came in my "Whatnots" pack. 

 The beautiful swimmer girl is only attached to the pockets so that I can still slide things behind her as pockets. 

The embellishment on the left (and others like it in this album) are able to be used as pockets (I only glued down the left and bottom of them)

This embelly was one of the cards (like above) but I cut her out and attached her to the page and then cut out her words "Girls Just wanna have funds" 

I'm sorry that this was such a long post but I'm extremely excited to share this with all of you. And thank you, Deb for the amazing idea and project! 

If you make one too, send pictures! Also, if you have any questions about the construction, leave me a comment!