It's All About The Love 2019 Challenge

Beginning Feb 1st, I'll be sharing daily entries in 

"It's all about the love."  I share the prompts with you in case 

anyone else would like to jump in with me.  

Every day I will record a prompt in a special book I'm preparing 

for this challenge.  There are no rules.  No worries, or 

stress.  Follow along and I'll share with you how I'll be doing 

it on my end.  

 This is an old book I bought on Ebay or Etsy.. I can't remember which and 

I actually got two.  The other one is red and so beautiful that I want to keep

it as it is.  This book ... is beautiful as well but she will hold fourteen days of 

my artsy mess.  I have no plans as of yet what I will do each day.  Some days 

I may want to just write about the prompts... or maybe I'll tear out some watercolor

paper and sketch something and paint, or maybe I'll scribble, or splatter, or glue ..

who knows what will happen?  This is utter proof that any one 

can just go with the flow and have fun enjoying the process of beautiful

messy, meaningful art.  

 First thing I did was gut my book.  

Who gasped?  I heard someone.  Maybe three or four of you... in unison?

It's okay... calm down.  

It's really gonna be alright.  

I shuddered too the first time I tried this. 

My book had the pages sewn in so it was easier to cut them

out carefully.  

If you have an old book you want to do this in as well... go for it.

 I know there are many ways to alter a book and just let me tell you

I am winging it.  

Through Advent I did one as well this same way and enjoyed the process 

so much.  This Love book is kind of the same idea.  

Anyways, I found some pretty papers in my pile.  I love pink roses

and liked how the pink went with my green book.  

I glued the scrapbook papers to the inside covers and 

used tape on the inside of the spine.  Mine is a regular book tape 

that I bought on amazon.  But duct tape works too.  

Digging through my paper stashes, I pulled out a few pages of plain printer paper, 

old ledger paper, tags, file folders,  pages from the actual book because they're so beautiful and aged, .. tracing paper, tomoe river paper, and other scrapbook papers I liked. 

Then, I heated up some dark instant coffee, and dipped the pages in the coffee to 

darken them up.  I had parchment paper on the kitchen table, and old material over that, then 

dipped away and laid it out to dry.  We had our wood stove going at the time and they dried quickly.

Please note I'm sharing all this by things I've read and learned from others. 

Nothin new here.  

 Then, I went through my lace, and pulled out some of it and dyed it as well. 

Also old embroidered doilies that were messed up.  

I stained and dried them in the coffee and did something I hardly ever do....

  -- pulled out the iron and actually ironed it all.  

Ironing paper is much more fun than clothes... and the smell?

ahhhhh coffee break!  Yum.  

This was my pile when it was all done.  I stained a lot of paper!

I'll have paper for the rest of the year to play with I sure hope!  

On some of the pages, I used the embroidered pieces and stitched them randomly 

on the olde featherweight machine.  

Sewing paper is right up there with ... peanut butter toast with bananas on top to me. 

It's heaven on earth.  

I did a few pages... stitching tags, and making little pockets as well.

By sewing paper,... please let me explain that I love it real messy too.

Crooked ... and tattered, and long tails of thread.  

If it's perfect looking at all... there is something in me that wants to 

really mess it up pretty.  

?  I know??  

It's weird.  

You can think it. 

I understand.

To put my simple book together,

I trimmed papers to fit inside using book pages that came out of the

book as a guide.  I measured nothing.  I hate math!  

Plus we already went over the beautiful mess thing.  

So I stacked papers that made me happy.  You know the stains that were 

beautiful, and blobs of coffee that made me giddy?  Then I grabbed a needle and thread..

I used both of these in my stash 

and threaded them together on a big needle and 

after folding my papers all together in half,

I poked holes and stitched them together.  

Some of my original book pages were not together so I used

masking tape down there center to hold together then 

sewed the whole signature together so that I could have a double page 

spread each for fourteen days.  I actually added two or three more papers 

for just in case I wanted them.  If they're not enough... no worry... I'll tape some in.

For my advent book I did not stitch anything together.  

How I held it all together was just tying a long lace or ribbon on the inside

of the book around the spine and tied it.  Then all the folded pages tuck right inside

under the lace.  Does that make sense?

Here is my ready'd book.  

You can't really see it in this photo but there is a narrow lace tied on the front of the spine that 

holds my paper inside.  The wide lace you see on the front with the silver glittery stuff is an elastic ribbon from walmart.  I just sewed it together to fit inside the front book cover.  So it's technically like a stitched loop then slid on the front cover to hold the other baubles I've stitched on it so far.  I'll probably add to it.  The other shiny ribbons are tied to the narrow lace on the spine.  

I'll take another picture of that tomorrow but wanted to publish this today in case anyone else wants to join in and would like to do anything shared here today you'll have time.  You don't have to do anything like I've done.. heck if you want to use the prompts you could use a notebook and just write if you so desire.  This is just all for fun... 

I've got to get ready for my little grand coming!  

It's our playday today!   

But I'll share more photos tomorrow. 

Thanks for stopping in...

Leaonmary