WOYWW 160

Sorry, no photo of my desk this week as I’m too poorly to do anything, after seriously overdoing things over the last week or two and then the craft show on Saturday. Scroll down to see what was on my workdesk at the craft show!

Hopefully I’ll be back to WOYWW properly next week.

ATCs – thank you so much, everyone who has sent me one so far. I have not forgotten you and just as soon as I am up to it, you will be receiving yours from me. I’ll be doing a post about the exquisite little works of art I have so far received!

Hugs to you all and wishing you a very happy WOYWW.

Village Craft Fair

Last Saturday there was a craft fair in our village church to celebrate the creativity of the local people and as a local fund-raiser. I was offered a table and readily agreed, and offered to do demonstrations throughout the day.

Some of the work on display was of a very high standard; for instance, the lady who had the table next to mine had only been painting for about a year, and was producing work such as this:

There was also someone who was exhibiting a wide range of items including miniature embroidered rugs for dolls’ houses, taken from original rug designs:

seen here with some of her exquisite silver spoons. She also worked with enamel on copper, and made silver and bead jewellery. I was particularly taken with her marine life jewellery.

Further acrylic paintings:

This artist also created fairies from hand-made felt, which you can see on the display on the left of her table.

A great display of beautiful quilts.

There are more photos of the show in my Photobucket album.

Here I am at my table, ready to start.

This is my display board. I am so grateful to my hubby for finding some pegboard panels for me – this turned out to be ideal for hanging my mirrors and prints, and it took the rest really well with Blue Tack.

As you can see, I tried to display as much variety as I could – my mixed media mirrors (for further details, click on “Mirrors” in the RH sidebar of my blog – there are several posts), ATCs (likewise), pages from my ongoing mixed media Fine Art Album project, some experimental pieces, small paintings, and prints of my zentangle art – I printed these on semi-gloss photographic paper and am very pleased with the quality, and the intensity of the colour.

As I worked on my demo pieces, lots of people came up to watch and to chat, and ask me about my work. On the far left of my table, beside the zentangle print, are the cards and coasters. As well as offering these black and white zentangle cards for sale, I also managed to make up nearly 2 dozen coloured ones. I shall be doing a separate post about these in due course.

Of all that I had on offer, I only managed to sell nine cards, unfortunately, but at least my work got some exposure, and I had great fun being creative all day, so it was worth it!

Now for some photos of the work I did during the day. Most of these were small in size so that I could demonstrate several different techniques, and as usual I worked on ATC-sized card much of the time, as any successful samples can then be used for actual ATCs, and anything not successful won’t break the bank because hardly anything has been used!

I started with a plain white ATC which I stamped with versamark, and heat-embossed with clear embossing powder. I then inked this with Walnut Stain Distress Ink, using my Inkylicious Ink Dusters, and finished it off with a bit more distressing round the edges with Vintage Photo DI. The stamp was Calligraphic Mat #4 from The Artistic Stamper. The embossing acts as a resist, showing the white card beneath the ink. On the second sample, I inked it first using Weathered Wood DI, then embossed with clear embossing powder, and inked again, this time with Bundled Sage, and finally a touch of Vintage Photo around the edges to distress it. This resulted in the resist showing the initial inking colour, in this case blue. This stamp is the Music background stamp, again from The Artistic Stamper.

You can see how through many layers of stamping and inking, many different and interesting effects can be created.

The next thing I demonstrated was rubbing the ink pad on my non-stick craft sheet, spritzing it with water and smooshing the card in this ink. For the first sample, I used a mixture of Wild Honey, Spiced Marmalade, Walnut Stain and Vintage Photo DIs. The quality of the card wasn’t that good for this technique, but I didn’t mind in the end that the initial smooshing came out quite blotchy; with the added stamping and extra ink, it just added to the general grunginess of the effect. To get a smoother effect, watercolour paper would be better as it stands up well to a soaking.

I stamped with gold embossing powder onto the background of the first piece, and in the second, used the stamp as a resist, as before. The stamp in the first sample is a flower head stamp from The Stamp Barn, and that in the second is from the Tim Holtz Ultimate Grunge Collection by Stampers Anonymous. This sample was first inked all over with Spiced Marmalade DI, stamped with clear embossing powder and then smooshed into Walnut Stain and Vintage Photo. To finish each of these samples, I spritzed them with a DIY glimmer mist made from Wild Honey Distress Re-inker, water and Perfect Pearls (Perfect Pearl colour), which has given an iridescent finish, and some nice blotches of a more intense effect.

The next sample was somewhat similar, but smooshed, stamped and inked repeatedly, building up the layers until I got the effect I wanted. In this case I used the Personal Impressions Pebbles background stamp with Versamark and clear embossing powder, and the Crafty Individuals large swirl stamp, also with Versamark and clear embossing powder, and finally with gold. This one was then sprinkled with water and blotted with some kitchen paper.

I did a quickie demo showing the effect of sanding Core’dinations paper – I had prepared a piece of Whitewash Core’dinations at home, embossing it with the Tim Holtz Texture Fades embossing folder “Cracked.” After sanding, I inked it with Dusty Concord DI, showing how the ink is intensified by the roughness of the sanded surface. To finish this one off, I rubbed on a little Treasure Gold in the central part, but it doesn’t show up too well on the photo.

I did a few examples with one of the stamps from the Stamp Attack JoZart Design fans collection, using Versamark onto black card and then adding dry Perfect Pearls in various colours with a soft brush. Once I had brushed off the excess I spritzed them lightly with water to activate the binding agent in the mica powder. These will be cut out and used as small tags, with the addition of some ribbon and a bit of bling.

My final sample was done with acrylics and stencils. I had intended to do several of these, but time was marching on, and I had other things to do as well.

For this, I laid my Increasing Circles stencil onto some heavy watercolour paper and painted on some gesso with a foam brush. After drying this with my heat gun, I proceeded to paint the surface roughly with alizarin crimson acrylic paint, placed the stencil back and rubbed with a baby wipe. This removed quite a bit of the paint from the gesso which acted as a resist, giving some interesting overlapping partial circles. I repeated the process with some ultramarine blue, and then stamped with scraps of extra large and extra small bubble wrap, using gesso. The effect was altogether too bright at this stage, so I made my favourite dulling-down acrylic glaze from a touch of Payne’s grey acrylic paint mixed with acrylic polymer, and after drying this, stamped with archival black ink using the ink-spatter stamp from the Tim Holtz Ultimate Grunge collection from Stampers Anonymous, and finally stamped with copper metallic acrylic paint using the circles stamp from the Bitty Grunge collection also from Stampers Anonymous. As always, using gesso and acrylics, I had to try and remember to clean the stencil, brushes and stamps immediately or it dries on very quickly and becomes impossible to remove. This is a bit of a bore, especially when one is on a creative roll and is desperate to get on to the next stage! (How nice it would be to have a flunky to do it for me, like the artists of old, who had apprentices to grind their paint for them!!)

This is a technique that you can just go on adding to, layer by layer, colour by colour, shape by shape, whatever you want, until you like it! The possibilities are endless. Here’s a detail shot.

I really like how the texture of the watercolour paper works with this background.

My second demonstration was making some paper flowers with Penny Duncan’s rose design cut file, somewhat adapted to give a more frilly edge to the petals. I deliberately made these quite large so that people could see what was going on. Here are the materials I used.

The pieces were drawn in Inkscape and cut out using Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine. Distress Stains are the best method of colouring the petals and leaves, in my opinion. They are easy to apply, and you can build up the layers of colour to the intensity you desire. Once coloured and dried with the heat gun, each petal and leaf is hand-embossed onto a piece of fun foam, and then assembled using the hot glue gun. I ran a nib across the surface of a distress ink pad and drew the veins on the leaves. Here is the final result.

My final demo was intended to be zentangle drawing, and although I did do a bit, it was not enough to photograph – I will upload the finished drawing when I have done it. By the time I got started on that, the numbers of visitors to the show had thinned out considerably, and then people started clearing up, so I had to call it a day, as it took a very long time taking down my display and packing it all up ready to take home.

Coasters and Cards for the Craft Show

Next Saturday there is a craft exhibition/sale at our church, and I have booked a large table to display my work, and hopefully sell some pieces, and also to do a series of demonstrations during the day, of things which should be fun to watch. This time my display will feature my zentangle art, of course, and this will also be my final demo of the day. I am preparing some outline drawings ready to fill with pattern and colour on the day.

I am also demonstrating backgrounds with resist and stencilling, using a variety of techniques (nice and messy), and paper flower making. I have cut two different flower shapes from plain white card in readiness for this, and the demo will include colouring these pieces with Distress Stains, hand embossing them, and assembling them with the hot glue gun.

On the suggestion of several of my friends recently, I decided to get some coasters made of my zentangle designs. I now have two sets of approximately 3-in square designs, so I have had two different sets of coasters made, at one of the online photographic companies that also do mugs and things

Design Set One can be seen here, and Set Two here.

Here are the two sets of coasters.

I was a bit disappointed that they didn’t come boxed – for the price they were, and the quality, I think they should have. It’s annoying because I had to spend quite a long time (which I don’t have much of before the craft show on Saturday) making boxes for them.

The box base was easy. I simply cut a 6-inch square of black card, scored it in an inch from each edge, snipped a wedge out of each corner, and glued it up using Scotch Quick-Dry Adhesive (aka Lucy’s Glue lol! – Thank you Lucy, for recommending the best wet glue on the market in my opinion). This made a 4-inch square box for the 3 1/2 in square coasters. However, the lid was a different matter. The first one I made was too big. Eventually I got it right, and I’ve created two svg files in Inkscape, which are now uploaded to my Skydrive – one for the lid itself, and the other for the lid lining.

Both lid and lining have an aperture measuring 3 inches square. The lid has semi-circular pieces cut out either side for ease of opening. To make the lid, after cutting both pieces on Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine, I cut a square of acetate measuring 3 1/2 inches and glued this with Lucy’s Glue onto the lid lining. I then glued this onto the lid itself, accurately aligning the two apertures and sandwiching the acetate between the two pieces. I then scored the lid, exactly following the outline of the liner, and folded up the sides as snugly as I possibly could against the liner, and cut wedges in the corners, and assembled as for the base.

The final touch for the box was to add a printed label, and a small insert in the bottom of the box with a short explanation about zentangle.

Here are the coasters in their boxes.

The other day I also made a set of two dozen small (A6 sized) cards featuring the same twelve designs as the coasters. They also have a leaflet in the back, giving some information about zentangle. Here they are, bagged up and ready for sale.

I have also got some plastic coasters on order, that you put your own photos in. I am intending to make these up with more of the same, and sell these individually as a cheaper option, as they are not as nice as the cork-backed ones.

 

A Word about Comments

As you know, last week I had problems with Blogger not showing my comments awaiting moderation. This turned out to be due to a conflict with the latest Firefox upgrade, and for a couple of days I had to deal with them in Internet Explorer (which I don’t usually use). It’s all working properly again in Firefox now, thank goodness, but I’ve got a great backlog of comments still awaiting moderation – I like to deal with each one individually and visit the person’s blog to reply, and this takes quite a time, particularly as Blogger is up to its usual tricks of taking ages to load the blogs, and often timing out. If your comment has not yet appeared on my blog, or you haven’t heard from me, please be patient – I am gradually getting through them all, and you are certainly not forgotten! One of my greatest joys is reading all the lovely comments my fabulous Blogland friends send me – I can’t tell you how uplifting and encouraging your wonderful words always are, so please keep them coming! It means so much to me.

This couldn’t have happened at a worse time, as I’m terribly busy this week, trying to prepare for the craft show, and I’m pulling out all the stops to keep on top of everything, and I don’t want to crash health-wise… I shall probably be very exhausted next week when it’s all over, and again, those of you lovely people who have kindly agreed to swap ATCs with me, I would ask you for your patience as I try and deal with it all! It may take some time.

Thank you so much for your understanding!

Blogger Problem–Comments not Visible

Just to let everyone know, I’m experiencing problems with Blogger (again…….) and I can’t view my unmoderated comments. I know there are lots there, because I saw them on Wednesday, and managed to follow up on some of them, and publish them, but I left the rest till I had time later, only to find that all the comments (published, unmoderated and spam) were no longer visible in the Blogger folder. They were visible on my other laptop and I intended to work on that to access them, but got too busy, and this morning, I find that they are not visible on there any more, either.

I have contacted Blogger 4 times now about this, and also posted a query on the Blogger forum hoping for some help, but so far absolutely no response. Someone on the Black Cat Cutters forum says she’s experiencing the same problems at the moment.

So I am sorry I can’t respond to any of you at the moment. I am hoping for a speedy resolution of this problem (some hope, where Blogger is involved) but meantime, please feel free to go on posting comments because they are all in there – somewhere!

Ed: One of the members of the Black Cat Cutter forum has come up with the solution – the latest upgrade to Firefox is causing the problem, and accessing the blog through IE makes the comments visible again! Thank you Stuart!! Let’s hope Blogger and Firefox resolve this problem between them. There must be many others who use both Blogger and Firefox, and this isn’t  a satisfactory state of affairs.

So – off to follow up on all my lovely comments, and sorry for the delay, folks!

Zentangles Large and Small!

I’ve been busy making some ATCs for my belated entry into the WOYWW special 3rd anniversary ATC swap. Also, we have a craft exhibition coming up soon at our church, and I am making some cards for that, and hoping also to exhibit (and possibly sell) some of my zentangle art.

My latest large piece (10 x 8 in) is of poppies, coloured with my Inktense pencils.

Not so much zentangle about this one – just a few patterns on the leaves and stems.

For the cards, I have returned to a more traditional zentangle approach, taking a 3 x 3 in. square and filling an abstract shape with pattern. So far I have done six of these, and I shall be using prints for the cards, rather than the original drawings. Some of these suggest a particular theme or idea, such as this one, entitled “Leaf”;

and this one, entitled “Heart.”

The remaining four are abstract.

To these I shall add the six zentangles I did a while back, on the same 3 x 3 in. squares.

I have also done a couple of 3 x 3s with colour – I shall be doing more of these in the coming days.

More poppies:

and a yellow fish:

I really like this marine theme – there is so much beauty and diversity under the ocean surface and I want to draw it all!!

Now for my ATCs. The marine theme is continued in some of these.

The next one may not be strictly marine, but it suggests a wave to me.

This one looks a bit like a purse to me:

and the final one is pure abstract.

Edited: Forgot to put the poppies ATC in!!

I may make up cards with prints of some of these ATCs too.

This is definitely a work in progress – I have soooo many ideas for more! – so watch this space!

WOYWW 158

I can’t believe another week has gone by so quickly. Time yet again for our weekly Nosey Fest, which is What’s On Your Workdesk Wednesday – to get involved or to find out more, click on the link in my sidebar which will take you to Julia who organises us all and makes it all possible.

Sorry I didn’t manage to visit many of you last week – these days I barely seem to manage more than a handful, for which I apologise – as usual I’ve been struggling with my health and am very behind with all the things I have to do, and then end up with very little time left for blog hopping.

Here’s my desk this week.

I have been working on some zentangle ATCs this week, and colouring them with the Inktense pencils that my hubby gave me for my birthday. I was so sorry not to be well enough to take part in the recent WOYWW special 3rd anniversary ATC swap, but would love to swap now, if anyone wants to join me! I’ve had one or two offers already.

Towards the back of the desk you can see some small 3 x 3 inch zentangles – some of these are traditional ones, drawn within an abstract shape, or “string” as it’s called, and one or two coloured zentangle art squares as well. These are going to be made into cards. We have got a craft exhibition/sale coming up in a couple of weeks, so am getting ready.

The large picture is the zentangle Poppies picture that I drew this week, and coloured with my Inktense pencils. I’ll do a post about that to show it in more detail. I am hoping to have a series of these to show at the exhibition and maybe sell some.

The picture is balanced on top of my ATC box, which contains several in various stages of completion – when I am experimenting with new techniques or materials, I tend to work on ATC-sized samples so nothing is wasted if it all goes pear-shaped, and if all goes well, I end up with a useable ATC! Most of these are mixed media.

At the very back of the desk you may be able to spot a small mixed media box that I’m altering – I’m doing a couple based on the same idea as a recent box I altered for a friend’s birthday. Hopefully I’ll have time to make a few more for the craft exhibition.

This week I had a lovely surprise in the post – an absolutely stunning card from Cindy, with a double-layered removable tag, and also a little bag of goodies for embellishing projects – a RAK and a half!! I was so touched, especially at the amount of work she has put into this beautiful creation. I am not sure how she actually did some of it…

Isn’t that all just gorgeous? Isn’t she talented!! Thank you Cindy!

This week I also made my dad a birthday card – I’ve done a separate post about that – on a steampunk theme, in mixed media. We’re hoping to see him on his birthday on Friday, and I’ll give it to him then. Also this week, I’ve been designing stencils in Inkscape, and cutting them with Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine.

Wishing you all a happy WOYWW and a fulfilling and creative week to come!

Steampunk Gears Birthday Card

It’s my dad’s birthday on Friday, so I’ve made him a card. He is very interested in clocks, so this year I’ve made him one with gears and clock parts.

The card base is plain white inkjet card which I printed with an elliptical transparency fade (which doesn’t show on the photo, unfortunately). Onto this is matted and layered some black cardstock over some dull gold (not mirror card, as I didn’t want anything too shiny on this card). I did the same with a smaller piece of each, heat embossing the sentiment, and sticking this down over a small piece of brown ribbon with a fleck of gold in it. The ribbon and the small piece of card were stuck down with Pinflair gel glue.

When I was making my stencils the other day, and made a mess of the clocks and gears one, I kept all the bits that fell out, to use as small masks. I used a few of these, rubbing over them with Versamark, using a piece of Cut ’n Dry foam, and then gently brushed on some gold Perfect Pearls (mica powder) with a soft brush, and shaking the excess back into the container.

I used a couple of the cut out acetate pieces as embellishments, stuck down with Crafter’s Companion Stick and Stay spray adhesive, and the rest of the embellishments were some of the Friendly Plastic gears and clock pieces that I made last year, from the moulds I’d made. Before sticking these down with Pinflair gel glue, using my new fine nozzle syringe, I rubbed on a little Treasure Gold (like Rub ’n Buff) to give them a nice vintage metallic look.

For the inside, I made a card insert by printing the same elliptical transparency fade and some printed text, adding some gear and clock part images under the transparency fade layer. I created this in Serif PagePlus, my desktop publishing software.

I think the black, brown, cream and dull gold, combined with the steampunk theme, makes a nice card for a man. Hope he enjoys it!

Stencils

I’ve been busy making stencils with Sheba, my Black Cat Cougar cutting machine. I made a few a little while back, but wasn’t 100% satisfied with them because the acetate I used was standard laser printing acetate which is a bit thin, and not up to the somewhat robust treatment that stencils tend to undergo when used in mixed media work.

I’ve discovered various different things you can use to cut stencils, but remembered I’d got a whole box of binders for the heat binding system that I bought some years ago for a project my hubby was doing – some of these covers have gone a bit yellow for some reason, so I thought I’d try cutting them.

Here is one of them, cut from its back cover:

They are certainly a bit thicker than standard acetate, and cutting slowly at Velocity 40, and Force 120 with a double cut on my machine, and using the 60-deg+ blade, I was able to get reasonable results. Some of us on the Black Cat forum have been saying that the small rectangular test cut that the machines will do doesn’t always give very accurate results when it comes to cutting the real thing – the shape is small and regular, and not very intricate, and sometimes cutting the real thing requires a different amount of force. Unless one can determine from a test cut exactly what force and speed is required, one can end up wasting quite a bit of material. Gaz, one of our forum members, and a positive mine of information and useful advice (thanks, Gaz!) has designed a new test cut shape which I have tried, and which works well – it combines straight and curved lines, open and closed paths, giving a more accurate estimate of how the real thing will cut. (I have thickened the lines somewhat, when exporting as a bitmap, so it shows up better.)

When I cut the last lot of stencils, I had problems with small cut out pieces lifting from the mat and being carried along with the blade, preventing further cutting. Loupy, also on the Black Cat Forum, suggested spraying the back of the stencil sheet with repositionable adhesive to create a “double whammy” sticking effect with the adhesive already on the mat (thanks, Loupy!), and this certainly helped a great deal – the added advantage is that the back of the stencil is then slightly sticky and holds in place when you use it. The back of the binders is also made from shiny white card, and I can keep the stencils on this without them sticking, so it’s win-win all round.

However, I had great difficulty peeling the cut stencil off Sheba’s mat without the stencil tearing, as it was so well stuck down! In the end the only way to remove it was to spray it with Crafter’s Companion Stick Away as I lifted it, to dissolve the glue, which of course started to remove the glue from the mat… I am thinking of getting a new mat for general use, and keeping my current one for stencils (I am already using the back of it, because in the early days I scored the top surface deeply by using too much force – common newbie mistake!!) – I can easily re-spray it with Crafter’s Companion Stick and Spray for each stencil I cut. This isn’t a long term project anyway, because when all the stencils are cut, I shan’t need to do any more from those particular svg files, unless, of course, I want to design new ones… Unlike normal svg file cutting in card, which you may want to repeat many times, once you’ve got a stencil, you don’t need to make more copies of it, but can use it repeatedly.

Designing the stencils has been fun as it’s helped improved my knowledge base where Inkscape is concerned! Through this process I have learnt how to use the Tiled Clones feature, which is very useful, and a quick way to make any sort of lattice.

Anyway… here are the stencils I’ve created recently. The first one is approximately 6 x 6 inches, and is of a brickwork design.

Here is a picture of a test piece I made with this stencil, using Distress Inks in Rusty Hinge, Barn Door and Walnut Stain, using my Inkylicious Ink Dusters.

If you look carefully at both this picture and the actual stencil, you can see near the bottom left where two small pieces of the stencil were torn away when I lifted it from the cutting mat. I’m not too worried about this, because mostly, in use, the stencils won’t be used in their entirety anyway, but to add texture in patches.

This is my “Increasing Circles” stencil. I tried to draw this using Tiled Clones but couldn’t get it to work how I wanted, so I just drew several different sizes of circles, and duplicated them several times, and arranged them as randomly as I could across the page to give the effect I wanted. Again, this measures about 6 x 6 inches.

Sheba doesn’t like cutting small circles much, and even with adhesive on the back of the stencil, some of them did tend to lift a bit. There are a couple of tears between some of the circles but I don’t think this will affect the end result much in use.

The next one was a significant failure!! I got a bit carried away in Inkscape, and drew lots of gorgeous gear wheels and clock bits, and got totally confused about what would cut out and what would remain – I do find it hard to visualise this unless it’s a very simple design! You can see some large holes with no detail, and all the detailed bits cut out at the bottom! Rather than ditch it, I thought I’d keep the cut out bits to use as small masks, or perhaps to add to a project – transparent clock gears might be a fun embellishment! Nothing ever wasted…

So… My Clocks and Gears stencil is going to have to be adjusted somewhat, to make it cut as a decent, useable stencil!

Here is the Scallops stencil. I haven’t cut this one yet, so there’s no photo, and I’m hoping it will cut OK.

My final one in this session is the Honeycomb stencil. I nearly made the same mistake as I did with the Clocks and Gears but realised my mistake while I was still in Inkscape, so didn’t waste too much time! If I’d gone ahead as it was, the whole of the centre section would have fallen out, leaving a huge rectangular hole with nice zig-zag edges! Not a lot of use really…

This design was created using Tiled Clones. I had to do a bit of tidying up with the nodes afterwards so that the edges were clean, and there weren’t lots of tiny, untidy bits cut. This stencil measures approximately 10 x 8 inches, but again, will probably never be used in its entirety. There are a few torn bits but I should be able to avoid these in use. I think this will be a very useful stencil as it’s an attractive design.

One thing about using stencils in mixed media art is how you can use them not only to paint through, but to remove paint through – effectively transforming the stencil into a mask! While the paint is still wet, you lay the stencil on top, spritz with a little water if necessary, and then gently rub with a baby wipe to remove the paint through the cut areas of the stencil. Depending on how hard you rub, and what’s underneath, you get different effects. With a layer of gesso on the substrate, you get a much stronger, brighter result, because the gesso tends not to absorb the paint, but when the paint is applied to the substrate with no gesso, you get a much more subtle, gentle effect. Both are good!

I saw a good hint recently somewhere online (sorry, can’t remember who it was) that if you want to enlarge the border of the stencil to prevent inking over the edge, you can add some duct tape (or is it duck tape? I never know… Anyway, why do ducks need tape…?) folded over the edges to give a bit more depth. This enables you to cut useable stencils as large as possible from the given size of acetate that you’ve got. Not sure if I’ll need to do this, though, because most of the time I won’t want to stencil right to the edge. Also, if the stencils end up appreciably larger, I won’t be able to store them so easily. I am currently storing them on their backing sheets, inside clear punched folders in a loose-leaf binder.

The images on here are all bitmaps, of course, so that you can see them. The svg files for cutting are now uploaded to my SkyDrive for free download. Enjoy!