We Have a WINNER!

Congratulations to Ericka!  She is the winner of my Marbleized Paper Covered Notebook giveaway. Ericka wrote that she “recently made great apricot jam from organic u-pick apricots, and dill pickles, and a pickle garden medley.”

Thank you to everyone for your entries.  It was great to read about all your creativity.

Up next I’ll be giving away the Plastic Spoon Rose I made.  You can pin it on a lapel or a hat.  Both of these were projects made in June when I was doing 30 Days of Creativity.  You can read all my 30DoC posts here.  Watch for the next Giveaway and see how you can enter.

Thanks for stopping by.

Giveaway!

From Day 28 of my 2012 30 Days of Creativity project this is a Marbleized Paper Covered Notebook.  The notebook was part of my collaborative effort with Rem for a contest put on by the folks at 30DoC and Moleskine.  Our project was one of those picked and we won some little Postal Notebooks from Moleskine.  I’m giving away our creation, and you could win it!

Here is how you enter the giveaway: In the comments section of this post, tell me the latest thing you made: have you been doing any crafting?  Maybe you made a sandwich for your lunch?  Did you make the bed?  Whatever, just put it in your comment.  One entry per person, please.

You have until Friday, August 10 to enter.  To pick the winner, I will number the comments (omitting my responses and anyone who either doesn’t want the notebook or doesn’t follow the rules) and randomly pick a number with this nifty free random number generator.  I’ll send an email to the winner and they will have three days to respond.  If they don’t respond, I’ll pick another number. Once I have my winner, I will get their shipping address via email and send them the necklace!  Feel free to share this with your friends.

8/10 Update: We have a winner!  Congrats to Ericka – the notebook will be heading your way soon.

I’ll be giving away a few more of my 30DoC creations in the upcoming weeks (Plastic Spoon Rose pin, Button Rings, Macrame Bracelet, Glass Tile Pendants)  so keep an eye out and don’t forget to enter with your comment in the comments section.  I don’t usually have that many people competing so your odds are probably pretty good.  Also – winning one item does not block you from entering in a future giveaway!

Thanks for stopping by and good luck.

Day 28: Collaborate! Marbleized Paper Covered Notebook (with Video!)

I was going to take it easy today and just coast.  I’m working longer days at work in the summer and I’m staying up too late every night creating things.  I have Jazzercise class tonight.  I’m tired.  Whine, whine whine.  But then the #30DoC folks created a challenge!  I just couldn’t pass it up without giving it a shot.

The rules:

Pair up with any other Twitter user to make a collaborative piece for Day 28’s notebook day. We’ll pin your creation to our board, where all creators will be able to vote for their favorites. At 3:00 on Day 29, the top 25 creations’ teams with the most Pinterest likes will receive a gift from Moleskine.

~from the folks at 30 Days of Creativity

Well, I happen to have a Twitter user right in the apartment with me and he was amenable to collaborating on a creation for Day 28 (and the chance to win swag from Moleskine).  Thanks, Rem.

I did a post about this method of marbleizing paper before here.  It’s a great project and lots of fun.  I suggested making marbleized paper to cover our notebook and Rem agreed.  He worked hard and made this  awesome video to show how to create the marbleized paper and one of his photos is the one at the top of the post.

The supplies for the whole project include shaving cream (I prefer a citrus one but can’t always find it), ink refills to drip on the shaving cream…

Card stock (not shown), cookie sheets to use as a work surface (I show a glass casserole in the picture but found it wasn’t large enough to fit my sheet of paper), a squeegee, a plastic spoon a chopstick, and paper towels.

Once the paper is done: a composition book to cover, Mod Podge and a brush, Washi tape, a bone folder, scissors, an Exacto knife and an elastic hairband as a finishing touch on your new notebook.

First you make the marbleized paper according to the post here or the video here.

Once it is done, you cover the composition book with the paper.  Draw around the notebook with a pencil and cut your paper almost to size, allowing a little extra.  When you try to glue the paper and book together it’s easier to work with if you have  a margin of paper. I’ve found that the paper doesn’t always stick well once it has been marbleized because the shaving cream is coating the paper.

You may have to try several things until you get one that works for you – it really depends on both the paper and the shaving cream.  For this project I used Mod Podge.  A bone folder helps to smooth and press the paper onto the notebook.  A glue stick usually works too.

Use scissors or an Exacto knife to trim off the excess paper. Do the back cover the same way.

Some binder clips along the binding will help really hold the paper in place until the Mod Podge holds it.

Cover the binding with Washi tape and trim the ends with small scissors or the Exacto knife. I used two strips.

For a finishing touch, an elastic hairband makes a great belly band for the notebook.

Last year on Day 28, I made these cool Bottle Cap Necklaces.

That is it, our best effort for Day 28. By the way, I never made it to Jazzercise.

All the best to other teams.  Moleskine Notebooks for everyone!  Thanks for stopping by.

Marbleized Paper with Shaving Cream

This is a fun and easy crafting project that results in beautiful marbleized paper.   You start with shaving cream, dot on some ink, swirl it around, smoosh paper into it, then squeegee the shaving cream off the paper and that’s it!  You never know exactly what you will get until you scrape off the layer of shaving cream but the results are usually delightful.  Clean up is super easy which is another plus.

I crafted with my friend Margaret today and we were having so much fun that we didn’t want to stop. Playing with the lemon lime scented foam and the beautiful colored ink was both relaxing and satisfying.

Update: For a look at marbleizing using gouache and acrylics, check out the blog by Wayside Artist where she experiments by replacing the ink with thinned down gouache and acrylic paint.

Marbleized Paper with Shaving Cream

Supplies:

Rimmed Baking Sheet for your work surface

Shaving Cream (not the gel type – and I prefer the lemon lime scent)

Reinkers  in several colors (small bottles of ink used to re-ink stamp pads – mine are from Stampin’ Up! and are water-based dye inks, but I’ve read that alcohol-based inks also work)

-OR-

Food Coloring

Plastic Spoon for smoothing out the shaving cream

Chopstick or popsicle stick to swirl ink in shaving cream

Squeegee, plastic scraper or rubber spatula to scrape shaving cream off paper

Paper Towels

White Card Stock or White Printer Paper – cut to size for your projects – 8 1/2 x 11 cut into quarters is usually a good size for greeting cards, but some projects will need a larger size sheet.

Directions:

The baking sheet is your work surface.  One one half you will have the shaving cream and on the other a relatively clean surface to squeegee the shaving cream off the paper.

Spray some shaving cream onto one half of the baking sheet and smooth it out into a rough rectangle a little larger than the size of paper you will be coloring. Smooth it out with a plastic spoon and drip some ink onto it.

Now use a chopstick to swirl the ink around. You don’t want to mix it completely, but just swirl the ink lightly into the surface of the shaving cream.

Once all the ink spots have been swirled around, lay a piece of white paper on top of the shaving cream and tap it into the surface so the paper is fully in contact with the shaving cream.

Lift it off and lay the paper face up on the clean side of your baking sheet.

Using a squeegee or other scraper, gently scrape the shaving cream off the paper, revealing the beautiful marbleized design.

A quick wipe with paper towel will get any excess shaving cream.  Set paper aside to dry.

The colored shaving cream can be re-used, often without adding more ink.  Just swirl the chopstick around through the inky shaving cream and if desired add a few more drops of color and swirl again.

I find it best to stick with two or three colors in adjacent shades. As you mix more ink into the shaving foam your base or background color will be a light version of the original colors which can be even more stunning.  If your colors are too far apart on the color wheel, your shaving cream can become muddy-looking pretty fast.

I also tried this method with food coloring.

The colors aren’t the same as the ink refills, but it still produced nice results and folks are more likely to have it in their kitchen.

When you’ve got swirled ink covering all your white paper or your shaving cream has become loaded with so much color that you want to start fresh, it is quite easy to wash the inky shaving cream down the drain, rinse off your utensils and start again.

You’ll end up with inky fingers and a bunch of beautiful paper that you can now use to cover little notebooks, line envelopes and make cards, like this!

Try it out!  Thanks for the visit.  And thank you, Margaret, for being being a willing hand model and great crafting partner today.