Scrapbook of Scraps Progress Report #1: Manual Die Cutting

Manual die cutting machines and nesting dies are a great investment if you enjoy papercrafting projects. My creative world totally changed when I got my Spellbinder Platinum machine and saw how perfectly uniform I could make swatch cards, easily cut different shapes of paper, and, relevant to my scrapbook project, make tiny frames for tiny pictures.

Let’s start with the dies…

You will hear me talk about Waffle Flower a lot. They are a US company that works with designers to create unique stamps, dies, and other papercrafting products that you truly can’t find anywhere else. Today, I spent the afternoon cutting frames for my Scrapbook of Scraps project.

*Frame made from Astrobrights cardstock.*

After I made several frames, I got out some of my scraps to see what interesting compositions I could make with my sheets upon sheets of color-tester splats.

*A bunch of QoR Watercolor splats waiting to be put to good use*.

QoR watercolors are super-vivid so this page of tests has lots of potential to chop up into teeny-tiny pictures. I love the way the colors flow on this particular section, but I felt like it needed some Finetec Iridescent Watercolors to make it SPARKLE. Note that I haven’t glued the frame on yet. I was just using it to find my favorite color composition.

After I added some shine and let the paint dry, I cut it the little section out and glued it onto the frame.

*Look at the sparkle! It reminds me of an eyeshadow pallette.*

Here are two others that I finished today. These are re-purposed Sennelier test strips.

I haven’t glued any of them in my scrapbook yet because I’m not sure where I’m going to place them. Plus, I didn’t want to deal with anymore glue on my hands.

Stay tuned for my progress on the Scrapbook of Scraps!

Making a Scrapbook…Out of Scraps.

I have a seemingly endless pile of color-test scraps in my studio that I couldn’t bring myself to throw away. They are so bright that it would be a shame to see them in a trash can.

Papercrafting is one of my other favorite hobbies so I decided to assemble a scrapbook comprised primarily of literal scraps.

A tiny selection of my mountains of scraps

I chose a Ranger Dylusions Flip Journal because the pages are made of thick cardstock that will accept water and ink. I haven’t tested it yet, but I’m fairly certain that it won’t buckle or bleed based on the thickness and texture of the cardstock. I also liked it because it has a thick outer sleeve with an envelope attached to the inside. My only complaint about the journal is that the right-side corners are rounded which makes it difficult to put a decorative border on the edges.

I wanted to put a bright border on the inside and outside covers, so I painted ROY G. BIV squares using my beloved Sennlier L’Aquarelle paints on a long piece of Strathmore watercolor paper. I didn’t want to use thick cotton paper because I wanted to be sure the covers closed correctly.

Highly-pigmented, smooth, gorgeous Senneliers.

After the paper dried, I cut some 1″ wide strips to glue on the edge of the covers. It’s not perfect – I blobbed glue too heavily on one of the strips – but, despite the glue disaster, it turned out well.

Glue splat: lower left corner of the strip. *facepalm*

Close-up of the inside cover. No glue blobs. I learned my lesson.

I’m probably going to put a few more things on the cover, but this was a fun Saturday project. Stay tuned for my progress!

Watercolor Pigment Comparison Swatches: Page 1

Cerulean, Cobalt, and Ultramarine Pigments

*Left to right: Cerulean, Cobalt, and Ultramarine Swatches*

I’ve been fascinated with how watercolor paints of the same name vary across brands, even when the same pigment is used. For example, you would expect Daniel Smith’s cerulean blue to look nearly identical to Winsor & Newton’s cerulean blue, right? As you can see from the photo, that’s not the case. I decided to do a study of how colors vary between brands. This deceptively simple-looking page actually took months to finish.

Here is the work that went into its creation:

I cataloged all of my watercolor paints into an Excel spreadsheet and noted properties like pigment number, lightfastness, transparency, staining, and granulation.
I used a die cutter to make swatch cards and the pages which I will eventually bind.
I swatched the paints I wanted to compare. Blues are my favorite, so I started with my most frequently-used
I used silicon stamps to assign numbers to the swatches for easy identification.
After I finish my pages, they are going to be bound in a little flipbook which I’m going to keep next to my desk for easy access to the comparisons.

The most important lesson I learned when I began my research is that color names are less important than pigment numbers. Instead of buying colors based on trade names, I look at the pigment listed on the tube to get a better idea of what the color will actually look like.

Stay tuned for new pigment comparisons! I’ve done swatches for Opera Pink, Viridian, and Lemon Yellow that I’m excited to share!

* I know that I misspelled “Winsor” in the pigment descriptions on the finished page. It will haunt me forever.