Make your own wash tape - tutorial!

Commercial Washi tapes

If you aren't familiar with Washi tape, it's a paper tape made with Japanese Washi paper patterns.  The tape has gotten so popular that now it's available in all kinds of patterns. The backing on Washi tape is not very sticky and I often have to glue it down to keep it in place.  Since it's a paper product, it has a translucent quality that plain printed tape does not have.
I got the idea for making Washi tape from a Joggles  tutorial, which showed making Washi tape with tissue paper and rubber stamps.  However, this tape is made using your own art images.  And the best thing about it is that it takes advantage of the Thumbnail Principle.  You know what I mean, in the old Flickr system for posting things your work initially appeared in a small thumbnail size version, and, voila!  It was instantly improved and way better looking.  I consistently call myself the Queen of the Thumbnail (as well as the Mistress of Longears - one cannot have too many titles!)
Here's how it's done:
Use Photoshop, iWork Pages or Word or Excel to make the vertical height of  your image equal to the desired width of your tape, anywhere from 1 1/2 inches to 1/2 inch or narrower.  Copy the image over and over in rows on a printable document.  It helps to space the rows so that they nearly touch each other.  That will make cutting the strips easier.

Printed without photo editing - a bit pale!

 Print the page on your printer.  If the image is pale like the one above, scan it into a jpeg and edit it in Photoshop or i Photo to intensify the colors.
Then print it on paper.  You can use several kinds of paper, but I prefer the translucent papers.  I used vellum which had a white leaf pattern printed on it, plain laser print vellum and tracing paper.  My printer had a hard time handling the trace paper.  It had no problem at all with the leaf-printed vellum, which is technically not recommended for laser printing.

The first row is 1 1/4 inches tall and is printed on the leaf-patterned vellum .  The row below is printed on laser vellum, ordered from Amazon.  Paper Source used to have it, but have not had any for a while.  The first row was printed without intensifying the colors in photo editing.


Next, apply a double-sided tape to the back of the printed page.  For this, I used 2 different products:
Scor Tape - available from Joggles and Peel-n-Stick that I bought ages ago at a JoAnn's or Michael's store.
To apply the tape, just peel off the protective coating from one side and stick it down to the back side of the printed page.  Cover the entire back with tape.


Finally, turn the page to the right side and cut the strips of washi tape!  When you want to use it, just peel off the other protective paper and stick it down!  This tape is a bit thicker than the real thing, but it has your very own imagery! 

Some of the final tapes

 If you try this, please post your results!  I'd love to see them.

So THAT's my problem!

Spring crop at Longears

I subscribe to Gretchen Rubin's Happiness Daily Moments of Happiness which seems a bit greedy of me since I am so very happily retired.  But I do it anyway!  This was today's message:

“He who chases two hares will catch neither.”
-Publius Syrus

Referencing all those journals - the lazy way

A page of thumbnail shots from one of my wildflower journals

I recently had reason to refer to something in an old journal, and it took me only 3 minutes to find it.  Knowing you journallers as I do, you, too have many, many volumes to keep track of.  I know there are people who have the discipline to number pages and create indexes but that's not me, and that's not how I recall information.....I recall events by the pictures I drew of them.  So, upon completing each journal, I photograph the cover and all the pages and print a contact sheet with thumbnails of every page.  I label the pages and pop them into a binder, divided by category (regular journal, garden journal, travel, etc.)  I can flip through those pages and find what I want very quickly!

A happy Thanksgiving to you!

Butter box journals have been very trendy among online journalists and I have finally found the most apropos subject for the butter-box journal:  my Thanksgiving prep guide!  After all, I use more butter for this meal than I have used all year.

If only my real to-do lists looked this nice all the time...so much more motivating!

I've incorporated the stickers and labels from the meal and included a critical path timeline for Turkey Day activities.  Once an architect, always an architect.  Like Eisenhower planning D-Day, I have given a lot of thought to this plan.  As a result, the beaches at Longears are safe for Freedom and the American Way.  (Remember, I live in Kansas!)

And for those well-intentioned people who want to help, I am holding a turkey feather drawing...on the back of each feather is a last-minute task just waiting for someone to accomplish.
I hope you and yours will have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day!

Ready to go: but not packed!

When it comes to packing for a trip, I've never gotten it right:  always too many of one thing and not enough of another (yes, it's fun to shop for a missing piece on holiday, but often that means missing too much other fun!)

 On my last trip, I started to emulate other journal keepers who start a trip journal by illustrating a trip journal with all the packed contents.  I shortly learned why I never went to fashion design school! Determined to find a better way than to draw each and every piece of clothing, I did a black and white cartoon drawing of basic wardrobe shapes.  Then I made copies and cut out pieces and colored them!
I arranged outfits for each day, coloring multiple copies of pieces I planned to use more than once.   Then I copied the finished page and tucked it into my suitcase.  Voila!  The most successful packing I've managed to date!

I dreamed I went to Paris with Carol of Paris Breakfasts.

And if you don't know Paris Breakfast, go over and acquaint yourself right now!

We were immediately drawn to this window.  Is it?  YES!  My first Parisian macaron tower!

The pastry case was filled with strictly ordered rows, as any Parisian case is arranged.

Though the macs were a bit depleted!

They even had Carol's beloved guimauve! (marshmallows)

The boxes were so elegant!  Shades of Laduree?

The boxes are dressed in beautiful silk ribbons.

This chest provided an elegant station for coffee and tea condiments.

The napkins and plastic to-go ware nestled beautifully inside the drawer in pink linens.

Even the plastic ice cream bowls were tres chic!

We decided to sit on this lovely period piece.

The Mariage Freres tea was perfection!

As I paid the bill, I glanced down to the countertop and saw the shop's card.  Natasha's Mullberry and Mott!  Why, that's not in Paris at all!  We were in Kansas!

Confessions of a would-be Travel Journaller

I confess!  When I  travel I always intend to draw and paint in my fabulously illustrated hand-made journal, showing all the places I visit and the meals I eat.  Reality often intervenes:  The tour guide gives me exactly 3 minutes to explore after he finishes talking....I start dinner with a lovely glass of wine, and suddenly, my sketching is a bit wobbly.  Or it's too dark to see what I'm eating, let alone draw it!
Undaunted, I take a photo!  Then, back at home, I can make the journal page at my leisure.
 Sometimes this approach actually results in a new approach.  Take this photo from the Rookery, a Chicago building designed by Burnham and Root in the late 19th century and renovated by a young Frank Lloyd Wright several decades later:

Mr. Wright clad the dark iron columns of the original building's atrium with white marble and added a gold leaf  pattern.  This is not what we tend to think of when we think of Wright's work but it did brighten the space considerably.  The tour guide did not allow us any time to linger after his brief talk, pointing out various features, so I took a photo.  When I got home, I considered drawing this detail, but I wanted a visual cue to remind me of the gold leaf, so I printed the photo at a size that would fit on my page.   Below, you can see part of the photo in the top half and the cut out area in the bottom.

I used an Xacto knife to cut out the pattern.  If I had planned to use this stencil again I would have printed on  card stock or a clear transparency sheet, but I only needed to use this once, and printed it on plain paper, which was much easier to cut than any other paper.  Laying the stencil on my page, I printed through it with a metallic gold stamp pad.  I was out of gold leaf, but if I'd had any on hand, I would have sponged the gold leaf adhesive through the stencil.  Note that I didn't bother cutting out the pattern on the entire photo, just enough to get one full repeat of the pattern.  That left a bit of space on the page for me to draw in the dark iron column inside the marble cladding.

One additional benefit of leaving some journalling to do after returning home:  I get to prolong the pleasure of the trip!