{ATC Binder} and {WOYWW}

Hello! I hope everyone is having a great week thus far.  It's Wednesday so I guess it's time to share WOYWW :) Please visit Julia on her blog for more info on WOYWW.

Here is what I've been busy doing:

This is actually a project I started awhile back but never finished till now.  I decorated a mini album binder with the intention of making it a place I could put some of my art experiments in.  I like to play with different techniques/mediums and thought it would be fun to have that all in one binder that I could go refer to for some inspiration. 

I was at the dollar store the other day and found some trading card plastic sleeves and bought them because, well, they were a dollar, and I was also thinking that I'd like to play around making some ATC's.  I know I'm way behind on the times, but it was something that I never got around to trying :p

When I got home I scoured my space for a spare binder to store my plastic sleeves in and although I found some, they were just not pretty enough to store some artsy atc's. I could have decorated a binder but I just was not motivated to. As I pondered what to do I spotted something from the corner of my eye sitting on a dusty shelf, yep it was the mini binder I decorated way back when. So light bulb flashing in my mind I decided that was where my future atc's will be housed in.

So, to get to the point as this is becoming a rather dull long post :p I began by trimming down the plastic sleeves to size. The sheets come with 9 pockets (3 across and 3 down) but I had to trim off 1 pocket in each row of 3 in order to fit the binder, no biggie :p 

The plastics were pretty flimsy so I decided to reinforce where the holes would be for binding by adding a strip of light weight chipboard. I tried at first to sew the plastic and chipboard so that it would look pretty but that didn't turn out as I hoped (I was able to sew 2, then the machine quit on me).  As I've mentioned in a previous post somewhere I don't own a sewing machine, what I do have is one of those mini machines that are suppose to be for scrapbooking. There's no way I would ever consider that a sewing machine (at least not with a straight face :p). Anyway, now I know why that machine has been sitting on my shelf collecting dust for the past 8 yrs or so!

I ended up stapling the chipboard to the plastic with my TimHoltz tiny attacher.  I then decided to add a piece of washi tape to cover the staples and make it more pretty.  I punched some holes with my crop-o-dile and then I was done!

Here are some photos of the binder and the plastic sleeve inserts:

Can't wait to start filling it up!  I hope you enjoyed a peek at what's on my workdesk this Wednesday.  Now that I've shared, I'm off to clear off my desk so I can start on those atc's.  If anyone knows of a good place for swapping please let me know :)

Have a great day. Take Care!

{WOYWW}

Hey again! I just realized I haven't been keeping up with my WOYWW.  I'm glad to say my "art" desk is cleared off at the moment, but here's what my "craft" desk looks like:

It's been like this for almost a week now.  There's remnants from working on my Valentine treat boxes from last week and then remnants from the mini album I created for the box a couple of days ago. At least it's basically from the same project then, but I think it's about time I cleared it off anways :p
If you're wondering what WOYWW is, it means What's On Your Workdesk Wednesday. You can find out all about it on Julia's Blog. Go check her out, i'd love to see what's on your desk :)

Thanks for having a look!

WOYWW and {Homemade Colorwash Sprays}

Hi there! Hope your week is going by smoothly so far :) I was doing some bloghopping and happened upon Julia's blog and her WOYWW (What's on your workdesk Wednesday) weekly posts that she hosts. So I thought to myself, hmmmm this sounds fun, maybe I'll give it a try :p

Since I will be showing you my workdesk, I guess I will now have to admit that since my last post I haven't been all that great with cleaning up after working on my projects. 
LOL, so much for that New Year's resolution!

Here is a photo of what I was working on Monday.  My desk pretty much looks about the same, but I have every intention of clearing it off today :p

Money for me at the moment is very limited and I'm on an extremely tight budget so I've had to be a bit more resourceful as far as art supplies.  But that's the wonderful thing about art journaling and mixed media, pretty much anything goes and you're only limited by your imagination.  Luckily too, I bought lots of supplies and hoarded them when I was able to afford it :p

I've been wanting some Ranger colorwash sprays for the longest but at about $4 a bottle and up, that was a bit beyond my budget.  Luckily, awhile back I was able to purchase some Adirondack ink refills for $1.50 a bottle and decided now was the time to make use of it.

Now my next dilemma was spray bottles. I really didn't want to have to buy any so I decided to tranfer the contents of my smooch spritz bottles into another container (paint containers from the dollar store) and use the misters for my colorwashes.  I really liked the mist of these sprayers but they were constantly clogging on me because of the mica in them, so making the decision to switch out the contents was an easy one.

After playing around a bit I ended up with a "recipe" I was happy with. Now I have a bunch of colorwash sprays and LOTS of ink still leftover to make more :) 

Here's my "recipe" and how I made them:

1. Empty and clean out bottles

2. Fill halfway with water

3. Add 20 drops of ink (I really wanted vibrant color, add less if you prefer it lighter)

4. Add 1/8 tsp. of acrylic glazing liquid  (You don't have to do this, but I wanted to make the spray more permanent)

5. Shake, Shake, Shake

6. Fill the rest of the bottle with more water

7. Cap and Label

8. Your done!!

I sprayed them onto white cardstock and punched that out with a tag punch. Then added that to a binder ring. This is how I like to catalog my sprays :) 

Thanks for stopping by! Hope the rest of your week is wonderful!