A White Wedding

Just squeezing in a few quick images to post before Tricia coming. The next week will be pretty hectic. I was hoping to have this book finished by the time that she came. Don't think that will happen. I had so many set backs with this book from the beginning. It started out as a children's Bible board book. It originally had about 25 pages. I ended up removing several pages, almost half as a matter of fact, to allow for the expansion due to added paper and embellishments. While posting an entry into it, the spine just exploded. Had a heck of a time rebuilding the book and almost ended up throwing it out. I ended up reinforcing the spine with Tyvek and sewing the binding. it should hold up well now. This just once again confirms my believe that I should just bind my own books rather than chancing an existing book.

Making a few ATCs

I have joined a few ATC swaps that I am trying to hurry and get done before my sister, Tricia comes. When she gets here we plan on working on charms together and possibly attend a wedding if we have some time. One of the ATC swaps is an ABC swap. I am rather excited about this one as I think it's a fun idea, but I have to admit I have been having trouble with coming up with ideas that I am really pleased with. This house photo is an old one of "The Baker House" (which at one time was painted pink) in town. I got the
image from the historic museum archives awhile back. After making the cards, which are actually shaped liked the house, I put a thin layer of gesso mixed with a glaze over them and then sanded them. This gave them much more of a vintage look. This Egg card is quite thick. The image of the egg is actually suspended in the frame (which has many layers of paint and has been sanded a bit) with string that is wrapped around the frame to hold it in place. The frame is edged in a metallic gold, which sets it off nicely. I really like working with shaped cards and the more dimensional egg card, rather
sets them apart from the regular ATCs. This next card is not for a swap, but just kind of happened. It is probably my favorite cards that I have made recently. The image is actually a laser copy of a spread made in the first Altered Book I ever made. After all this time it's still one of my favorites. I am enjoying this somewhat free time experimenting with charms and working on ATCs, but after my sisters visit I'm back to working on inventory for festival and can hopefully get back to the collage dolls that have been on hold for so very long. The rest of my ATCs can be viewed on the web site -
http://WWW.IngridDijkers.com/ArtistTradingCards.html

Some new charms

After a bit of practicing I think I have the hang of soldering. The learning process was a lot less painful than I thought it would be. I have joined 2 different charm swaps. What fun! I have already mailed off one package and the next should be ready to go today or tomorrow. I am looking forward to receiving the charms back from the swap to see what everyone else has come up with. I feel the domino charms are rather plain, but I just couldn't find anything else that seemed to work nicely with them, the domino halves on their own was just much nicer. The bulb was kind of the
same situation. I tried many things that just didn't work and finally settled for the bell and crystal to go with with it (I think mostly because of the wonderful little tinkling sound that it makes). My sister, Tricia is coming from Australia in a few weeks and we plan to experiment on these charms together. Between the 2 of us we have a lot of ideas. We should be able to come up with some outrageous stuff. I really look forward to working on this with her. It should also be interesting to see how this soldering and charm making will end up working itself into the rest of my work ... or not. I think that it probably will though. it lends itself well to everything else I do. Regardless, a new learned skill never goes to waste.