Saturday, February 20, 2016

A Fairy Tale and altered Trading Card Pockets

I am part of the design crew for Tangie Baxter & Co. and do posts for the Art Journal Pockets every month.  Tangie gives us two free 8 1/2 X 11" Journal Sheets and a challenge.  This months challenge was "Fairy Tales".  So, I did what any design team member would do, I printed out the two sheets and looked at them, and looked at them and after a few days with no clue what so ever what I would do with an octopus and seahorses, I started making some notes and that is when it came to me, I would write a fairy tale.  It was a fun challenge that took a different turn for me because I also do a blog post once a month for Tangies' Blog and February has been crazy for me and I did not have a clue what I was going to do for the Blog.

When I finish my challenges each month I cut the pockets in the Trading Card Pocket Sheets on the horizontal on the perforation marks which gives me three sections of 3 cards each and I bind them, I do this because I have no where to store an 8 1/2 X 11" binder, my studio space is a little corner of my closet and some wall space for storage.  They get bound and placed in a box on my shelf.  
A few months back before Christmas I found a great deal on "The We Are Memory Keepers" Fuse and decided it would be useful with the pockets and some other projects I had in mind and got it. Instead of doing my usual binding I decided to experiment and see if I could create a continuous horizontal sheet, so the pockets went from the example above to below.

Perfect for an accordion fold and when folded a neat little packet of 2 1/2 X 3 1/2" cards.  Below is how I made them into one continuous line.

I took a freezer sandwich bag and cut 2 strips 3/4" by 3", I laid the top 3 panel section in the middle of the brace and fused it with the "Fuse", then laid the middle strip on the other half and fused, it worked and then did the bottom section.  I love it, prior to this I have been using old file folders to bind my projects but this is ever better and smaller.  

For the book cover I used a piece of corrugated cardboard, sprayed it front and back with Design Master's "Tint It" Jade and on the front turned the cover upside down and sprayed it with "Tint It" Gold Shimmer so it would drip, creating the sea grass for the Seahorses to swim and hide in.  I then emphasized the sea grass with a micron "Black" pen. I used some Tim Holtz photo corners and his fasteners to keep the book closed and going with the theme attached an existing octopus charm to the fastener.  The accordion sections are secured to the inside back with red line tape, I put the tape on the back cover and the back of the trading card pocket.  I created the "Once Upon a Time"  and Sea Horse elements from Tangies' sheets using the Cameo Silhouette.  As far as I am concerned cannot work with these pockets without the Fuse.
And they lived happily ever after, The End.  Happy Saturday!



1 comment:

Sharon Caudle said...

You, my dear, are freaking AMAZING!!!! This is beautiful and so creative!! Utterly fantastic!!!!