Categories
General

Simple origami pumpkin tutorial – step by step with pictures

Try making this origami pumpkin in a variety of colours and patterns for a fun autumn project. You’ll need a sheet of fairly thin square paper; crease the folds with a creasing tool, or you can use the back of your thumb nail.

  • Start with the square of paper turned so it looks like a diamond
  • Fold it in half, top corner to bottom corner
  • Fold in half again, corner to opposite corner, along the top edge
  • Lift the flap you’ve just folded, and open up the layers…
  • Squash this layer into a neat diamond shape
  • Flip over sideways, and do the same squash fold on the other flap
  • You should now have a nice diamond shape, with layers that open at the bottom
  • Take the top flap on the left over to the right…
  • Fold this to the left, so the top sloped edge lines up with the central crease
  • Fold the bottom sloped edge to line up with the central crease
  • Take this layer back over to the right and press the creases flat
  • Next, take the top flap on the right over to the left, and make the same two folds
  • Once you’ve taken that flap back over to the right, you should be left with a slim diamond shape in the middle
  • Flip the model over
  • Fold over the top and bottom corners a small amount to shape the pumpkin
  • Fold both side corners in, roughly the same amount (you can take a look at the right side to check you’re happy with the shape, and adjust these folds if necessary)
  • Take the small top triangle you folded over, and fold the point up, so the tip sticks out a bit over the top of the pumpkin, creating the stalk
  • Turn it over to the right side to see the finished result!
Categories
Art Inspiration

Getting started with art journaling: simple ideas and inspiration

Ahoy there, Journalers!

Whether you want to keep a visual diary, or just have somewhere to practice and progress your skills, an art journal is a great addition to your creative journey. In this post, I’ll give you a few ideas to start you off. The first thing you need is a somewhere for your art! My handmade journals have paper suitable for pencils, pens and some paints; if you missed them, you can check out my previous blogs about that here:

Pencils & pens

Examples of coloured pens, pencils and paints on an open journal page.

Colours & paints

It’s a good idea to start simple, especially if you’re just beginning your art journey (if you’re like me, you won’t draw, paint or write anything on the first page in case something goes wrong 😂). You can often find drawing challenges and prompts online, which can be useful for experimenting with different styles and subjects (Inktober is underway throughout October, with a drawing prompt for every day).

Some ideas could be:

Still life

Nature

People

Abstract or doodles

Below you can find some helpful tips if you just need a bit of inspiration to set your creative juices flowing.

Magazines: flick through until something catches your eye… draw it!

Alternatively, look around you. What is there that you could try to draw or paint? Something with an interesting shape or engaging colours? Replicate it, or break it into basic shapes for a more abstract look.

Wanting to build on your skills? Setting a goal can be a good way to stay on track (one of mine is get better at drawing hands). Dedicate a whole page to practicing one thing.

Some other ideas: daily sketches, details, different styles, different mediums. Experiment! Doodle! Date your work and look back on your progress. Most of all, don’t be afraid to make mistakes. Perfection is overrated 😉

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Categories
Craft fairs Inspiration

Upcoming craft fairs & creative workshops -Autumn/Winter 2024

Join me at a local fair in Northamptonshire, or come along to a workshop and make something for yourself. I’ve got a few dates in the diary – check them out below 👇

Don’t forget you can shop with me online if you can’t get out and about to any of these events.

I’m running a few workshops towards the end of the year, including leather journals & festive origami.

Please visit The Galleria or Wellingborough Library for venue details and to book.

I’ve got 3 fairs booked in so far in and around Northamptonshire – including a book extravaganza at the start of October. That one will be the most dangerous in terms of spending money I think 😂

Not Northants based? Shop with me online!
Categories
General Handmade travel journals Stationery

How to write a travel journal: hints & tips for starting out

Keeping a travel journal is a great way to both plan and document your travels. Being a list maker, I always keep a notebook for planning and packing, occasionally adding notes or drawings while I’m away. Whatever you’d like to use yours for, I’ve put together some ideas for what you could include – and some fun decorations examples!

Shop my range of travel journals on etsy

PLANNING: go as basic or as in depth as you like. Keep it simple with where & when they’re going, or plan a full-on itinerary. Here are some ideas to get you thinking:
-Destination/dates
-Travel/accommodation details
-What to do while you’re there
-Budget
-Language basics

PACKING: a list of essentials is good, so you don’t forget anything important. But it’s fun to plan everything else too 😎 My top categories are:
-Essentials
-Toiletries/accessories 
-Clothes
-Miscellaneous (for things that don’t quite fit in other categories!)

TRAVEL DIARY: unlined pages keeps things versatile. You can have space for writing, drawing or adding photos or tickets (in case you get such a rare thing as a paper ticket!). If the paper’s sturdy enough you can glue things in; you could also use paperclips, or stash things in the pocket of your notebook. What? Your notebook doesn’t have a pocket?! Add one yourself by gluing an envelope to the inside cover.

Finally, some ideas for decorations and doodles. You can add these to the appropriate pages as you’re planning. Think general travel icons, local foods or what to expect weather-wise.

SHOP MY RANGE OF TRAVEL JOURNALS ON ETSY
Categories
Craft Origami Paper Tutorial

Easy Origami Envelope Tutorial – step by step with pictures

Origami paper and an origami envelope

Grab a square of paper and try this simple make!

These paper envelopes are quick to make once you’ve got the hang of them. They’re a fun way to package small gifts, send a special note, use in a scrapbook or to decorate handmade cards.

All you need is a square of paper. I’ve used a two-sided paper, but you can use whatever you’d like. Remember my two rules of origami – fold neatly and crease firmly!

  • If using two sided, start with the side you want on the outside face down.
  • Turn the square to a diamond and fold in half, bottom point to top point.
  • Fold one outside point over to meet the other, but just press the middle point gently – this is to make where the centre is.
  • Open back out fully.
  • Fold the bottom point to the centre mark you’ve just made, crease and unfold.
  • Fold in half again along your first fold line, taking the bottom point up, then fold that point down using the existing crease.
  • Next, you’ll need to fold the outsides in to the centre so the points overlap slightly – as evenly as you can! 
  • You can fold them over gently both at the same time until you get them to the position you want, before creasing the folds properly. Overlap the points a little for a rectangular envelope, or fold them over a little further for a more square look.
  • Tuck one point into another. You can glue these in place if you need to.
  • That’s it! If you want a closed envelope, simply fold the top down and secure with a bit of Washi tape.
More origami tutorials this way!
Categories
General Stationery Tutorial

Still not tried bullet journaling? A simple guide to get you started.

Do you love lists? Organising your thoughts on paper? Tracking your goals? Bullet journaling might be for you!

Bullet journaling isn’t a new trend – in fact, it started to become popular around 10 years ago, so most likely you’ve heard of it. It can be used to focus your tasks, track your goals and generally organise your life; often done on dotted paper, but you can use blank or even lined. The point is to customise it your way.

As with starting any new notebook, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with all those empty pages. Some people use bullet journals a bit like an extension of a diary or planner – often with a key or index for reference.
However, this can be a big undertaking at first, so my advice would be to start with one or two things and go from there; make them something you like, something fun – books you want to read, top films etc. or tracking your favourite exercise (if you have one!).

To get yourself started, you only need a few basics. 

Essentials:

  • Journal/notebook
  • Pen/pencil

Nice to have:

  • Coloured pens or pencils
  • Ruler
  • Rubber

What about paper type? A dot grid allows you to easily draw neater lines & boxes, create charts & tables, and gives you guides to draw banners and embellishments – without hindering your creativity too much. If you want to use blank, lined or graph paper, that’s fine too! 

The biggest task is setting up the pages; using templates and guides can help, especially if you’re using blank paper – draw out a guide on a spare piece of paper and you can use it to trace again and again.

It can be as simple or as complicated as you’d like to make it. Tailor it to your strengths and needs. If all you need from it is a title and some bullet points for lists – perfect. If you want to decorate every inch of paper – go for it!

These simple flags can be made any size you want, and can be used for things like titles or tabs for section headers, or just to decorate the page.

To do/To buy

This is a great one to start with: nice and simple, easy to repeat and can be customised each week/month. (It’s one I use all the time!). I used the dot grid to draw the outlines, then decorated the edges with coloured fine liners. Stars make a fun alternative to round bullet points.

Books books books 📚Aiming to read a certain number of books each month, or just to track your reading for the year? This bookshelf layout can help do that! The “shelf” was created on plain paper, using a ruler and pencil, before going over in pen. You can then sketch out the books in pencil, and outline or colour them in as you finish each book. 

Fancy having a go? I’ve got two styles of dot grid journal in stock:
Moon Phases and Smoky Keys.
Shop plain paper journals and notebooks here.

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Categories
Handmade leather journals Handmade stationery cases Stationery

Colour me happy 🌈 journals & stationery made from colourful leather samples

Colour is IN this season


I’ve recently rescued a bumper batch of leather sample sheets and am really enjoying using them! There are some gorgeous colours and textures in there, and I’ve started splitting them into collections such as Mermaids, Monsters and Magic (this is more just for myself, because it’s fun 🤩). 

Here’s some of the things I’ve been making so far:

Soft green leather pencil case – plenty of room for stashing all your favourite stationery items.

This midnight blue goes perfectly with the rich cream leather strap on this A6 lined journal.

Subtly different dusky shades for a new style of book-inspired jewellery: a trio of mini journals for a chunkier necklace.

What a combo 😍 duck-egg blue with bottle green. This one is A6 with blank cartridge paper inside.

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Categories
General Notebooks Stationery Stationery Tutorial

How to turn your blank journal into a diary

New year, new diary

So, you’ve got a blank-paged journal and would like to use it as a diary… what do you do? Where do you start? All those empty pages can feel quite daunting!

I’ve put together a quick guide with some ideas to help you out. 

If you’re looking to turn your blank journal into a diary, you’ll need to make sure you’ve got enough pages to last the year. My journals are 128 pages (sides) – here’s an idea of how you could use them.

If you create weekly spreads and do each one over 2 pages, it would make up 104 of the pages (see above image, created in an A6 journal). You could then allocate 1 page per month for a monthly spread, creating it at the start of each set of weeks.

You’ll need more weeks in some months; if you have each monthly layout on a right-hand page, the the next 4 or 5 sets of double pages can be weekly spreads for that month (you’d then end up with a spare blank left-hand page, opposite the next month).

To do the monthly layout, start with a 7×5 grid (days of the week x weeks in the month; it’s easiest to do 5 weeks for all months, because of how the dates fall). 

For an A6 journal, make the grid from squares that are roughly 1.5 x 1.5 cm; for A5 they can be around 2 x 2 cm (it might be a good idea to make a template to copy/trace every month). Write the days above the grid, then add the dates in the boxes.

Add a title for the month at the top of the page, as fancy as you like – make it into a banner, flag, or decorate the word. Here are some ideas:

That’s the main structure taken care of… what else will you need? Maybe a title page at the start, or a couple of pages for a yearly outlook? A page to list birthdays/important dates? You could have ideas/note pages each month, or have a few blank pages at the end for jotting things down. 

You can create your diary however you want, with whatever pages you’d like to add, but hopefully I’ve given you some ideas for a way to start it off. 

Happy journaling!

Don’t forget, you can shop my range of blank handmade journals and notebooks in my Etsy shop 👇

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Categories
General Origami Paper Tutorial

Step by step origami star tutorial with pictures

Origami star

Have a go at making this origami star! It may seem fiddly, so have a practice run first on a scrap square of paper to get the hang of it.

It’s a four-pointed star, so a lot of the folds you’ll be repeating the same thing 4 times on all 4 sections/layers (often 2 front, 2 back) – bear this in mind when following along.

You’ll need a square of fairly thin paper (if your paper is double-sided, start with the plain side facing up). Don’t forget to fold neatly and crease firmly!

  • Start with the paper square on in front of you.
  • Fold in half from top to bottom, crease and unfold, then fold in half from side to side, creasing well.
  • Open back out into a square
  • Turn the paper over, then fold from corner to opposite corner; again, do this both ways.
  • Open back out into a square.
  • Pick the paper up and press the centre upwards, bringing the edges down.
  • You should end up with a folded diamond shape, with open layers at the bottom.
  • Taking the top layer only, fold the outside bottom edge to the centre crease.
  • Repeat this step on all bottom edges, front and back.
  • Next, you’ll need to open up the folds you’ve just made and, using the creases from these folds, push them inside…
  • They should look like this!
  • Repeat with all 4 folds. You should have a lot of layers at the bottom now!
  • Using the top layer only (the long triangle at the bottom), fold the bottom point upwards.
  • Repeat for all 4 points in turn.
  • At this point, the model should end look like a triangle pointing upwards.
  • Take one of the bottom outside corners and fold it in to meet the centre crease.
  • Again, this step will need to be repeated with all 4 bottom corners in turn, so fold the front 2 up…
  • …then turn over and fold the back 2 up in the same way.
  • Pick the model up for the next step.
  • We’re going to open up the star, taking all 4 of the top points out and down.
  • It helps if you stick a thumb either side of the central point, to help you ease it open – the middle of the model should kind of lift and flatten into a square.
  • Press all the creases flat and you’re done!
  • Ta da!
Categories
Art Handmade leather journals Inspiration Notebooks Paper Stationery Stationery

A quick guide to using colour in your handmade journal: pens, pencils & paints

Do you want to use your journal for painting or colouring? Will the paper take it ok? Well, it does depend on the paper type; but generally, if you’re buying a quality handmade notebook, it should take some form of paints. I’ve chosen a few things here for adding colour, including coloured pencils and felt tip pens – just to cover different options!

As mentioned in the pencils/pens write up (which you can find here) the paper in my journals is 140gsm cartridge paper; it will take paints and inks, but some better than others. Ideally for watercolour, you need proper watercolour paper; however, if you’re just starting out or experimenting, the sturdy paper in my journals is fine for testing things out.

Coloured pencils are readily available and easy to use. You can create more in the way of shading and texture with coloured pencils, simply by pressing harder for a darker tone. You should be able to work quickly and easily with pencils, starting light and building up colour where needed.

Felt/fibre-tip pens are nice and bold and bright, creating clean defined lines. While you can’t shade with them as you can with pencils, you can create a graduated effect by overlapping colours slightly with swift, light strokes. Issues? Leave the pen on the paper too long and it’ll bleed through. You can easily write or draw with pens too, making them more versatile. 

You can create simple watercolours quite easily. Start with the lighter colours and build up to the darker washes. Blend/merge colours using wet on wet paint; for more defined areas, you’ll need to wait for the previous layer to dry. The paper may buckle slightly, but will warp if you get it too wet. You can place a scrap piece of paper or card under the page you’re working on.

As with watercolours, you can get heavier paper to use with acrylics, but the paper I use is great for a mixed media art journal. Acrylic paints are easy to just pick up and use. They’re quick drying and, once dry, you can easily paint over the previous layer. You can thin them with water. 

Here you can see the other side of the paper from the mushroom drawings – it shows how much you can see the colours on the other side, and how much the paper warps. If you’re using watercolour or acrylics, I’d suggest not using paints on the other side of the page, but pencils should be ok to use.

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journals and notebooks.

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