Back from a break and bursting with projects — this short video is a look inside what's on my workbench right now and what tutorials are coming to the channel over the next week or two. Nothing is finished yet, which is exactly the point: I wanted to share the work-in-progress before it became polished, so you know what's on its way.
What we cover
This is a channel update and project preview — five things I'm actively working on, including handmade fabric flowers in multiple styles, a junk mail envelope junk journal prototype, wallpaper journals lined with calico, an altered baby wipe lid journal, and a single-page signature preparation system I've developed. No full tutorials yet, but a real look at where each project stands.
What you'll learn
What the fabric flower experiments look like — and why I'm still figuring them out
I went into my holiday hoping for some kind of epiphany about a quick, simple flower-making method. What I came back with instead is five distinct flower styles I've been experimenting with:
- Flowers cut from doily fabric, including pieces from a large tablecloth I've cut up — these are my favourite of the lot, finished with a button or some beads at the centre
- A simpler variation on the same technique that produces little bows instead of flowers, with one fewer step
- Fabric square flowers — squares of fabric put together into flower shapes, with room for variation in colour combinations, fabric types, and trimming the corners to make them feel more petal-like
These are the kind of thing you can put together while watching TV. Whether I do a full tutorial on them depends on whether there's interest — I wasn't planning to, since there are already plenty of flower tutorials on YouTube, but if you'd like to see how I made these specifically, let me know.
The junk mail envelope junk journal — prototype stage
I've been collecting bill envelopes and junk mail envelopes for a while, and one night before leaving I quickly put together a first version to see how it would work. It's rough — it's a prototype, not a finished piece — but the structure is there. I haven't sorted the signatures yet, and I'm planning to make five or six more before I document the full step-by-step tutorial. Importantly, I wrote down my steps as I made the prototype, which means I'll actually be able to recreate and share the process properly rather than trying to reconstruct it later.
Wallpaper journals lined with calico — tutorial almost ready
A little while ago I made a batch of wallpaper journals that sold quickly, and I got a lot of requests in the comments for a tutorial on how they're made. I started making a new batch before going overseas — didn't quite finish them in time — and I'm completing them now. Once they're done, I'll do a full step-by-step. The construction uses wallpaper for the cover and calico as a lining, and that's the combination I'll walk through properly when the time comes.
The altered baby wipe lid journal — finishing what I started
I did an earlier tutorial on altering flip-top baby wipe containers into little journal-like objects, but the project got set aside when something else caught my attention. It's been sitting on my desk and in the back of my mind ever since. I'm committing to finishing it now — it's nearly done, just needs a few more embellishments — so I can finally share the completed version and move it off the to-do list.
A system for preparing single-page signatures
This one I'm deliberately keeping vague for now because I want to show it properly in its own video. I have a way of preparing pages for signatures — I think they might be called single-page signatures, though I'm not entirely sure of the exact name — and I've been using this system for a while. It's practical enough that I think it's worth showing in detail, and that video is coming.
Tips & gotchas
Make a deal with yourself to finish what you start. I say this partly because I'm saying it to myself — the baby wipe lid journal sat on my desk for five months before I came back to it. It's easy to get pulled toward the next idea when you've got a dozen things in progress at once, but the unfinished ones stay in your head and take up mental space even when you're not working on them. Finishing clears that.
Write down your steps when you're prototyping. I did this with the junk mail envelope journal, and it made all the difference. When I'm experimenting with something new, I'm often moving fast and improvising — if I don't note what I did, I can't reliably recreate it, let alone explain it to someone else. Even rough notes made in the moment are worth more than a perfect memory later.
It's all connected, and the tutorials will show how.
