New website and blog location...

You may wonder why there aren't any new updates on this blog. Now I know I haven't been very regular with updates, but there have been several since the last post...only I moved it all to my new website MorganLeFaesTrinkets.com

You will find all the posts from this site over there, as well as new updates, the new location of free the printable files/templates, including the coloring booklets.

I hope to see you there in the future =)

Have a great day,
Monique

For more examples of my work, please visit my website, facebook page or Flickr album:
http://morganlefaestrinkets.com/
https://www.facebook.com/MorganLeFaesTrinkets
https://www.flickr.com/photos/94455363@N02/sets/72157638275223663/

Live Long and Prosper...a birthday present

Last year I made several Traveler's Notebooks using a masking technique. I knew the technique very well from my art journaling and since I hadn't seen anyone use this on leather I thought I would give it a go.

My goal was to get a lighter lettering (or other) onto the notebook.
Up to then I had only been able to get darker images into the leather using stamps. The masking would allow me to keep parts lighter (like this).

The masking technique worked fabulous and I bought a silhouette portrait to explore the possibilities of this further.

Somehow live got in the way, with my job, combined with the Etsy Shop and family life... the machine just sat there gathering dust.... (so sad)

However now that I've quit my job to make TN's full time and my sister in law's birthday (a huge star trek fan) was coming up, I forced myself to MAKE IT SO ...

Painted leather Traveler's Notebook covers, on the outside....

Or...why I don't paint the inside of my covers with the same acrylics based leather dyes I use on the smooth outside.

I've gotten a few questions from people asking me if I could paint the inside of the leather Traveler's Notebook covers. The answer to that would have to be yes, of course I can paint the inside of the covers, however I choose not to do it. For a reason, a very good reason in my mind. =)

I do dye the insides of the covers with alcohol or oil based leather dyes. So there's plenty of color to be had ...

for instance, the above Nebula Traveler's Notebook, has a purple inside =)

To explain why I choose not to paint the inside, I would first have to explain something about the vegetable tanned leather I use.

Painted Traveler's Notebooks...

Á while back I discovered you can paint Leather Travelers Notebooks with acrylic paint, my all time favorite medium. Regular Acrylic paint will work, however special acrylics for leather are better and give a much nicer result.

Since then I have made quite a few Traveler's notebooks that were painted, among which are my painted lady and some nebula's. I tend to show some of the TN's I make in my facebook group, Lady Falcon Traveler's Notebooks and on my instagram, @LadyFalconTN, but somehow seem to forget to post them here...

So without further ado, here's my latest Weir Tree TN. It's an A6 Traveler's Notebook and it has one, larger/older , brother, or sister, in the world =)

These are hand painted and since the leather doesn't take kindly to pencil, I can't sketch it out before hand.

Very short Blogpost...

I'm going to try something new today....I'm going to write a short blogpost... That's right, very short...
However, It is a rather long video =)

It's a flip through of my Traveler's Notebook (s), both my personal planner and the TN I took with me on holiday to Italy with the Travelogue and the doodling booklets.
 I hope you enjoy

Have a lovely weekend,
xx Monique

IG: LadyFalconTN
Flickr: Traveler's Notebooks
Etsy: MorganLeFaesTrinkets

A little trip and a travelogue to log it

Last week I went on a little trip to Italy with my family. We had lots of fun and mad loads of pictures. Over the years I noticed somehow those pictures are taken only to be never looked at again, or if you do look at them, you can't remember what was going on, or even where it was.

So the past few years I've taken to making a travelogue from all my trips. Sometimes quite elaborate, but usually just a brief journaling page per day with what we did and a few pics to go with it. Sometimes I draw, sometimes I don't. I just go with the flow.

This year I made a new template for my travelogue and made it available in my Facebook group, Lady Falcon Traveler's Notebooks

It started out looking like this

and ended up looking like this =)

Not as chunky as some I did before, but lovely and messy, just the way I like it.

A6, Fieldnotes/Pocket or Passport booklet making tutorial

Just a quick post today, with a video tutorial I made about printing and making A6, Fieldnotes (Pocket), Passport sized booklets when you onlu have A4 sized paper.

I don't think this will work with letter sized paper, because the dimensions and proportions are not completely comparable to A4 paper. However, the templates for FN and PP booklets might work.

If you do get it to work, please let me know =)

I also have a few pictures of the little passport I made.

Announcing the winner.. and a painted passport TN

This will be a very short blogpost, with just the video announcing the winner of the giveaway from the previous blogpost Traveler's Notebook.

So a short blogpost and a short video, that would be a first right? =)
Maybe even a bit too short...

How about a little eye candy then, my newest addition to my Traveler's Notebook family. Meet my super cute wallet passport Traveler's Notebook.

When I started I didn't know if it was going to work...

CLOSED My very first Pyrography Traveler's Notebook and a giveaway

At the beginning of last year I saw some beautiful Traveler's Notebook that were made with a technique called leather burning, pyrography. Inspired by this I set out to gather all the materials needed to give this a shot. Made a trial piece in leather and then somehow never got any further.

I guess I was just scared to ruin it and didn't trust myself enough to just go and do it. Well last week I gathered all the courage I could muster and went for it. Fail or no fail, I was going to make a Traveler's Notebook with pyrography.

And I did =)

Now I'm definitely not an expert at this technique, but I had fun doing it and I think it turned out rather nice. =)

The making of a leather "Journey" Travelers's Notebook...

And the mess it creates.

A while back I got a request for an A5 Traveler's Notebook by a lovely lady. Who made the mistake of giving me free reign in making it. Luckily she loves to create art as well. With that in mind and the fact that she planned on using it as an art journal I figured I could play a little.

I first tested the idea on a Traveler's Notebook I felt I ruined with some wrong stamping... I couldn't make it worse, right.

It turned out great, better even then expected.... and it left my whole Kitchen counter looking like a disaster area. I don't have a special art room and since I, obviously, was to enthusiastic and eager to try it, I didn't take any precautions. Which I should have, because I sprayed the leather dye... and I have sprayed inks before, so I should have known.

I did take some pictures while making this, so I'll try and explain what I did, should you want to try this at home.

Please remember the leather dyes I use (and are suitable to do this) are permanent inks. It will create a mess, so please protect the surroundings of your project... thoroughly!

My daily Traveler's Notebook, planner and common place book / journal

Today I finally made a video flip through of my daily Traveler's Notebook. I think a new video was long overdue, specialy now that I'm approaching 1000 subscribers on YouTube....

Which also means there's a giveaway coming. =)

First for the 1000 subscriber mark and secondly to celebrate the fact that I've now been making Traveler's Notebook for over a year and still loving them. Finding new ways to use them and trying out new techniques, like with my new "Journey" TN.

NaNoWriMo, how about that book cover...

With me essentialy being a discovery writer, also described as "seat of my pants" writer (in short, a pantser), or a gardener (as opposed to, respectively, an outliner, a planner, or an architect), I'm not entirely sure how I should prepare for the upcoming month.

As I told you last time, I made an inspirational booklet and downloaded Scrivener. Since then I also adapted the highschool workbook for the young writers into a Traveler's Notebook format, so my daughter could take it with her in her TN. That took some time, but was fun to do. They are nice to read and use even if you're not in high school. I made it available in my dropbox folder (you can find the link to the dropbox on my Midori TN free inserts page).

I played a little with Scrivener and, to be honest, I am impressed, so I'm keeping it. Watched some video's about outlining and prepping for NaNoWriMo (for instance Kaytastic's channel for the writing point of view and Ellen Brock's channel for the editor's point of view) and tried to implement some outlining by making chapters and character sheets in Scrivener (some great ones for Scrivener you can find here on Caroline Norrington's site). After which I came to a full stop.

NaNoWriMo prep for 2014

Joining the NaNoWriMo fun again this year and this time I decided to come prepared to the battlefield, so that, by the time november first comes along, I can hit the road running...

Now I'm not sure if I'm going to accomplish that, but I am at least going to give it a shot.

First of all I felt I needed a notebook, since NaNoWriMo is writing, ergo pen and paper...

So I designed an inspirational booklet to accompany me throughout the month, for notes, for inspiration, for wordcounts and journaling about anything NaNo related (or not...). I made the booklet freely available via my dropbox (the link to which you can find here).

Double threading elastic for your Traveler's Notebook

Since I started making Traveler's Notebooks I have tried out several different ways to thread the elastic through the spine to keep the notebooks inside.

Obviously I started with the normal method, which is one thread, this is realy plenty to keep the notebooks in place.

However I got so many requests to put two elastics in the spine, that I started trying out different ways to thread the elastic. I looked around for ways other people were threading their Traveler's Notebooks and found several, but none of them really appealed to me. 

The first and easiest way I found would be the sideways threading, as opposed to the regular vertical threading. This seems very nice in the beginning, but has a tendency to deform the spine, so that wasn't going to work for me.

How I'm using my Traveler's Notebooks at the moment

A year has passed since I made my first leather Traveler's Notebook and I've been using this sytem now for well over a year.

I've been making my own diaries and inserts right from the start and have adapted the system to suit my needs. I've used several different lay-outs and setups through-out this period, but I think I have now found a setup that works exactly how I like it.

I have 4 RS TN's for different purposes, one for work, one for art journaling, one for my Etsy store and one personal journal and diary/agenda. I also have a Fieldnotes sized TN for lists and keeping track of online orders and a small Passport sized one that I use as a wallet.

At first I used a setup with a MOTP, a WOTP and a daily diary with a chronodex adaptation to fit a 24 hr day. As time progressed and I was slowly overcoming the symptoms of my burn-out, I found I didn't need a full daily page to keep track of what I was doing. I did however want to keep at least a page per week.

 ___Warning, picture heavy post___

How to add extra booklets to a Traveler's Notebook

I received several questions about how to add extra booklets to your traveler's notebook and since this is rather difficult to explain with just words, I thought I'd make a blogpost about it with pictures to make it easier to see.

As an example I used my Fieldnotes/Pocket sized Traveler's Notebook, with just one elastic (1 long and 1 short)

I took it completely apart, to show you how I add the notebooks to my TN and took lots of pictures...

Mir Ardhon helped me make a file folder

I promised a long time ago I would make a video about how to make a file folder for your Traveler's Notebook. Since the video isn't realy coming along I thought a photo tutorial would be just as helpful.

So I set out make a file folder with the Traveling Dori, Mir Arhon watching my every move.

I'll do my best to keep the instructions short and clear.

Traveling Dori, Mîr Ardhon

Since the beginning of this year (march 2014) I've been involved in a project where people from all around the world share snippets of their life in a Traveler's Notebook.

For a brief period of time they will host one of the projects Traveler's Notebooks and capture their every day lives into the notebooks, with whatever medium they feel comfortable with. Be it writing, drawing, painting, photography or a combination of any of the above, anything goes.

A facebook group has been created for the group and many joined for the first trip around the world. Since there are so many people in the group, several subgroups have been cerated and each group has its own Traveler's Notebook.

I made 2 Traveler's Notebooks and inserts as a contribution to the project and coordinate both groups these travel within. These traveler's have departed for the USA on april 14th 2014 for their first stop and continued their journey around the world from there on. Some of the pictures of these travelers have been shared on Flickr and on Facebook. I will try and get more pictures gathered there. There are also pictures on Instagram (#TravelingDori).

Last week one of the traveler's came home after its first trip around the world and I was at awe. Its so wonderful to see all the contributions in the book, all those pieces of life from all around the world. To read about them, see their photo's and feel their art and heart.

So I made a little video, yesterday evening, which doesn't do it justice at all, but will give a little impression of the Traveler.

Got Tangled...

Yesterday I was browsing through Pinterest looking for some inspiration, I stumbled upon a beautiful collection of Tangle patterns. When I clicked trough to the blog I found they were made by a lovely lady named Emily Houtz. She made an entire set of Tangle reference cards and they were free to download.

With this many Tangle examples I figured I could perhaps make a booklet with Tangle examples to take with me in my Traveler's Notebook. After a bit of fiddling (quite a bit actualy) I managed to get them into the format I wanted them and made a trial booklet for my daughter.

She loved it very much an proceeded to make a cover for her booklet filled with doodles. Her cover not finished so I can't show it here yet, but she's having so much fun with it.

Looking at this I thought maybe other people would like a booklet like this as well, so I wrote to Emily to see if she would mind me sharing the booklet I made with her Tangles. I got a lovely email back from her and she graciously allowed me to share the booklet template with you.

I adjusted the template file a little and made an example booklet. I'll be taking this one with me in my RS TN.

A new quotes insert template

Recently I updated my Midori TN free inserts page with the link to the location where you can download them. I also added my new logo and the link to my Etsy shop. In case you would like me to make you a Traveler's Notebook or inserts for Traveler's Notebooks.

Among the inserts are some templates with quotes I collected overt the past year and used with my art journals. An insert with random quotes and an insert with Hitchhikers Guide quotes by Douglas Adams, since this is one of my all time favorite books. I've shared these free templates already on my facebook page and in several Facebook groups, but thought I'd share them here as well.