Kristin Victoria Creates

Making a Personal Journal or Diary It may be no surprise that I love art journals and junk journals. So I decided to make my own personal journal.  I've been wanting to start a journal again but couldn't decide on all the beautiful journals available out there. I wanted something a bit more personalized and less formal - allowing for daily entries, lists, drawings, etc. For the text block of the journal, I used 35 sheets of white printer paper, 5 sheets of lavender, 5 sheets of a soft mint green, 3 sheets of light blue, 2 sheets of another blue, and 2 sheets of blue cardstock, 2 sheets of purple card stock, and 1 sheet of green cardstock. After folding all the sheets in half with a bone folder, I arranged them in signatures of 5 sheets each. I made a series of holes of 7 on each signature.  Again, I used the light lavender thread to stitch the text block together. Look at all those colors! ...

Instead of doing a "What's inside my purse," I thought I'd show you around my quilting binder! I'm a binder person, always have been, probably always will be.  Being organized just makes my stress levels go down as well as makes me happy.  For my quilting binder, I reused one of my old binders from high school or college that was still in good shape. Whenever I pull this guy out for doing some design work I will also grab my collection of misfit colored pencils, a mechanical pencil, and a fine point Flair pen in black. On the inside, but not attached, I like to keep a packet of grid paper to draw designs and blocks on.  In the front cover pocket, I have a few print out designs of quilt tops and, as you can see, a stuffed squirrel pattern. In the first tab, I keep all designs, works in progress, random blocks, or anything I'm trying to sort out the piecing for. These are quilt tops, quilt blocks, mini quilts and what not that have not...

Mini Project - Press for Champagne I am adoring mini projects like this; they take less time, but are soo satisfying when completed. I've been loving these cute little frames with a door bell in the middle that say "press for champagne." Seeing them on Pinterest occasionally keeps them on my radar. However, I could not find a door bell or anything else similar to that without printing out a picture of a door bell.  I thought I'd get creative and make my own. I took a mini red frame that I've had laying around for awhile and decided it was time to vamp it up a bit. First, I painted the frame black. I did have another mini frame that was already black, but I wanted the swirls that was on this one for this particular project. I did about three layers of black acrylic paint to get full coverage. Something I didn't do for this project, but would be an excellent addition, would be to dry brush gold paint over the edges and ridges of the fram...

I've been wanting a thin, long sketch book specifically for random texture sketches, doodles, and abstract painting warm ups.  I honestly keep forgetting to look for one while I'm out and about, so I figured, I would make my own. I can't help myself when it comes to books and sketch books alike. So the ability to create them by hand just makes me so happy.  I find the process relaxing and fun.  A long time ago I stumbled on Sea Lemon's channel on YouTube. Let me tell you, I think she has the easiest to follow instructions on book binding. I adore her videos and always reference them whenever I get stuck. If you're just starting out or looking for a new binding technique to try, I suggest checking her channel out. I started with this pad of sketch paper, it's rather cheep and I'm not sure about the quality yet, but I thought it would be perfect for warm up sketching and painting.  I took ten sheets out and cut them, long ways, down the mi...

Mother's Day Cards For the first two cards, I used a premade medium, bright pink A2 sized card base.  I used patterned papers of diluted colored flowers as the main background, cutting them a little bit smaller so to have the pink color pop as a boarder. For the first card, I added a square of toned paper to a tag and wrote 'Happy Mother's Day" on it. For the second card, I added a small strip of patterned paper at the top, and another one at the bottom with hand lettered 'Happy Mother's Day.' For the next two cards, I wanted to keep the color pallet very similar and the design very simple. I used a dotted green and cream patterned paper, a floral boarder strip, off white card stock, and a textured, matching green cardstock. For the first card, I layered the card stocks and patterned paper with the floral strip in the middle. I then hand lettered the sentiment of 'Happy Mother's Day.' For the s...