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Hello to all members, passers-by, curious onlookers, and shy lurkers, and welcome to our regular daily check-in post. Just leave a comment below to let us know how your current projects are progressing, or even if they're not.
Checking in is NOT compulsory, check in as often or as seldom as you want, this community isn't about pressure it's about encouragement, motivation, and support. Crafting is meant to be fun, and what's more fun than sharing achievements and seeing the wonderful things everyone else is creating?
There may also occasionally be questions, but again you don't have to answer them, they're just a way of getting to know each other a bit better.
Today's Question: No question today.
If anyone has any questions of their own about the community, or suggestions for tags, questions to be asked on the check-in posts, or if anyone is interested in playing check-in host for a week here on the community, which would entail putting up the daily check-in posts and responding to comments, go to the Questions & Suggestions post and leave a comment.
I now declare this Check-In OPEN!
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We sort of started our altered books today. We both picked out books and sort of discussed different things we could do, and looked through her old ones. I was the only one who actually started prep work, but she mostly just wanted to talk and that is perfectly fine.
She also ate today, her own idea even. I offered to take a bag of donations to the thrift store she's been wanting to take for over 2 years now. And she made plans with me to go to a play this Sunday - also her idea. Oh, and she worked on and all but finished the collage she started last week, on her own. Productive visit over all.
Book prep work I did in case anyone is interested: to make space for embellishments, I removed every 11th page to start with. Most people do more, but I like having as many pages to work with as possible and I can always remove as needed. After looking at my page idea list, I picked 6 "I know I am going to do for sure" pages and reinforced book pages for them by gluing together some pages. I plan on using wet mediums and the thickness will help. I also plan on having several pockets with tags in them in the book. To make space for the first one, I cut out 12 pages, then reinforced the page the pocket will be glued to. I also found a tag template, so I can make as many as I need from card stock. I just have to remember how to make a pocket, lol.
In other crafting news, this morning before I went to Lynn's, I had to go to the store to pick up something to have for dinner later. On a whim, I checked to see if the yarn I had been waiting months for was finally in. It was and they have decided to carry exactly 4 colors - white, light grey, variegated light grey, and a strange blue green color that isn't quite teal and isn't quite turquoise. I wasn't impressed.
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What a boring selection of yarn.
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Very much so!
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I'll be interested to hear more on the book's progress. Does it have a theme?
Sucks that the yarn shop is only carrying such boring colours =(
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The theme I have planned is 2023. Basically, things of note to me personally - my grand nephew being born, lyrics to the song I've been playing nearly constantly on repeat for weeks, a movie that moved me, how much worse my anxiety has gotten recently - that kind of thing. It's part of why I wanted to incorporate pockets, so I would have a way to include things I feel should be in there, but maybe not take up a whole page. It also gives me an excuse to make art tags and ATCs. But it also means I might have to make more than one book to do the whole year XD
Biggest hurdle right now is I need to dye the pages that are prepped and that can be time consuming and I'm not sure I actually own the colors I want to use (not that I can get more, so I may have to rethink my process).
If only it was a yarn shop >.> Our only yarn shop moved to another town over a year ago.
Our local grocery store tries to be one stop shopping and had a fairly nice yarn aisle with good variety, but last year they remodeled and yarn is now a small section of the office supply aisle. They still sell 4 or 5 kinds of yarn, but obviously color is very limited.
There is another store - a discount store that sells a bit of everything. Overall, you never know what will be in there exactly, but they do have a dedicated yarn aisle. They only sell one brand, but in pretty much all the colors they make. It's where I buy most of my yarn, but they don't sell any bulky yarn, which is why I had my hopes up for when the stuff came in at the other place.
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We used to have three yarn shops, but I think there's only one newer one now and it's an out of the way place that requires a lot of walking to get to. We have a pound shop in the main shopping area that sells some yarn, but there's never enough of any one colour to make more than a pair of arm warmers. There's a charity shop that sells one brand that's not very good, and another one that sells a better brand which is where I got my teal yarn. Bulky yarn can be hard to get though, few places stock it these days because most people use doubleknit.
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That's too bad. Oh, that's a good point. I didn't even think of that.
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It depends a lot on what you want to use the journal for to figure out which is better. Altered books tend to lend themselves best to multimedia artwork and collage, mostly because how the paper is going to react to being drawn or painted on is a wildcard, even with proper prep. And some books have paper with a sort of coating on them? It's not actually a coating, but I'm not sure how else to describe it. It absorbs dye and ink like a sponge, but rejects acrylic paint, and prepping with gesso somehow makes it worse?
I have had a lot of weird oops'.