I would like to proudly introduce my as-yet-tiny Etsy shop, TinyRelics!
Here I’ll feature the mini shrines I make from altered tins and boxes; you can also get a custom-made shrine or portable altar of your own.
Surf on over and check out the three brand new babies I’ve listed, including this little guy:
I haven’t been doing much with my art journal in the last week or two, as I’ve been otherwise occupied with new creative endeavors, most notably the mini shrines I’m working on, which will, I hope, end up on Etsy very soon.
The other project I’ve been at is revamping my personal recipe book. A while back I did the outside, which I’ve mentioned; now it was time to do the inside. With all the paper craft stuff I have now it seemed like a crime not to make my recipes prettier.
The result you see below; they’re not complicated, but they jazz up their content and make it a lot more fun to page through the book. Behind each divider are page protectors containing the recipes I consider “mine” – some come from other sources, which I’ve credited wherever I can, but I’ve made all of them enough times to call them tried and true. Behind those are photocopied recipes from books (mostly library books); behind that are recipes clipped from magazines, glued to cardstock. I also tucked some sticky notes and page flags into the binder’s pockets so that I can make notes on recipes if I need to.
These aren’t the best pictures, but the gist is apparent.
The first thing you see when you open the book: the “breakfast” divider.
I tried to keep the fancy stuff to a minimum and stuck with a few stickers and basic backgrounds. Two things were necessary: that the recipes be readable, and that they be protected from spatters. Each sheet of cardstock, which has recipes on both sides, is in a plastic page protector. I can replace things way more easily than you’d think.
I left space deliberately so I can add new recipes later. Wow, this angle really makes it look like the red is crazy uneven – it’s not.
I used a circle punch to make this one a weird shape. I do love punches – when I was a kid I loved to play with the hand-held hole puncher and take the paper dots it left and arrange them in patterns. Now I can do it on a much larger scale.
A recipe from Hannah Kaminsky – I used circles punched out of a scrap of paper as simple embellishments. I like the effect.
I do love my Brownie in a Mug. Funny – the flowers look like they’re stuck to the outside of the page protector because the contrast is so wonky. Rest assured, they’re stuck to the recipe itself.
I sure do have a lot of chai-related recipes.
Materials Used:
Recollections white cardstock
Office Depot house brand plastic sheet protectors – 8 1/2×11″
Office Depot white D-ring binder
Die Cuts With a View “Pocket Full of Posies” paper stack
Bazzill cardstock – red, green, etc.
Papers and stickers from a variety of sources
EK Tools circle punches, 1/2″ and 1 1/2″
Listening to: Aimee Mann, “Save Me.”
Eating and/or Drinking: A nice frosty Coke Zero with a bit of maraschino cherry juice.
Reading: Why I Despise the Great Gatsby. Right there with ya, dude. I hated this book when I read it, and have absolutely zero desire to see the movie. There are already plenty of shows and films about horrible rich people. Calling something a “classic” is not enough to convince me to go anywhere near it.
Watching: It’s finale season! I’m kind of relieved, actually. I have completely lost my fangirl zeal for TVD, though my other shows are holding up beautifully under the strain of a full season’s storytelling. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still watching TVD, I just…it makes me tired. Every time I go to write a recap I end up doing nothing but bitching, which is not what I want the recaps to be. I like to write affectionate snark – I don’t hold TV shows sacred and above analysis, but if I’m not enjoying the show, why would I spend five hours writing a recap of it? There are of course things I still love about it, and my intention is to at the very least do a recap of The Originals (because it was so delightfully, wonderfully different) and the season finale. Don’t worry, I’m not giving up on our show, but I’m just so over the cure and Silas and every character making the same damn speeches over and over again. I don’t give a rat’s ass about who lives or dies, because there are no longer any consequences to death; that’s why the whole thing with Elena and Matt’s “yellow crayon” scene fell flat to me despite Nina Dobrev’s once and future mad skills. It just didn’t feel like Matt dying would mean anything, because there were so many ways he could come back, and at least 3 reasons why he probably wasn’t dead to begin with. At this point with all the Silas nonsense you don’t even know what’s actually real anyway, so how can you get invested in it? It’s hard to give a damn if there are no stakes…even when there are actual stakes. The only thing I’m really enjoying is that Katherine is back, although it amuses me hearing people talking about an “epic showdown” between her and Elena, because let’s face it, there is nothing remotely epic about Elena Gilbert.
Wearing: My fluffy pink and black skull socks.
Making: This weekend I finished a Shiva mini shrine – here’s a sneak peek.
Grateful for: Glossy Accents. Every crafty person has a favorite adhesive, and a lot of them are fans of this stuff. Not only does it stick things to other things, it can be coated over paper to create a sort of enameled finish that’s all shiny. The best part, for me, is that it has such a tiny precision tip you can get it into tight spaces that something like Tacky Glue would just glob right over.
Aha! Just under the wire.
Listening To: My End-of-April playlist, which I compiled on YouTube for everyone’s enjoyment. It’s partly songs I’ve been rocking out to on the radio when I drive, and partly old favorites.
Eating and/or Drinking: I can’t seem to get enough citrus these days. Fresh oranges, limeade, lemonade, orange Italian soda…bring it on. Just not orange with chocolate – that’s nasty. I’m also very much enjoying using my Keurig brewer to make a cup of coffee I put in the freezer for half an hour and then pour over ice with soy milk and vanilla syrup; I know you can brew right into a glass of ice, but all that does is melt the ice and leave you with watery coffee. Since I’m using a syrup for sweetener instead of granulated sugar I don’t have to worry about it not fully dissolving in cold liquid.
Reading: I’ve become temporarily obsessed with altered Altoids tins – I’ve made several portable altar/shrines over the years and recently rediscovered my love for them, so I’ve been browsing Pinterest boards out the wazoo. I’ve found several fun articles listing cool ways to recycle the tins – everything from making a USB charger to a trebuchet to a tiny grill to a mini amp to a guitar, as well as the more obvious survival and sewing kits. Check ‘em out:
What Can You Do With an Altoids Tin?
22 “Manly” Things to Do With an Altoids Tin
How to Make Altoid Tin Traveling Altars
And We All Shrine On – my Pinterest board for shrines and altars
Wearing: An extremely worn out and torn Harry Potter t-shirt with Harry’s wanted poster listing him as Undesirable #1.
Making: In addition to my tin shrine research, I’ve started redoing my personal recipe binder; I love how it looks on the outside (you can see it here), but with all the paper crafting supplies I have, it seemed wrong not to make the inside pretty as well.
Grateful For: DVR.
I recently switched pharmacies, and the new place has these great little paper bags printed with old-timey advertisements for drugs and cures. I really wanted to do something with one of them, and since all of the prescriptions I have are related to my mental illness, I thought I’d make the page about that. It’s nothing earthshattering, but I liked how it turned out.
I blurred out the bottom section on purpose since it’s the actual journal part of the journal. You can probably read it if you really try, but I thought it would be best if the eye didn’t immediately go there.
The background, as I said, was a bag, dyed with Tim Holtz Distress Ink (tea dye and vintage photo). The metal charm is also from the Tim Holtz product line (the man is everywhere in the crafting world, I swear); I printed out the pic on my HP, and the rest is from pages I had already torn out of the journal to accomodate its expanding girth thanks to all the extra layers of paper I’ve been adding. Same inks used to distress those pages. The title was stamped – just a generic stamp alphabet I got at Michael’s. They’re really frustrating to use because you can’t line them up properly, so they’re only really good for words you don’t need perfectly straight.
The top bit is the Wikipedia description of Bipolar Disorder.