2019 #11 Retro Colour Palettes: 1950s Diner Style with Hot Picks 1605 {by Lotte Kristensen}

2019 Topic 11: Retro Colour Palettes

Lotte has selected her retro colours and applied them and stamps in an interesting block formation to create a wonderful journal cover with a selection of vintage genre stamps. 
~  Leandra

Hey everyone, it's Lotte here - Retro Colour Palettes, what's not to love??!  I was hard pushed to choose between 1970s orange, brown, yellow and teal - or 1950s diner style fire engine red, robin's egg blue and black and white (like the tiled floors).  But  in the end I went with the 1950s combo, because I just love the pale blue with the red - it shouldn't work, but it does!  

(I got the photo off Pinterest, unfortunately there was no mention of who took it or where it came from, or I would have credited the photographer!)

I went with red and light green-blue, and some buff to offset both:

So, I decided to make a faux Midori style journal, because you can never have too many journals, right?!  And because I wanted to make squares of colour (echoing the black-and-white tiles of a 1950s diner), I looked for stamps which were largely rectangular in shape:  

 

Oh yes, I fancy myself sitting in cool coffee shops, sketching and making wry observations on the behaviour of 21st Century man (and woman):

So, let's get started!  I first cut two pieces of heavy calico fabric to measure roughly 21 x 30 centimeters (the inserts measure about 10 x 19 cms), and painted the top layer (which will be stamped) with a good coating of white gesso, and when that was dry, I spritzed a wee bit of Distress Spray Stain in Tea Dye:

When all that was dry, I lightly marked out squares with a water erasable pen (or you could use a pencil) and filled in with my chosen colours - Vintage Lace, London Bus and Mermaid Fresco Finish Acrylic Paints.  I'd already done a test run on a piece of normal paper to give me an idea of colour and stamp position: 

Next, I stamped a selection of the stamps all over, but within the rectangles, in Shadow Grey Ranger Archival Ink Pad:

And then it was time for the main stamping, which I did in Onyx Black Versafine Inkpad:

When this had dried thoroughly (Versafine takes quite a bit of time to do so properly), I glued the two pieces of calico together along the spine bit, let that dry and then punched two holes at the top and bottom of the piece, before adding silver eyelets.  Next I stitched the two pieces together on my sewing machine.  If you don't have one of those, you can just glue the two pieces together and stitch the flipped over bit by hand (next step!):

I positioned the blank notebooks inside the cover and folded over to determine where to stitch the flaps down:

Then it was time to thread some elastic cord through the holes, to keep the notebooks in place: 

Now, you can keep the cord long to wrap around the journal when not in use:

Though personally, I prefer just to keep the ends short - I would've added some beads if I could've found some suitable ones:

And a view from the back (almost the same as the front LOL!):

So this was quite a nice and simple project, for a change - as I said already, I love journals, and hand made ones are the best because you can completely personalise them and get something no-one else has.  I've already planned to make some for Christmas pressies - hoping if I start now, I might actually end up being on time LOL!

Until next time :D

Lotte x