Beyond Pagan 101

Beyond Pagan 101 by Rowan Hale

My first Flow-ish!

I made the cover of the cover of an old magazine.

I ripped the cover off the magazine and painted it. Then I stenciled on the "Flow" and wrote the -ish over it. I copied the "Flow" from an actual Flow magazine and cut the template myself.

Then I made an insert of a junk mail leaflet by painting it white with gesso. 

I "bound" this insert to the covers with some paper string I dyed and spun myself.  It's the green string that can be seen in this photo. I hope she will unspun it and use the crepe paper for something.

Then I added pockets to the inside with washi tape. The washi tape doesn't stick. :-( Maybe it's old, or just... washi. It's not supposed to stick. Or something. Anyway, major source of irritation. 

This was a scavenger hunt swap. We got a list of things that should be in the Flow-ish. 

A lizard
A top hat
A horse
A hot air balloon
A head of lettuce
A saddle
A candelabra
A chocolate candy wrapper ( the real thing)
A mirror
A shoe
A coffee pot
A ring
A potato chip bag ( the real thing)
A pillow
A spool of thread
A clock
A truck

So... there's my lizard on the first page.

There is also a paper bag from Indiska (a Swedish shop selling Indian things), with all the tags from the items I bought; a saffron sachet with pink and gold things inside, like some jewel stickers and glittery things shaker bag.

Then there's some wallpaper samples, in metallics.

Inside the cover pocket is some snail mail love - envelopes, letter paper and post cards.

Then I made her some horsies and put in the pattern so that she can make more horsies herself.

There's also some papers.

A horse with tophat I drew, some pink and gold paper ribbon, some painted papers and a tag I made; gold cardstock with peacock feather in texture paste dyed with alcohol inks.

 

Now the candelabra... I read "chandelier"... and found that image of a chandelier and made an envelope of it. And then I noticed it said "candelabra", not "chandelier"... But then I saw that there is actually a candelabra on the shelf behind the chandelier. LOL

In the envelope is a little rubber stamp, Easter themed bunny child. Really cute :-)
And those two mini sachets, with salt and pepper. I think they are so cute!

There's some IKEA sticker sheets; paper napkins and chocolate candy wrappers... A cardstock wrapper for dark chocolate; a chocolate bonbon wrapper and then a mini candy bar wrapper. To be sure I got what Rosemary meant with "chocolate candy wrapper" LOL

More horses - my swap pal loves horses :-D
She also likes Dyan Reaveley's work, so I made her a couple of silhouettes to be used in her art journals; a horse with a rider and a bare horse. I also made some pages with these, to put a black acrylic layer on the paper to protect it and make it tolerate use better.

The hot air balloon on a card and a "head of lettuce" - a lettuce girl after Elsa Beskow. I hope it counts :-D

Some vintage pattern paper, more painted paper, some summer-y magazine pages, a page from paper palette, a page from National Geographic with someone's letter printed on, some pieces of scrapbook paper and a piece of tissue paper with my own designed horse themed vintage pattern on. My printer is crap, the ink is watersoluble, so I wonder how useful this paper will be to my swap pal, but... what ever. I'll give her the image so that she can print her own paper herself with her own printer, after she has received this swap.

There is also a piece of paper shelf edging and a polaroid kind of pocket for photos. I love these pockets. I make them myself, by cutting a polaroid frame from cardstock and covering it with printer paper. 

Oh, yes, and there's a paper bag I made from a magazine page, and a plastic page divider from my father's vintage Time Manager :-D

And here's a picture of a mirror, and some vintage scraps with shoes on them.

And a lot of paper from notebooks, composition books, telephone books, graph paper, music note paper etc. Also some pages from a Japanese book.

On the left side there's a little pocket I made from National Geographics order envelope. Inside this pocket is some pretty pictures and some tags.

The coffee pot is in one of those stamps; old Swedish stamps about the old coffee house and inn signs in Sweden. The ring is on that DARK page - it's an ad from a magazine.

There's also more paper, among others a page from IKEA instructions, backside of a security envelope (that's as fancy as it gets here.), an IKEA measuring tape, a lid from KESO (cottage cheese) can, a Finnish betting list, some strips of paper lace and a cover of a composition book with Minnie Mouse on it. And the potato chip bag. The turquoise one with hearts on it.

Spools of thread; I made some wood graining on cardstock, and cut some spools of that, and put some pretty effect yarn on them. 

The pillows are on the right side; one magazine ad about a hotel and one little ad about fancy throw pillows. They are pretty, I think.
There's also a bag of noodles, some painted kitchen towels and a piece of art of mine. Also, a couple of large sheets of flower paper; we get this for free from the grocery store, it is meant to be used to protect flowers and plants one buys from cold. The white is from Sweden and the brown from Finland. Then there are a couple of sheets "glanspapper" - a special sort of shiny paper meant for kids' crafting, and a piece of marbled paper I have made. That's the TINY sliver of green seen on the left bottom corner under the pink, purple and gold shiny paper. :-D

So, the clock is on the nightstand by the bed on the ad page from a magazine, and the truck - well... some sort of car anyway, is on the other magazine page. Now, I wasn't so sure it is good enough, so I put in another image of Truck... on the image under is a black and white drawing of two men. The one on right is Truck Hannah... But - a woman hanging out of the window of a car I call a truck. Under that is a piece of Russian writing from a tourist brochure for Russians about the town I was born in. There are some pictures on that, too. I hope she can use it. It's a bit boring, but, hey, Cyrillics. There's another bag with more interesting pictures, a slip of a cover, a matchbook notebook made of the wood grain paper, some vintage Christmas mini cards and a plastic pocket with some textured material; a piece of corrugated cardboard, a rubber rug slip mat, a piece of gold netting etc.

And here some more bits and bobs that couldn't fit in the earlier photos; a box of tea from Celestial Seasonings; some teabag paper, a teabag tag with a saying on the other side - in Finnish. Some string. Some pieces of ribbon from an old seamstress' stash I bought from second hand store. I don't know what those were for, but they are interesting. I hope my swap pal can do something with them. Also, some silver ribbon from the same stash. Some tags. A junk mail cardstock cut into tags and ATCs. A sheet of stickers, drawn on label sheet, uncut. I couldn't figure out how to do that... I mean... would I cut them and then put the circles as they are in the journal, or would I cut them and try to find another sheet I can stick them back to... and what does that do to the glue and... uh. So - I left them uncut. I hope it's OK.

I am really nervous if my swap pal will like this and feel satisfied. I really, truly hope she does.

P.S. A couple of changes in the final, it weighed a bit more than 1 kg, so I had to remove some things. I also made some other things, like embellished the paperclips.
Tomorrow I'll post what I got! IT IS WONDERFUL!!! :-)

Wonderful weekend

I spend the weekend with my sisters :-)
Absolutely wonderful! The best time ever. I love my sisters so much!

So I was away, no time to write anything. Not that that would be a noticeable difference... I'm really bad blogger :-D

But, September...
Mabon countdown calender.
Make a grape cluster, a couple of big leaves to decorate the hook carrying all the little grape baggies holding the goodies, and a  bunch of little grape baggies.

You can do the baggies like this: Lined drawstring bag
or like this: play mat (though obviously a lot smaller - and it is OK to just sew in the drawstring, not even put it in a... what it's called... channel?

Anyway, it's really easy. You can also choose to make the grapes of paper, and then simply sew two oval pieces of paper together, or glue them together.

What to put in as surprises?
Mabon is the Feast of Fruit - put in fruit related items. If you can't think of anything, use candy. Grape and apples are the best choice, but any fruit is good.
Generally, you can use any "stocking stuffer" list to come up with ideas.

But, here's a couple
1) grape smelling playdough
2) grape smelling bath bomb
3) coloring pages with Mabon theme
4) dot-to-dot puzzle pages with Mabon theme
5) little notebook with color design in Mabon theme
6) purple pen
7) leopard plushie or amigurumi
8) grape juice powder
9) autumn colored gloves
10) small package of raisins
11) winegums
12) unshelled nuts and nutcracker

Pocket letters

I don't know who got the idea, but there are these storage pockets for trading cards and collector cards, and someone noticed that if you fold it in three height-wise, it fits perfectly a certain size of an envelope. (US standards), and they decided to fill the pockets with nice things and send the page to someone they liked. :-)
Great idea.

(It seems this someone was Janette Lane.)

So, these plastic pocket pages are meant for trading cards, baseball cards, ATCs, collectible card game cards, so they are 2-1/2 inches by 3-1/2 inches (~6 1/2 x 9 cm).

So - I like templates and lists and rules and such, so here's how I do this.

1) decide a theme, especially a color theme.

2) write a letter
- date and place it
- write a greeting
- tell a little about why you are sending this letter
- tell a little about yourself, what you are doing at the moment, how are you feeling, what are you experiencing, did something happen to make you smile, did you see something interesting
-  conclude with well wishes
- sign
- add at least one P.S. like greetings from your pet.

3) find a teabag in paper wrapping (or a little sachet of coffee or cocoa or something like that.)

4) make the ATCs/cards for the pockets - usually people have 9 of these. These are either individual pieces or one bigger piece divided into 9 pieces.

5) find some other goodies in the other pockets. You have already the teabag and the letter to fill 2 of the pockets.

Some flat items to be put in the pockets
- a lot of people put in a little card with some washitape wound around, or small cards with embroidery floss or baker's twine. Other ribbons and piece of pretty fabric etc. works well too.
- small, flat pieces of candy or snacks
- paper scraps,
- magazine clippings, interesting article, Sunday cartoon, sudoku, word puzzle or something else like that
- different kinds of scrapbooking embellishments, like diecuts, snaps, journal box etc.
- quote cards, inspirational quotes etc. like Project Life cards. (Those are too big for these pockets, so you have to choose some that can be cut into size.
- paperclips and other such things that are used in planners
- stationery
- ephemera
- stamps
- stickers
- friendship bracelet
- seed packets
- anything in flat sachets
- recipes
- book plates
- balloons
- samples, like perfume samples
- origami
- temporary tattoos
- glow in the dark stars or gold stars
- mini flags
- cards, playing cards, tarot cards, oracle cards, alphabet cards...
- matchbook things, like notebooks or sewing supplies
- pressed flowers or leaves
- small bookmarks
- tags
- mini confetti bags

Pocket letter by Judy Zelenka Brand

Autumn Sabbathiade :-)

So, Mabon is coming, are you ready? :-D

This year... this year I will do better!

Hmm... let's see how it goes :-D I don't have my hopes up though. Perhaps I should. I mean, positive thinking, affirmations, law of attraction and so on. If I believe I won't, I'll make sure I won't. So I won't.
But if I believe I will, I will make sure I will, and I will. I'd like that :-D

So, what? What will I do better this year?

I will have a Mabon calendar ready, filled and waiting for the kids.
I will decorate every room, a little by little.
I will plan and prepare a delicious day of eating to celebrate the Harvest Feast of Fruit.
We will celebrate Rosh Hashanah
I will make and post Mabon cards
I will give gifts
I will spend time with my family, just be and enjoy each other's company, maybe play board games