My Advent Journal

I love to make books.  I have so many - many of which have never been used - I just love the process of making them.   It took me quite a while to decide how I wanted to journal the Advent Challenge that Mary has written.  You can find it on her blog at Advent Words 2017.

Eventually I decided to make a book with watercolour paper and some fabric I bought a few years ago to make Christmas related items.  The fabric has been sitting in the cupboard all that time.  I tore pieces of it up and glued it with matte medium to the water colour paper. I was then going to make little collages for each page and maybe do some stitches.

I took so long thinking about it that I was getting further and further into the study but had no pages done.  So I simplified things.  I stamped the word of the day onto each page.  I used Valerie Sjodin's stencils and Marjolaine Walker's stencils with gelatos.  I wrote with Inktense pencils and here are my pages to date.

I used Pumice Stone Distress Ink to stain the edges of the pages after I had distressed the edges.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

6 days of December Daily

I enjoyed making my December Daily album last year and actually finishing a project.  However I knew we were doing lots of things.  This year I thought I would do it again in order to find some joy in the season.  Otherwise it's just going to be 'just another month'.   And to be honest so far it's been just that.

I prepared the inserts ahead of time with the freedom to move anything that wasn't right for that day.  I have moved several things already.

The reason why and the Advent Words calendar.

Day 1  Naomi had sent me a photo of our grandson playing with the Nativity set we bought last year.  On day 2 we FaceTimed with the family in Sydney.

On day 3 there was a supermoon but I didn't get very good photos because of the clouds.

Day 4 I listed 4 strange Christmas songs that I like.  

Day 5: I wrote about spending Christmas with my cousin who died last month.  And on day 6 I bought some pants instead of Christmas Cards for my church's Pants Campaign.

I'm still trying to work out how to take decent photos of my album.  These were taken in the conservatory to have the benefit of natural daylight and they still needed tweaking.

Thanks for joining me today.
Bernice

More in my Fabric Sketchbook

In my last post I showed you my Fabric Sketchbook as far as I had got on the two day course.

When I got home I worked on it again adding the exercises suggested by Dionne that I hadn't had time to do.

I made a stamp and found the stamps I had made from Dionne's online course Developing Sketchbooks.

I used black acrylic paint to stamping my fabric sketchbook.  I also developed the teardrop shape which I had found in amongst the pages.

And here is my book which could be called finished.  Although there's plenty of scope for more machining and handstitching.

The back (left) and front pages

I really enjoyed doing this workshop and I feel much more confident about using my machine.

Be aware though that if you book for next year's course you won't end up with what I did.  Firstly, each of us on the course ended up with something different, and secondly, Dionne teaches it slightly differently each time she does the workshop.

Thanks for joining me today
Bernice