Artsydori Love and a GIVEAWAY!

A big welcome to all of you who have come from the StencilGirl Talk blog! 

If you haven't been at StencilGirl Talk, you need to! I wrote a guest post there, and it was all about how I made an Artsydori and another project in my unPlanner using StencilGirl stencils.

You have come to the right place! I am hosting a GIVEAWAY!!

Yes, I will give away one of these Artsydori sets to one lucky person in celebration of my new adventure with the StencilGirl Creative Team!
See the details at the end of this post.

Artsydori #1 is on StencilGirl Talk blog, so you need to go visit me there to see it. :)

Artsydori Set  #2

 the Artsydori

It measures like the original Traveler's Notebook by Midori: approximately 9 inches (23cm) tall and about 5 1/4 inches (23cm) wide

funky stitching, generous and well-placed pen loop

The inside with aqua coloured quality elastic.

The Artsydori fits four of my generously sized notebooks inside.

Four coordinating hand bound notebooks to go inside. These are funky machine stitched with matching thread. The inside pages are plain white cardstock.

All the designs are made using StencilGirl stencils!

Links to the stencils used to make this Artsydori and coordinating notebooks:

Ornamental Petals Screen

Kilim Patterns

Geometric Sky

To make your own Artsydori, do check out this great class where I learned to make them!!

JunqueArt

Here I have another one that I just made last week.

Artsydori #3

And here is the dori with the coordinating notebooks which I had fun making with gelliprints and StencilGirl stencils!

Some funky notebooks. I love these new stencils I used for this, designed by Mary Beth Shaw!

April 2016 Club stencils

The coloring was hard to capture on this one. The pink and black should look more purple, and the yellow is actually more of a green color.

Artsydori #4

I used the amazing new stencils by Mary Beth Shaw. They come in the

April StencilGirl Club set.

I highly recommend this club! You get exclusive stencils every month. Check it out HERE.

I also used stencils from two previous club month sets:

September 2015

February 2016

I don't have the matching notebooks for the above dori, so if you win, and this one is your favorite, it'll just be the dori, not a set.

I have started to make some to sell from time to time, so if you see one that you'd like to purchase, please email me.

customscrapbooksbyanna (at) gmail (dot) com

This one is sold, so you can't pick this one as your favorite (#1,2,3 or 4), but I wanted to show this one to you too.

Here are the instructions to enter the giveway:

How: In the comment section, tell me which Artsydori is your favorite. You can choose the one on the StencilGirl Talk blog as well. In order to contact you if you are the winner, leave your email address like this: customscrapbooksbyanna (at) gmail (dot) com. If you are uncomfortable leaving your address, you can email me as well. My email address is the one I just mentioned. :)

When: I will draw randomly from all the comments and emails on Friday, May 5th, 2016 at noon.

This giveaway is open to anyone in Canada or USA. So sorry about those overseas. Shipping would kill me. :(

Why: to celebrate my new adventure with the Stencil Girl Creative Team! :) Whoot!!
To see more Artsydori posts see here:

Artsydori Land

Inspiration Wednesday 2016 Week One

Inspiration Wednesday Handmade Journal

So happy that you chose to visit me here!

Bless you!

♥♥♥  Anna  ♥♥♥

Stencil Girl Design Team Announcement

I have very exciting news today! StencilGirl has invited me to be on their design team and I couldn't be more thrilled! It'll be so fun to work with all those yummy stencils and the other fabulous ladies. 

See the announcement on the StencilGirl Talk blog.

Stay tuned for another exciting thing I am involved in, which I will publish soon. :)

I'm waving goodbye while amongst this gorgeous pile of painty StencilGirl stencils. 

Bye bye!

♥♥♥  Anna  ♥♥♥

April unPlanner Pages Part 01

Hi everyone! I'm back again with another unPlanner post. Can you tell I'm seriously in love with this project? Thanks so much to Rae Missigman, Lorraine Bell and Sandi Keene! Check out the details HERE. ♥♥♥

I started a new binder, as the first one is completely full!

I choose happy, summery colors of summery for April. I might be rushing summer a bit here, but it's what I need to do. I'm sure all you northerners understand, correct? ;)

April divider is a card I had made some time ago, using gelliprints, and I call it a paper quilt.

I added a white cardstock half circle, wrote out the month with my Zig Clean Color Waterbrush markers.Stitching in black all around, of course. ;)

This is the front of the watercolour calendar tip-in.

Calendar all ready to fill in with fun doodles. I'm loving it so much!!

For the reinforcement spine: if you have followed my blog the last two years, you might have seen my watercolour bubbles tutorial. I used my April colors, and instead of using watercolor pencils, I just used those Zig markers. I simply painted circles, and outlined them with a fine-line Sharpie marker in black. I stitched in black again, of course.

Week 14 PAC done. Again, revisiting my 2014 DLP design. The words scribbled onto the watercolour paper are the lyrics to a song very dear to me: Speak Life by Toby Mac. See that design HERE. I added two designs of orange ribbon to add interest, and I cut out one of the yellow bubbles in my design for the reinforcement hole. I love it! 

For April 1 and 2, I have these lovely circles on a white cardstock, which I printed the weekly view download on, the download that comes with the project. To see how I made these pages, I created a fun tutorial. It's right HERE. 

Yellow bubbles for the reinforcement spine. :)

To house the PACs, I again altered the pocket pages to fit. Black stitching...

Close-up are always good, right? Here they are. :)

Pocket for the second PAC is ready to go. 

April 3- 10 ready to be filled in. I can't quite believe how caught up I am!

And we're done for now!

Thanks for visiting!!

♥♥♥  Anna  ♥♥♥

Finger Painted Circles Weekly View Tutorial

I'm always looking for a new look for my weekly views in my unPlanner, one that accommodates my journaling spots. I am liking this one very much, so I have decided to give you a step-by-step.

This features:

- An analogous color scheme. I used red, pink, orange and yellow.

-7 circles fit randomly on two pages. My pages are 6"x8".

- Downloads from the Art5 unPlanner kit, but any lined pages would do.

-My watercolor bubbles paper for the reinforcement strips. See HERE for that tutorial.

-Sewing around edges and the reinforcement strips

-Day of the week stamps. I used the ones that come in the Art5 unPlanner kit.

Are you ready? Here goes:

Materials needed:

1.Paints in an analogous color scheme, meaning colors that are beside each other on the color wheel.

2. Lined paper
3. circle template - I used a roll of masking tape. It measures around 4" in diameter.

4. black Sharpie fine-line marker

5. stencil for the background: I used Tim Holtz Scribbles

6.white Uniball Signo gel pen

7. the watercolor bubbles paper

8. sewing machine

9. black thread

10. sponge

11. glue stick

12. paper trimmer

13. black ink pad

14. days of the week stamps - I used Rae Missigman's stamps that came in the unPlanner kit.

15. hole punch to fit for binder

16. hole reinforcements

Step 1: print out the downloads onto cardstock paper.

Step 2 : draw 4 circles on one page, and three on the other in a random way.

Step 3: Started painting circles with your fingers around the black ones you drew in. Use all the colors you picked. Paint with a very light hand, with only a bit of paint on your finger. This way you won't have bold slashes of color. You want each color to be broken up, random on the paper.

Tip: I find the yellow is too strong here, so below, I added more light touches of different colors, to add more dimension.

Keep adding more paint until you have a nice blend and coverage of painty circles. I like lots of variation of color for my circles. Let dry completely.

Step 4: With a sponge, add paint through the stencil to the remaining white space around the circles.

Step 5: I found the hot pink competed too much with the painty circles, so I added white paint over it. 

Step 6: Draw random dots with Uniball Signo gel pen on the circles.

Step 7: Draw broken circles on top of the circles, focusing on the inside circle and outer.

Step 8: Stamp the days of the week in the circles.

Step 9: doodle in the numbers with black Sharpie.

Step 10: trim the watercolor bubble paper into 3/4" strips and glue to reinforcement spines on both pages.

Step 11: punch the holes to fit binder.

Step 12: Add white reinforcement stickers to each hole.

Step 13: outline the edges of the reinforcement strips and the circles with the Sharpie.

Step 14: Sew with black thread around each page and the edges of the reinforcement strips.

And you're done! Now you are ready to journal your days! 

If you haven't seen the unPlanner project details, do check out this awesome project HERE! 

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. See you another time!

♥♥♥ Anna ♥♥♥