Tuesday, August 11, 2015

make a spectacle of yourself!

yepper, that's what we want you to do for this week's challenge at shopping our stash! so will we all be channeling our inner kardashian? ummmmmmm... no. howsabout we just make projects with eyeglasses on them? yeah, that'll work. to this end, i constructed a somewhat fab pair o'shades, if i do say so myself... and apparently, i do! :)

black and white photo pages from a very old falling-apart book about hawaii i found at the library booksale; palm tree stamp purchased in a pearl city giftshop by my friend barb, c.1995 (!); epoxy palm tree + tiki sticker: (very old) creative imaginations; yellow chipboard thickers: american crafts (via the lovely miss leslie, ta v much!); sunglasses constructed from a scrap of ranger glossy black cardstock using a free clipart image, see below for details; adhesives: elmers brand gluetape, xyron, sewing machine; book covers made of paper accents medium weight chipboard; endpapers: frances meyer; bookring and interior cardstock pages: staples; font: splash

ok, so yeah, i'm still stuck in hawaii mode. and let's face it, there are only so many "aloha" birthday cards a girl can use, lol. on the other hand, my etsy shop's stock of travel books is sadly depleted, so i just shifted gears and made one of those with a sort of vintage hawaiian vibe. the cover is 5x7; the interior pages are just over 4x6.5". it's bound by a single book ring to facilitate adding postcards, brochures and other fun "vacation stuff" while on the road.


but my favorite thing is the pair of shades, which i built from the ground up. it was easier than you'd think, too, want to see? the main thing is knowing how to cheat, which i'm pretty good at. yes, i could draw a pair of sunglasses, and in fact the idea of this was inspired by something i drew for ICAD, but i wanted this pair to be symmetrical, and i also wanted to be able to re-use the same shape in future, so i found a free clipart image online, and printed it within the size of a 3x5 photo on some sturdy index stock.


it's well known that i loathe cutting with a craft knife, but this one i found at staples last winter is by far the most comfortable handle i've ever encountered, and for interior cuts you just have to sort of suck it up. to maximize my results i attached a scrap of clear inkjet transparency to the cardstock, so i'd wind up with a stencil as well as a template.


two stencils, actually... one positive and one negative; or i suppose you could call it one stencil and one mask? plus the cardstock template, which is what i used for this project.


i traced the glasses frame on the back of some glossy black cardstock, cut it out, and then backed it with the palm trees i'd stamped on a scrap of bookpaper that looked a bit like a sunset. i adhered the little collage of glasses, palm tree, tiki and "aloha" to the beach photo, which i left large enough to wrap around the front cover of the book. since i like the front and back covers to coordinate, i found a second black and white image that went pretty well.


i trimmed up some pretty hibiscus-patterned cardstock to use as endpapers, and made two week's worth of pages with the days on them, some fun hawaiian word pages, and a bunch of blank extra pages, and attached everything with a sturdy book ring:


i've used leslie's gorgeous crooked stamper sketch challenge #7, though you can see that i've rotated it 90-degrees counter-clockwise; and admittedly, it's still a pretty loose take. but it's an awesome sketch and it really did inspire me, so i bet you'll like it, too:


speaking of stuff i *KNOW* you'll like: all of my darling dt sisters are making a spectacle of themselves at SOS this week, too;  and there's no way you want to miss that! ♥

7 comments:

  1. This is awesome, love those glasses!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I LOVE how you make things work. Those glasses - mask, stencil, etc. - genius!

    And thanks for playing my CS Sketch Challenge! I can see the sketch, so no worries!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ohhhhhhhh fab travel book, fab take on the CS challenge and now we totally NEED to have a Kardashian inspired challenge!! LOL

    ReplyDelete
  4. Awesome travel booklet, great use of the glasses in the collage. Great take on the sketch too.

    ReplyDelete
  5. What a super cute idea! I can "see" why you would like this design - it's so bright and pretty.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Another cool travel book of fun from my LFL :)

    ReplyDelete

the *BEST* part of blogging is the comments, dontcha think? thanks for taking time to leave one! ~♥~