Nancy Wethington

Nancyland Designs Etsy Shop!

Pleased to announce my newest endeavor 

NancylandDesigns - Etsy

Pre-decorated journals & mini-books

in a vintage style.

One-of-a-kind designs!

 

So excited . . .

Look what happened!

Having admired their paper and detailed die-cuts

I am very excited to announce I am a Team Member!

And here are my Team Mates:

What a way to start a new year!

My first Button Farm Club kit . . .

 

So excited and honored to be offering my kits thru

Button Farm Club

See my kit here:

Hummingbird Folio

You may purchase this kit without signing up for the kit club.

 

 

Happy day after turkey day . . .

A couple of weeks ago, the girls and I took a trip to Ankeny IA and visited Memory Bound where we took classes from the talented Frank Garcia. Frank designs for Prima Marketing and has several gorgeous lines with them including Memory Hardware. I love his style!

We took several classes from Frank over the weekend including this beautiful book you see above. It's using one of Frank's Memory Hardware albums along with many other Frank designed products. The paper and embellishments are from Frank's Sweet Peppermint line.

I love all the layers and detail he puts into every project. And did I tell you what a good teacher he is? He definitely *knows his stuff* and has patience like no other. 

Loved every minute of the weekend creating beautiful projects. In the next few days, I'll share more of what we made with the talented Frank Garcia. Details to be shared soon!

Christmas at Checkered Cottage . . .

Thank you to those who've signed up sight-unseen for my

Prima Christmas Book.

Saturday, December 10

10:30 am to 4:30 pm

Here's a look at the cover.

We'll be using Frank Garcia's products including

Memory Journal 

Sweet Peppermint 6x6 Collection Kit

Sweet Peppermint Chipboard & More

Sweet Peppermint Flowers

Vintage style chenille candy cane

Sweet Peppermint ATC Cards

and

specialties by Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts

We'll use Gesso and Snowflakes and Paints and more

to decorate this year's Christmas book.

Sign up by calling

Checkered Cottage ~ Kirkwood MO

 

Here mini, mini . . .

Lately I've found a few extra days to work on some mini-albums.

Having collected many patterns for mini's

I chose to use

Laura Denison's Simple Favorites: 3 Pocket Album.

I found this album to be so intriguing with its many pockets

going every which way

and plenty of room for tags and photo mats.

I chose both Graphic 45 and K&Co papers for my book

with some Bo Bunny thrown in for good measure.

Look at all that real estate!

Love the blues and browns with some pink thrown in.

It's vintage and bright.

Pockets, pockets everywhere!

And for the cover, I used Laura's idea of fabric on the spine.

Worked like a charm,

especially with Frank Garcia's Artisan Tape by Prima Marketing.

(Love that stuff)

My first moving video . . .

Yes, it's back to the 1920's for me with a moving video.

Although I've made video's before, they were from stills (see, 1920's!)

Today, after days of work (ha - no kidding)

I finally quit.  It is what it is.

This mini is from a pattern designed by 

Laura Denison.

It's called Time Revisited and you can find it here:

http://www.lauradenisondesigns.com/product/time-revisited-mini-album/

Laura is an amazing book creator who definitely thinks out of the box for all her designs.

I don't think she evens knows a box exist out there somewhere.

I have learned so much from her in mini-book construction.

This one, I decorated myself with the help of a 

fabric binding (thanks Laura!)

applied with Frank Garcia's Memory Hardware Artisan Adhesive Tape.

NO KIDDING - THIS IS THE BEST TAPE I'VE EVER USED!

The strongest and yet still tears easily. It's amazing!

If your LSS doesn't carry it, please ask them to. You won't be disappointed.

On to the moving pictures:

 

 

7 Gypsies Travel Mini-Book . . .

I used to fancy myself a bit of a gypsy.

With over 30 years experience in the travel industry 

I can't get enough of travel mini-books.

Here I used 7 Gypsies: Gypsy Moments and Wanderlust 8x8 paper pads

There are things to do with paper that are a  must for me:

{1}  Ink all raw edges

{2} Add pockets whenever possible

{3} Layer with chipboard and Crafty Foam Tape - even stickers!

{4} Use black Crafty Foam Tape or black chipboard or ink the edges of the chipboard with black.

Why? It creates less of a glaring lift than white would create.

{5} Fussy cut where you can to create layers and tags

{6} Odd numbers are more pleasing to the eye than even numbers

{7} Use magnets to create flip pages

{8} Create interest with double pockets

{9} If the packaging is pretty, save it and use it for backgrounds.

{10} Drag colors from one side of the page to another.

The right side paper already had a blue toned design

so I added a blue toned tag to the pocket on the left page. 

It helps to draw the eye from one page to another.

Thanks for browsing my travel book.

Graphic 45 Mini-Book Pages . . .

You've seen this cover before:

It's from a 4 part series of workshops I taught using

Graphic 45's Botanicabella

and

Mixed Media Album

Thought I'd show you some of the inside pages.

I adore inter-active pages of any kind

and filled this book with them.

The page below uses magnets (yep, love those too)

as a closure

and once opened, more pockets:

Another magnet keeps this mini-booklet in it's pocket

until the flap lifts up:

A belly band holds mini-cards in place

while the chipboard piece keeps them from falling out of the book.

This page is a flap and closes with a magnet until the inside is revealed

with more pockets:

Open this page to a surprise pop-up:

We also stamped on vellum to create a 2-sided design.

On this page we created a belly band

that holds a booklet.

The booklet stays in place with magnets.

Thanks for viewing some of the pages of my

Graphic 45 Botanicabella mini-book.

A wonderful Prima Educator Day . . .

Spent the best day yesterday at Checkered Cottage, Kirkwood MO

We got together to create this mini-book.

It's a Frank Garcia Memory Hardware Chipboard Album (Square).

We all loved using this album with a 6x6 paper pad.

Frank's trick of painting the edges of the album in your favorite color

makes putting this together a snap!

The classroom is ready and filled with gorgeous Prima Marketing products.

We were using Prima's Butterfly 6x6 paper pad

with a theme of butterflies, birds and fairies for our books.

Then we got down to busy-ness:

We started with 4x6 Pocket Paintable Cards

and used

Prima's creamy Oil Pastels.

They easily mix with water and have the most delicious colors.

They are, by far, the easiest to blend I have ever worked with.

The girls agreed!

Each of the girls picked out an intricately cut butterfly from

Gypsy Soul Laser Cuts.

We first painted with a layer of 

Prima's Altered Alchemy Light Patina,

let that dry and then added

a layer of 

Altered Alchemy Opal Magic Blue.

Why is it called Magic?

The color is brilliant when painted on white or cream.

Paint it on black and the color magically changes.

(You'll see in a bit.)

We finished the inside pages and 

then started layering the cover:

Since each of the gals chose their own image for the cover,

each book was uniquely their own. 

Here are a few samples of what they completed:

Notice the butterflies!

The doily on the front cover was cut using

Prima's Die - Parisian Lace.

Of course Prima flowers were everywhere

as well as 

Prima's Butterfly Matchboxes.

Butterfly Tags & Tickets

were used on the cover and throughout the book.

We were finished creating at 2 pm

(I thought)

but the gals kept fussing, adding flowers, leaves, embellishments and fussy cutting.

It was so much fun!

Thank you to all those who participated.

I loved every minute of it and hope you did too.