The Garden Journal

Hello everyone!  It's so nice to have you stop by.  It's been quiet around here lately but I've been busy still organizing my work space (glad to say that's almost finished!) and this weekend I got out into the garden to start the spring clean up!  It's so nice to be seeing the garden starting to awaken.  And, that thought ties in with the project I'm going to share with you today. 

For a few years I've wanted to make an early spring themed garden journal.  I love pansies and all the early spring flowers.  There is nothing that makes me happier than seeing the first yellow crocuses blooming out my front door.  Well, I finally decided that this was going to be the second of my long unfinished projects to be completed.  It had been sitting around for so long that my ideas for it changed quite a bit.  But, I kept the theme of  pansies and violas.

 

 

I decided to use an envelope book from Graphic45.  That gave me pockets for journaling cards.  The back cover has a flap that comes around to the front for the closure.  I used papers to cover each envelope, back, front and flaps.  The fun part was embellishing each page.  I used stamps, stencils, paint, embossing and die cuts along with pansy themed embellishments of all kinds, including some handmade ribbon pansies and fabric scraps of vintage pansy themed images.  The best way to illustrate what I did is to show you some pictures.  So, here goes.

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

These pictures give you the idea of how I covered the envelopes.  The remaining pages are similar.   I covered each flap with a different patterned paper while using solid colored papers in different shades of lavender for the main part of the envelope.  Using the lavender paper was a challenge for me because I don't use that color very often.  But, I was pleased with how it worked out. 

 

 

The front cover was stamped with a collage of different stamps.  I used a stamp with a meadow of wild flowers and pansies on a piece of torn water color paper which I colored with Distress Markers.  A die cut from the new TH foliage strip die and a stamped label finished the cover.   The flap was covered with more of the lavender paper and a "cap" of green die cut paper.  For a closure I used a beautiful china button painted with pansies that my dear friend Christen sent me several years ago.  I used a variety of  ribbons with paper beads and a Lucite flower and a leaf on the ends.  Here are some details.

 

 



 



 

 

 

 

 

I decided to keep the journaling cards simple.  I embossed three of them and stamped the other three.  That gives me plenty of room to attach a seed packet and make notes. 

 

 

 

 

 

So there you have it.  My long planned early spring gardening journal. It changed from when I first gathered supplies to start it.  I was thinking more dimensional, with more embellishments, but my style is evolving and I wanted a journal that was more functional but still artistic and decorative.  I'm looking forward to putting it to use this year. 

 

Thank you for joining me today.  I really appreciate your visits and your comments.  I hope you have a great day and a wonderful week.



 





 

 

 



Spring, in beads and the garden

These are some of the pansies in pots around my garden.   I plant pansies in pots in the fall and they usually winter over pretty well.  This year, because our winter was so mild, they have done really well.  So well in fact that some of them are pot bound now!  But, they look so pretty, and add so much color to the awakening garden!   I love pansies and they are available in wonderful colors and combinations of colors.

Like these beauties.

They look luminous, don't they?  And, you won't be surprised to know that I always buy orange pansies in the fall.  I love them and pair them with purple, yellow, deep blue or the black ones that are available before Halloween.  I love the way they look in the spring, as a harbinger of the brightness to come in summer.  Here are some of the orange ones that I have in a pot out my kitchen window.

I just love them!

But, all this spring beauty  in the garden has inspired my beading too.  I made this bracelet based on a design I had seen in one of the beading magazines several years ago.  I don't remember which magazine it was, and I adapted the design to fit my taste, but I really love it.

As I recall, the original had rectangular pieces which then had beads strung inside.  I found these oval mother of pearl components at Michael's last year and decided I could use them in this kind of a design.  They look dark in this picture but they are actually a soft turquoise.  I gathered up odds and ends of flower beads, leaf beads, crystals and seed beads and went to work creating a garden in each oval. I strung the ovals and then worked back using fringe stitch in each oval.  I had so much fun creating this bracelet.  It was fun to make and it's fun to wear.  I feel I  have my garden on my wrist when I wear it! Here's a close up of one of the ovals.

This was a fun bracelet to make.  I had come in from working in the garden and I really wanted to continue the gardening with my beads. 

I'm off to work on the last of my Beading Babes projects and finish up my project for Amy's blog hop next week!

I hope you have a wonderful day.  Thanks for stopping by.