I finished something!

I'm feeling a bit 'stuck' craft-wise, so it was great to finish my Vogue artwork last night.  Here it is:

Hmm.  Slightly twisted on the page, but I can fix that up when I frame it.

I used two layers of tracing paper - the top layer has most of the drawing, plus a small amount of colour:

The layer underneath has most of the block colour, and some of the writing which I wanted to tone-down the colour of.

I used a mixture of ink (the black), coloured pencil and coloured card stuck down with double sided tape.

Inspired?  Want to make one?  It's really simple, so if you're planning to do something similar I'd recommend choosing a simple line drawing, and making a few copies of it at the size that you're after.

Your first step is to trace the line drawing - primary school stuff right?!  

And now some planning:

• If you're planning to use a texta for the line drawing, do a trial to make sure that it won't smudge! I had planned to use a marker for the red highlights, but found that the one I had on hand was going to smudge and switched to pencil instead. 

• You'll need to think about how you adhere the layers together.  I learnt from my son's Big Ben poster that double sided tape doesn't look that good stuck on the reverse side of tracing paper.  So, rather than stick the blocks of colour to the back of the first layer of tracing paper (which is what we did with the Big Ben poster), I stuck mine onto a second layer of tracing paper.  This way I could use my tape where it wouldn't be seen (I plan to join all of the layers together at the edges under a framing mat before hanging it on the wall).

• Check out what your planned colours look like underneath the tracing paper.  The red I used is a lot more orange than I originally intended, but it looks heaps better (and less orange) under the tracing paper than my first preference.  On a similar vein, I used a coloured tracing paper for the girls' blonde hair, but the adhesive 'Jac' paper I used to stick it down altered this to a solid colour, which was a bit disappointing at first.

• I used two layers of tracing paper, and would highly recommend it as opposed to attaching your coloured shapes to a solid background.  Using the second layer of tracing paper allows you to stick down your coloured card without having double-sided tape showing from the front, and allows you to line up all of the layers more easily than if you only have one layer above the solid background.

Your next step will be to cut the blocks of colour from coloured card/paper.  To do this accurately, place a copy of the picture over the top of your coloured card and then cut around the shape you're after (this is why you'll need a few copies of the picture).

I'd recommend cutting two layers of paper together where you have intersecting colours. For example, to do the socks and shoes I:

• Layered black/red and white card on top of each other, then put a copy of the picture over the top of the lot, 
• Cut the whole stack around the outline of the sock and shoes together (you have to be careful none of the layers move).  
• Removed the white/sock card, and cut the picture and the black/red card around the shoe outline. 

This way there is no gap between the sock and the shoe and there's no little bit of sock showing where the sock and shoe aren't cut exactly the same (hope that makes sense, I found it impossible to take photos while I was cutting!).  You might be able to see that I didn't use this approach for the intersection between the little girl's hair and the middle girl's dress, and there's a bit of a gap there.  Minor gaps are less visible once you put the line drawing over the top, but I know that if I think about it too much this bit of the picture will bug me!

I couldn't find any polka-dot paper, so I used
coloured pencil on the trace to make my own.

Finally, you can fill in some details with coloured pencil - I used pencil for the middle girl's shoes, the lighter sections on their toy (no idea what sort of animal it's supposed to be), the detailing on the smaller girls' dresses, the middle girl's headband, and the word 'pattern'.

Oh, and if you don't want to have to deal with it later, make sure that your drawing is square under the tracing paper before you begin!

Thanks for sticking with me all the way to the bottom!  If you do decide to make a tracing paper artwork I'd love to see how it turns out - leave me a comment with your link.

Vogue 2651 Wall Art

As I mentioned, I was inspired by the Schoolboy's Big Ben poster, and immediately pulled out one of my vintage Vogue patterns.  I enlarged the envelope illustration, and made a start.  It didn't take too long to work out that the texta that the Schoolboy used was way too thick for my purposes.  Fast forward a week, and after spending way too much time faffing around with my Rotring pens, I finally came to the conclusion that leaving them sit for 20 years and then expecting to resurrect them was asking a bit much!

I ended up using a 0.5mm 'Pentel for Film' marker that I thought I'd lost.  The actual drawing was quite quick, and here's my drawing after stage 1:

I'm finding it harder to find time to keep going than to actually do the construction, so here's where I'm up to now:

Here's a peek at how it looks underneath the top tracing paper layer.  The process's quite simple, but I plan to show you more of a 'how to' once I'm finished...

I'm off to sign up and check out the new 'creative spaces' over here and here.  I know, I know, if I did less of that I might be finished the picture by now, but I do love seeing what everyone else is up to!

Inspired by the Schoolboy

The Schoolboy's doing a 'show and teach' on Big Ben to his class tomorrow.  He was determined to draw a picture of it himself.  His control freak of a mother was a bit worried about what that'd look like (he's brilliant, but most of what he draws is about 5cm tall and full of minute detail - not really visible in a classroom setting).  This is what we came up with:

The drawing isn't actually 'his' - its a tracing of an enlarged version of this colouring page.  He's done a brilliant job though, and using architectural tracing paper allowed him to add colour to the drawing from behind, rather than having to colour it in / trace using coloured paper.

I'm so impressed I think I'm going to have a shot using this vintage pattern, which you'll have seen before. (although now that I'm looking at it I'm torn between this one, Vogue 2678, and Vogue 2650).   I have a million things to do first, but I'm 'home alone' with the kids tonight, so I can see the priorities being shifted a little, provided of course that I can decide which pattern to use...

Tuesday morning trifle

I bought a new diary yesterday.  I had one already, but it wasn't totally to my liking, and I'm a sucker for stationary.  Anyway, I got myself a student diary from Officeworks - week to an opening on one side, to-do ("homework") lists on the other.

I'm trying to get organised, and writing in all the kinder orientation times (1/2 hour here, 1 hour there, ramping up to 2 1/2 hours twice a week) reminded me that if I turned up to kinder with the boy at the wrong time it wouldn't be the first time (the Schoolboy and I were 1/2 hour early for 4yo kinder one day because I got the time wrong - and that was 2nd term!).  I know that weekly appointments should become ingrained into your memory, and I hate writing them into my diary every week, but I do forget, and I have been known to double-book over things that I've been doing at the same time of the week for years!  So this morning before breakfast I made myself this nifty little bookmark for my new diary.  I haven't laminated / contacted it, because I figure that things do change a bit, but its going to be my page-keeper as well as my reminder notice for the next little bit at least.

I've put my 'Project 52' list on the back as a reminder, plus some magnets to keep it in place.

Hope you're all having a great day!

Inspired by...

I've just been doing some blog surfing, and come across betweenthelines.  There are some great step-by-step instructions for stuff to make from home, including how to make fabric covered notebooks really simply using Vliesofix.  It got me inspired to make a folder of sorts for the schoolboy.  It's big enough to fit A4 paper (I'm going to give it to him with some new paper in it, but after that it'll be a great way of using the reverse side of stuff from the study).

Here's what I did:

I cut some cardboard to a bit bigger than A3 - the blue sheet is A4 size, and I wanted it a bit bigger all round.  My card was reasonably thick, but you could use a manilla folder if you didn't have anything suitable.

I then cut some Vliesofix roughly to size, and ironed it onto the back of the fabric left over from the pencil box.

I peeled off the paper and then ironed the fabric onto the cardboard (I put the backing paper and some baking paper between the cardboard and the ironing board to stop the overhang sticking to the ironing board).

Next I trimmed the material to the same size as the cardboard (not as easy as I expected to get a straight cut - next time I think I'd use a rotary cutter and ruler, or the idea below).

I hole-punched some A4 paper, and then connected them together with a Tubeclip - this will allow the schoolboy to add/subtract paper from his folder easily, and as its adhesive on the back I could then stick the pages in with no problems.

What I'd do differently next time:

• I was using leftovers, and had only just enough fabric and an odd-shape (and again, only just large enough) piece of Vliesofix, and didn't do a brilliant job of lining up the pattern with the edge of the cardboard.  I think ideally you'd have a fresh bit if Vliesofix so that you could line up the straight edge with the pattern on your fabric.  

• I had trouble working out where the edge of my cardboard was when I put the fabric on top of it, which made lining up the pattern even more difficult.  Next time I'd put the fabric face-down and then the cardboard/book on top of it.  I think you'd be able to see through the fabric to line up the pattern more successfully that way.

• The overhanging Vliesofix was a bit tacky after I'd peeled it off the baking paper after stage 3.  I'd be tempted to leave an overhang all round like you do when you're putting Contact on a book, and fold the edges in the same way.  That way the edges are protected and you don't have to worry about making sure that the edges are cut perfectly straight.

Inspired by...

Ever since I saw some cute 'x mark the spot' bookmarks on the kootoyoo website, I've been wanting to make a truckload of them as gifts and to replace the envelopes and old receipts that always seem to end up as my bookmarks.  Well, I've sorted my magnetic issues, and yesterday I made one.  I was a bit dismayed by how clumsy the end product looked (brought about, I suspect, by my impatience and use of a sewing machine rather than hand stitching - I'll try again another time), but I really like my paper variants.  I've made a couple, and coated the scrapbooking paper with contact for durability.  They're great - you can hold the book upside down (or put it in your handbag) and the bookmark doesn't fall out, and I think they're easier to find in the book than the traditional version.  Thanks for the inspiration Kirsty!

Kid-friendly Christmas garlands

Thought I'd share with you our family Christmas version of the paper garlands at art as life: what is to be is up to me.  My ideal was all white stars, but the boys were insistent about using their new Christmas stamp (I got both the stars and the stamp from Riot).  Result was so effective that the neighbour across the road came to see if we had new fairy lights!  Maybe one day I'll get my simple version, but in the meantime this's a very kid-friendly craft idea for Christmas. If you'd like another Christmas alternative / a 'how to', check out the snowflake version at maya-made.