Birthday, Box and Stationary

I've been pretty sick lately, I've had a nasty flu that's put me out of action for over a week (suspected whooping cough for a while but not sure now, hope it's not!)

I've been unable to go to work, doctors orders, and am on strong antibiotics that leave me with a perpetual bitter taste in my mouth, ew.

It also happened to fall on my birthday, of course, but it's nothing new as I've always had crappy things (mainly illness or accidents; broken bones, hospital stays, asthma attacks, flu's, bugs and infections etc) happen around the time of my birthday.

The upside was that this year I spent it with my wonderful family, and even in my disgusting state at the time, we had a lovely birthday breakfast :)

<3They even bought me a kumquat plant! Yum!

To stave off the boredom while at home I've been making stuffs, mainly books and birthday presents.

This one is a stationary set, printed with my own hand made stamps with matching envelopes and sticker seals. I even made the a box for them this time! I'm quite pleased with how it turned out, even if it is a little rough around the edges.

I then wrapped it in some of my hand-dyed lokta paper i've been saving for special use :3

Mandatory doggy approval.

*

Hand Stamped Gift

Recently it was N's mother's birthday and, for the occasion, I made her a gift:




The paper is a lovely pearlescent cream colour. The images are hand stamped with chalk inks. All the elements were cut to size, folded and glued by hand.
My hand does not thank me for this lol.
I punched a few little blue stickers as envelope seals then added some pretty ribbon to finish it off. :)
The final size of the little note-papers is 12.3 x 10.5cm
The envelopes are 9 x 6cm
I've been on a crafting binge since my job finished last week. :)



Almost two months since my last post here... I am ashamed. :(

*

Printable - Cardigan Dolly Stationary

Printable JPG.
A cute little stationary sheet to jot down cute little notes. ^_^


Feel free to save to your computer or print for personal use. :)
p.s. If you'd like a higher resolution, lemme know here.

*

Grungy Notepad Tutorial and Printout

Day 21 of my 365 Design a Day, I created this little vectored printout project: To make your own grungy little notepad!


Get the download here: Notepad Pages PDF

The design was created in illustrator (so still vectors!) using a few grunge and dirt brushes and a texture background as well as various layer blending effects.

Free to download and print out for personal use only. :)


Mini Instructions:
1. Click on the link, download the PDF file to your computer, open it, print it out onto A4 or Letter size paper (may need a little resizing) of a decent weight/thickness and not too opaque; I used an 80GSM weight, smooth paper. Regular printer paper works fine.
2. Print out more than one page, say, between 10 and 20 (5 or 10 double pages), depending on the weight of the paper (lighter/thinner paper = more pages can be bound together, thicker/heavier paper = fewer can be bound together as it becomes much more difficult to either punch holes or staple).
2. Trim if you prefer not to have the white borders showing.
3. "Bind" the pages together at the top section using a hole punch and strong thread/ribbon or staples.
4. Cover the binding with sticker paper or fabric of choice.
5. Enjoy your new notepad! :D


Photo Tutorial:


Gather your materials, here I have my printouts (I printed 9 pages so that's 18 sheets in my notepad, for more printing info, check the mini instructions above), a piece of recycled cardboard for the backing, sticky backed patterned paper for the upper wrap and tools of choice.

Trim your printouts to your desired size, here I've cut all the white out but you can leave it in if you like a border around each sheet.
Cut your backing card to the same size as your printouts.
Cut your sticker paper or fabric etc to the same width as the printouts and between 8 and 10cm high. You can easily measure how much you want to use, however, by putting the paper against the top margin of the printouts and roughly measuring and marking how far down you'd like the paper to go. Just remember to leave enough to wrap over the block of printouts and down the the back a little.

Gather your printed sheets and backing card together and jog them a bit to get them as aligned as possible.
Staple about halfway down the top margin on the printouts - Make sure your stapler is strong enough to staple cleanly through all your papers and card.
Another method here is to punch two holes halfway down the top margin and tie a ribbon or heavy thread through the gathered sheets. The next step is optional if you chose the hole punching method as your ribbon may make too much bulk for the covering sticker paper/fabric.

Stapled block of sheets and card backing!
Covering sticker paper ready to be attached.

Remove the backing paper from the sticker paper and carefully align it with the sides of the bookblock (your block of printed sheets and card), a little over halfway down and covering the staples, just make sure you have enough of the sticker paper to wrap around the top and attach to the card at the back, as in the next photo.

Turn your block over and using a bone folder to help with the crease, pull the sticker paper over the top of the block and down to stick to the card backing.

Use a bonefolder or equivalent to apply pressure, carefully! or you might tear the paper where the staples are.
Smooth out creases and press the sticker paper firmly to the front and back of the block of sheets.

Enjoy your new notepad!
An easy little project under 30 minutes. :D



Cross posted to my 365 Days of Vee Blog also.

*

Stationary Idea

I've always wanted to make stationary of some sort and today i was feeling productive after my lovely trip to the beach and subsequent sunburn ^^

I painted this in Painter:


And this is the kind of things I want to do with it: