Some cards

So it has been card making time recently. You all know I am not much for making them – keeping them to my layout scraps where possible. I’ve made 2 lately and one of them is a ’special’ – made from scratch. DS1 asked for one for his GF and so I used the gorgeous Love Bandit range from Bo Bunny to make a little card for him for Valentines Day.

Lots of cutting out of those yummy paper elements. The frame is one of the stamps from the collection – very noice.

The cute little heart punch is one of the new Martha Stewart ones – pefect for this sort of card.

The flowers are a mix of ones I cut out from the patterned papers and some of those from the range itself.

The other card – also from Bo Bunny - is from the Flutter Butter range and uses some of the same elements and left-overs as the layout.

The 3D flower is one I have seen lots of people using lately – most notably Tim Holtz – and is easy to make. Love the look of it – especially when given a coat of Kindyglitz.

TSE/Ideal Papercraft Inspiration cc – Challenge 1 (Pink Paislee – Cupid)

Whoo hoo – tis cc time again at TSE/Ideal Papercraft. Come join us over the next week as the forum ladies tackle the layout/card challenges. We’re hoping for a year of scrapping fun, challenge, and inspiration – and to start the ball rolling we have a cc that we hope will inspire and challenge you to push your own scrapping boundaries and have fun doing so.

This cc we are setting the challenges with an accompanying image/word/quote/etc as inspiration and you can check out here for mine. My challenge is a simple one: from that image take three elements to incorporate into your layout as your 3 criteria. All you need to do is state which elements you used. eg colours, the idea of a ‘bunch’ of something or a ‘tree’, hearts, flowers, etc.

So for my example – using the stunning Pink Paisley Cupid range of papers and embellishments – I used the colours (red, pink, chocolate); the idea of the 3 stripes (the box in the photo) and the ‘bunches/clusters’ of flowers/embellishments.

What a gorgeous range Cupid is too – I’m not much of a Pink Paislee girl, but I do like the pinks, browns, reds and cream in this range. I think it is the oh-so-cuttable flowers that do it for me though – I am such a sucker for something to cut out. What’s not to love about some yummy flowers – and cutting these out allowed me to make some flower/stem bunches that look very cool. The larger flower is of course a Prima – and I went back to the trusty Glimmermist to get the colour.

Having recently seen a number of layouts using the whole vertical stripe/section design, I thought I would have a go at it too. I used a Java Bazzill cardstock for my base, and overlaid that with some Love Potion patterned paper, which I tore and inked. The red central strip is a bit of cardboard packaging sprayed with Red Velvet Glimmermist. A very yummy colour this one.

I’ve tucked some torn bits of reverse side of the Postcards paper so that it peeps out of the rips in the Love Potion.

Some of the cool Borderlines Clear Stickers and a scallop-punched bit of the pink reverse of the Hearts Bloom paper line the sides of the cardboard centre strip. Into this I stuck my photo of Madame taking her Teddy for a walk in the woods. The journaling card is a mix of one of the Postcards and one of the Diecuts – with a rubon to finish it off. The gorgeous little metal Key is one of the Making Memories Ledger Pebble Keys.

To embellish the cut out flowers I inked the edges to give them a sharp edge and then added a little Kindyglitz here and there – with a Kaisercraft rhinestone for a centre. The alphas are also Kaisercraft (No. 1) and again they are Glimmermisted with that yummy Red Velvet colour.

So check out here for the Cupid range from Pink Paislee. I’ve done my re-stock so you should be safe to get some for yourself. And don’t forget to join us all for the cc and try your hand at winning a prize from the prize cupboard.

Basic Scrapping Techniques – Bo Bunny – Flutter Butter

Oh my gosh!! I have been dying to use this range. I’m a bit anal about getting all the bits in a collection if I like them and I had to hunt about to find all that I wanted to use. I’ve been good though and almost all of the layout is available here from the 123 store. I’ll be posting this layout up in the 123 forum in a day or so – when I find out which section it is supposed to go into. Until then though I thought I would post it here.

There’s lots of inking, distressed edges, layering and stitching in this one. I had a ball making it and really enjoyed the process. Ahhhh – time to scrap a layout is a luxury I have missed. I’ve been playing with this one for several days rather than trying to get it done in a hurry and I think the extra time in the creativity shows.

Most of the layout design involves cutting out the circle patterns from the patterned papers, distressing the edges with my trusty HS distresser and then inking some of them before layering them. I used pop-dots to get make the circles more 3-D and Kaiser rhinestones to embellish the circles. I clustered most of them on either side of the title tag, with a smaller group of them up in the top right corner.

The stamp pack that goes with this range is gorgeous. Two of the circle patterns and the butterfly are included in it as well as the flourish I have used on the layout. Yummo. In this close-up you can see the stamping (Stazon Saddle Brown), the cut circles and the stitching. It was nice to do some stitching again and I had fun stitching a pattern along the grid lines in the patterned paper. A few randomly placed Kaiser gems to finish off the stitching made for an easy and cheap embellishment.

The title is one of those complex little put-togethers that just seem to happen. A tag from the die-cuts page, over which I layered another tag I made myself from some left-over paper and then a square I cut from some more spare paper – all inked and with alphas from the sticker sheet from the range what more could you ask for in a title? A little Kaiser bling, a rubon and some doodling and we’re done.

The rubons are divine too – although I split most of them in two and used them here and there – this larger one I used here to make an interesting spot in the last of the ‘empty space’ on the layout. Lol – can’t have any space can we??

So get yourself some Flutter Butter yumminess from 123 and be quick – I think I need to head back there to get me some more.

TSE Feb Sketch – BG – Origins

Oops – sorry – a little late with this one I know. Anyway – here is the layout for it – you can check out the sketch and a chance at the prize cupboard here at TSE.

I love these new papers where you get all this embellishment on the corners/edges with less patterned paper in the middle. Lets you stick ‘stuff’ to your heart’s content in the middle of the page and still have pretty edges. Anyway – Sea Salt – is one such paper and it is much prettier in real life that it looks on the screen. In fact, most of the papers from this range are. I was so-so when they first came out – but had a chance of getting a Collection pack at half price – so I did – and I am sorry now I did not get more of some of the individual papers as they are lovely.

Anyway – the base is Sea Salt and the only other paper on it is a torn part of Renew – which I used because of the awesome flowers on it. If you look closely here you can see the flowers behind all the other ‘stuff’. The only other ‘pattern’ as such comes from part of a journaling transparency overlay that I cut up and put to the left of the photo – all I wanted were the lovely flowers on it.

I’ve seen a lot of layouts recently with chippy frames on them just put here and there – either around titles or journaling or some little bit the scrapper wanted to highlight – so I thought I would try that with this gorgeous Twiddleybitz frame I got from Mary. Yummo – a little distress ink smudged over it here and there, a coat of Rock Candy Crackle Paint and whallah – just stunning. Love it! I used it to frame some cool flowers on the patterned paper – and I highlighted them with some Rock Candy Distress Stickles.

There are a heap of old (some are Pie Shop ones and others are from last year) Prima flowers and pearls/bling to embellish the papers and to keep the nature theme going. I was lucky enough to have the perfect colour matches in my stash and for once left the Glimmermist alone.

The small flowers I embellished with a little Peeled Paint Distress Stickles and some buttons from the Origins collection. (Don’t you just love the quality control issues BG??) Lmao – shabby is as shabby does – so I left it on like that. The little tag behind the flower is a left-over bit of some grunge-paper that I put though my Cuttlebug and embossed with flowers and vines. Inked up with some distress ink it came up a treat. The tag itself is a Nestability tag – wonderful things these. No more cutting out and trying for a clean edge for me!! Now I have perfect tags every time. Some more pearls/bling finishes it off. The strip of paper behind it all is the reverse side of the Sea Salt paper and is gorgeous – a grungy sort of cross-hatching pattern. Want another sheet of this one just so I can use the reverse.

The alphas were done using the same technique as the frame. A mix of Peeled Paint (or it might have been Shabby Shutters – I totally forget now), Tea Dye and Walnut Stain Distress Inks just smudged on where-ever. It’s more a mix of the first two with a little Walnut Stain just wiped over to give it some darker spots on it. More Rock Candy over the top for those lovely fine cracks.

Not a lot of journaling on this one, as it is part of a larger set of photos I took up at Purlingbrook Falls. My little Poppet had a lovely time up there playing Pussycat Fairy and communing with nature. She was fascinated with the HUGE lobby we spotted in the creek. Lmao – she was disgusted though when we told her that some people eat them. Not for her she says!!

So that’s my sketch layout for the month – head off to TSE for the sketch itself and a chance at the prize cupboard.

7 Gypsies – Gypsy Market

Ok – here is my first contribution to scrapping 2010. It was a while in the making, but finally it is done and I can share it with you. It’s a little darker than I normally go in layouts – but I loved the Gypsy Market collection as soon as I saw it and had to have those gorgeous 7 Gypsies papers. Of course they screamed “grunge” at me, but since I had a few grungy techniques I wanted to try, that was fine.

I’ve distressed all the paper edges and then inked over them in Black Soot Distress Ink. The bigger rips in the top paper are usually the result of over-enthusiastic use of the HS distresser, rather than any planned design, though I will make them bigger if it suits the layout. Scrap goss is that the Heidi Swapp brand itself is now discontinued – so you might want to stock up on her nifty little edge distressers while you can.

I have to confess that for a long time the layout was headed in a different direction, until I finally owned up that the grungeboard piece I had spent ages on was simply better off with a different paper combination – but cool, I will have another Gypsies layout to share at some point with that on it. So I sat there for ages (whilst fellow DT’s Mon completed 2 layouts and Kars covered her book covers) and pushed my photo around the 2 bits of paper. Sigh!! Who gets any scrapping done on scrap nights anyway??

Adding a third paper – the baby-poo yellow one (Herne) made all the difference to the layout. It gave me the ‘lift’ in the colours that I needed. Once I had that, the rest was simply embellishing.

The red chipboard and flowers were made in the same way. Inked with Fired Brick Distress Ink and then lightly ‘swiped’ over with some Black Soot Distress Ink. This gives them a lovely grungy weathered look. Then I added some Fired Brick Distress Stickles to the chipboard and some Peeled Paint Distress Stickles to the flowers. Whoo hoo that’s an awesome look – adding both glitter and texture to the surface of the chipboard/flowers.

The green chipboard is simply the same process, but with Peeled Paint Distress Ink.

Here you can see close up the grunge texture that the Distress Stickles gives the chipboard.

The yellow ochre flowers were coloured with a Colorbox chalk ink and then I used Walnut Stain Distress Stickles to embellish them. You can dry the Distress Stickles with a heat gun to help minimise the time spent drying your embellishments. A red Kaiser rhinestone for a centre completes them.

I used the Prima rubons and rhinestone flourishes to “fill in” some of the empty spaces in the layout. Some time I will have to try using the rubons with their original rhinestones – they have a heap in each pack and some are really tiny – they would look awesome together on a layout.

In the end I ran out of room for the journaling – so I used a hidden tag tucked under the photo edge. The photo was taken at Purlingbrook Falls in Springbrook and I wrote about how Madame was in paradise – just wandering about in her pussycat fairy costume looking for other pussycat fairies and enjoying the stream and wilderness. I may not be happy with the planned photos of her brother and his girlfriend (looooooong story) but I am thrilled with the incidental photos I got of my little fairy wildcat.

For those of you who like a little Timmy grunge in your scrapping – these papers are perfect for this type of work. Some of the other papers are not so ‘dark’ – so for those of you who like a brighter grunge, there’s also something to catch your eye. Whatever you do, don’t miss the chance to check them out for yourself – here - at 123.

Bad Blogger

Yeah – ok – I know I have been these past few months. Anyone would think I had not scrapped at all – and you would be close to the truth. Sigh. Sometimes life takes precedence and the hobbies need to be put on the back burner.

November is always a bad month for scrappers who are teachers and it was a very rough month for me up until mid December when I finished my contract for the school I was teaching at. Family issues kept the rest of December and most of January a bit of a blur too. Hopefully these have been sorted out now and things will be better this year.

I have again made myself the promise not to take on a full-time teaching job and to focus on my own family. This time I was strong and refused the work contract for another year full-time at the same school. Sometimes – family needs to come first. With Madame starting Prep; DS3 going into High School; DS2 entering year 10 and the academic Honours Program; and DS1 hopefully mending some educational bridges – this is a year that will be full-on and needing attention from Hubby and me.

The up-side is I guess – that I will have more time for scrapping. And you can’t complain about that. At least I can’t anyway. I did a huge re-sort of the scrap room and replaced the bookcases damaged in the flooding last year. Ohh my – if you want scrap-friendly shelving that is (relatively) cheap but looks fantastic – you cannot go past the Billy range from IKEA. I now have a wall to wall and pretty much floor to ceiling set of wonderfully deep shelves that will store all my stash. It’s taken me weeks to get it all sorted out – but all I have left now is to finish the chippy; stickers and embellishments sorting out and I am done. Whoo Hoo!!

I do have some stuff to share with you over the next week – I finally got back to scrapping about 2 weeks ago, but with the change over to cable (yee haaa – I can use u-tube now) it has taken me a bit to sort out all my inter-net connections etc. So I will be catching up the back-log over the next week.

For those (few) of you who check out my blog regularly – you will know I am not much one for putting personal stuff up – and this is pretty much the most personal I have posted, but I wanted to thank those of you who have emailed to ask if things were ok and to say you missed the posts and explain the break. Many thanks for your kind thoughts and for taking the time to check out my little blog. I appreciate all of you who comment and otherwise contact me.

Coming up next week we have the Inspirations CC at TSE and we would love to have you join us there.

Otherwise – welcome to 2010 – I hope it is a great year for us all.

Paper Inklings – school papers and embellishments – part 2

Being a teacher at your children’s school (as I was for nearly 8 years) has a few perks – and I don’t mean the “mum I’ve eaten all my lunch and I’m still hungry – can you get me something from the tuckshop?” ones. It means that sometimes, when other teachers take photos of my kids in the classroom doing things, I can jump up and down and ask for a copy.

Even better for me – the main snapper of all things photographic at their school – is actually a wonderful photographer as well (though he didn’t take the photos in this particular layout). So I have a number of great photos of my kids in the classroom or at sporting events that I would not normally have.

The boys go to a school with an academic focus – and science is treated very seriously, even in the junior school (Primary for those who are not in a P-12 school). Grade 6 is the final year for us in junior school and the highlight of the year in science is doing their very own science experiment – designed and performed themselves. It’s part of a program put out by CSIRO and if they meet the criteria, they get a certificate to say they have successfully completed the project.

Being a science teacher myself, you can imagine I was pretty stoked to get my hands on some photos of DS3 in the middle of conducting his experiment. After seeing the new School papers from Paper Inklings I could not imagine a better range to scrap these photos with. I started out by layering 2 of the papers over each other – using the brighter red one as a frame. Then I cut out one of the ruler strips to use as a base for the “year 6” rubon.

I cut up one of the chipboard titles (I took the word “years” of the bottom) to make part of my title. In keeping with the writing on the patterned paper I inked it black and then grunged over the top of it with white gel pen to get that ‘chalked on’ look. To make it stand out from the brown paper I needed to mat the title on the bright yellow patterned paper. Wow did that make it pop! The last part of the title I inked with some red chalk ink to match the red paper frame.

I also used on the chippy embellishments – a shield – as a base for some journaling. The information was simply printed out on some acetate and stuck to the inked shield. Simple, but very effective. Since most of the ink I used for this layout was chalk ink – it is hard to apply rubons or gel pen over the top of it – acetate is a great compromise.

Like the previous layout, I used some of the rubon titles from the range and the same red patterned paper for the journaling strips.

I love the chippy pencils – like the maths protractor in the previous layout – they are so unusual in design and look great on the layout. I inked these to look like a real pencil and used them to add in the title of DS3’s experiment. Way cool – I want more of these!!

Again – I am really happy with the finished layout. Although I have not been so much a fan of ‘themed’ papers before, I just love the way this range ‘scraps out’. At last I have a range of papers for all those school photos, where normal papers just did not seem to do them justice. I have a few more ideas up my sleeves yet – so when I finally get time to take a breath (school is very busy for me at the moment with year 11 and 12 stuff) – I’ll get back to my box of yummy goodies and finish off a couple more.

Paper Inklings – school papers and embellishments – part 1

So how many times have you wished that you had some appropriate papers to put with all those school photos you get? You know the ones I mean – you pay for the packages every year through the school and they arrive back with all those silly little tiny ones that you almost never use and the rest get farmed out to grandma’s and aunts.

Well Paper Inklings – a local Aussie company – has come to the rescue. Their new School range is just awesome. Lots of lovely colours to suit most schools and some fantastic patterns to the papers make this a great line for using up all those annual school portraits. Besides the great patterned papers, they have a matching range of rubons and chipboard titles and shapes that cover both Primary and Secondary school.

When I checked out their website I noticed they already had some wonderful layouts using school photos – so I thought I would see how well you could use the papers to make a layout that was less a ‘traditional school photo’ layout and more like the ones I normally do. And I have to admit I am pretty pleased with the results to date.

I’ve had this photo of DS1 and one of his favourite year 9 teachers for a long time now. This woman was a godsend. Young and hip and full of enthusiasm – she managed to undo the damage the previous maths teacher had done to his love of and self-confidence in maths. The Paper Inklings range was perfect – it kept the focus on the school/maths and yet let me be artistic and girly in design. DS1 loves the layout – and is old enough to appreciate the meaning behind some of the quotes printed on the patterned paper.

Ignoring the dreadful photo (you try taking one with such a bright sunny day and your subjects are under-cover) I think the layout manages to represent both aspects of the moment it captures. I’ve tried to let as much of the pattern on the paper show up the maths/learning theme and yet the flowers and the threading soften it and make it fun and ‘arty’.

I’ve layered the dark green side of one of the patterned papers over another that is made up of all these ruler measurements strips. Ripping out the centre allows me to have the contrasting ruler paper show through the darker green paper. I then punched some eyelets into two of the rip corners and threaded some string through them. It’s grungy – but then maths is never pretty (lol – it was never my favourite subject). Underneath the threaded string are some paper flowers I cut out of one of the other patterned papers in a gorgeous contrasting red. I’ve inked around the edges in white ink and added a few pearls to the centre of them. Gorgeous!!

Here’s a close-up of the flowers. Love the maths symbols and other educational bits printed on the papers.

I’ve framed 2 corners of the photo with some of the ruler-corner rubons from the range. I also used one of the title rubons and added some inked chippy to complete the title. Finishing the layout couldn’t have been easier – I just added one of the protractor chipboards from the chippy range and printed out the journaling on some of the red patterned paper.

Whallah – a layout that DS1 loves and I am pretty impressed with too. Wilma at 123 sells some of the rubons from this range in-store here – so check them out. She also still has a heap of the papers and rubons from their last range – -Mythical – which is a just-to-die-for girly range of fairies and flourishes.

The last of the Lemonade…

The 3rd and last of the BG Lemonade layouts for the newsletter at the beginning of October. Gosh the month has gone so quickly. “You are my Sunshine” focuses on elements from the Card Kit and Chipboard Sticker Shapes pack. The basic design is a frame of patterned paper around a smaller square of patterned paper. The photo is one from our ski trip – as we were driving through Victoria, Madame saw these bright, sunny yellow flowers along the roadside. She had to hop out and have a little wander through them – and I just ‘had’ to take some photos.

Don’t be afraid to cut up pre-made chipboard pieces. I took one large Sticker Shape that was a little over-powering in size and cut it into two smaller ones, which were much easier to place about the layout.

Here is the rest of the Sticker Shape – with a cardstock flower/leaf from the Card Kit. The pink flowers are another of the Prima vines (from my own stash).

This sweet little title card is from the Card Kit, as is the pink heart – the rest are chipboard stickers. It was too nice to keep for a card – and just perfect for my layout.

The title alphas are just the standard sticker ones that can be bought separately or come with the Collection Pack. You can also see the rubon that matches the flourish on the title card.

With the wide range of colours in this range – pinks, yellows, reds, blues, greens and creams – there is something for everyone. I’ve done 5 layouts using this collection now and not one of them is the same – this is probably the most versatile range BG has put out in a long time. So grab yourself some and have a play too.

More BG Lemonade for TSE

For “Summer Girl” – the second of the BG Lemonade layouts for TSE, I wanted to feature the rubons and Journal Cards. There is very little by way of ‘feature’ patterned paper on this layout – a strip from the multi-patterned Saltwater Taffy is the only one – the rest (the mats and base page) are all ‘background’ patterned papers. The Journal Card makes an effective ‘patterned paper’ in its own right – as well as providing a place for some journalling.

The Prima Flutter Vine, together with the Trellis Rose and folded Green Tara flower provide the main embellishment “feature” of the layout. Again, the Trellis Rose has been altered with Glimmermist and Kindyglitz to suit.

The rest of the page is ‘filled’ with rubons and the title alphas. All of the chipboard has been coloured with Keylime Radiant Rain (my own stash) – a perfect match for the green of the rubons and papers.