Father’s Day card – Offshore

Time to end this month as I began it – bright, bold and cheerful – and with plenty of Kaiser Offshore. My Father’s Day card won’t be missed – just like his kids, this card is ‘in your face’ and ‘full of life’. Lol – poor Hubby won’t know what hit him when this lands on his lap before he has time to get out of bed or open his eyes.

I used some of the scraps from my Sketch layout to make the card, along with some new materials. The shape is one I spotted somewhere – no idea where, which is a shame as I liked it – but the rest is all my own design.

I cheated and used my HS mask as a template to make the shape. To get the patterned paper to match I simply traced the shape about a half centimetre inside each layer to make it slightly smaller than the preceding layer.

The rest is just bits and pieces of the patterned paper that caught my fancy – cut out and layered onto the card face – and decorated with a few rhinestones here and there.

The alphas are also Kaiser – given a coat of Tim Holtz distress embossing powder and some Kindyglitz and a little blowtorching with my heat gun.

Happy Daddy’s Day Daddy!!

Scrooge McScrapper makes cards

I might be an expensive scrapper to keep – but I am the original Scrooge McScrapper when it comes to making cards. For me it is about using up the left-overs from layouts and making them into cards, rather than throwing the bits out.

Although there are 3 cards shown, there is only one basic design – one that is versatile enough to be used for any shape/size card and for any occasion. The best part about it is that it is quick and easy to make – even though it allows for every card to be different.

It works best with a double sided paper where one pattern is a background one (either a small pattern eg dots or a subdued pattern – just nothing brash and fancy) and the other is a more interesting pattern (stripes are particularly good for this).

Check out the Rudolf Club in the forum at 123 to find out how to make these cards and others by the Team.

CI Rock-a-bye – a mini album from scratch

Yep – I made one. Don’t ask me when the next one will be (not for a looooooooong time) but I love the one I have done.

I am a Marah Johnson fan from way back – love her grungey, moody, quirky sense of design and I buy almost every range she puts out. Her stuff for Creative Imaginations is just divine. Love it. love it. love it. I’m not much of a blog hopper (or blogger for that matter) but I did take a peek at hers the other day and nearly died – she is making her own mini albums (for kits and classes) and they are just PERFECT!!! I so want one. She used some of her older grunge ranges (the ones with the skulls) but I could see the new Rock-a-bye papers working perfectly with it too.

The only problem was I wanted the album to be the same shape as hers – so I did some internet snooping and downloaded images of the dies (wowzer they are expensive – since they are a commercial set I guess). Happy days!! I printed them out onto normal photocopy paper and then used them as templates to cut out my own mini album (all from scratch). So mine is made from some cardboard packaging my scrap stuff came in and some spare thin cardboard that some stores use to protect their papers in the mail

Anyway – to me a mini album should be about show-casing some special theme – a collection of photos that work to that theme – as much as it is about show-casing your techniques and scrapping style. Luckily for me – I was in the middle of collecting a series of photos of Madame going about her everyday business – so I collected a subset of these photos to make a ‘theme’ about her and her baby doll. It has been a milestone this last year – for years she would only ever play with the one small battered little blue baby doll – no other, no matter how cute or pretty – until this year. Now she has a pink version of the old blue one and has fickly transferred her love and attention to the pink ’sister’, whilst baby blue remains abandoned in the toy box.

So – to the mini album.

The cover is a lift-off of the one Marah has – sort of. I used the same cover shape and the same die cut piece on top. The rest is my own. I made the die cut from black cardstock and then covered it with black Kindyglitz, When it dried I adhered it to the front cover in the centre of the cover. The pink heart with the writing on it is from one of the patterned papers in the range. Behind that are some wings I made myself from clear transparency and a very thick layer of Crystallina Kindyglitz (so thick it took days to dry). A layered flower and a title – and there is the front cover.

(I am showing it to you page by page as since it is not finished I am not able to put it all together – when I get that done I will post up the final photo for that)

For the wings – I traced around the wings that were a pattern on another CI paper (for those interested it is one from the Amore range) and then scanned that into my computer. I printed it out onto a sheet of transparency and then traced over the pattern with a thicker black pen. Then I applied the Kindyglitz. The affect is just gorgeous.

The paper flowers in the album were all originally white (other than a couple of black Green Tara ones). I’ve used a mix of Prima Bucket of Blooms – man I need to get more of these) and Green Tara. The colours all came from Glimmermist Sweet Pea and Cherry Blossom or Stazon (the black ones that are not Green Tara). The silver butterfly brad is from one of Marah Johnson’s older ranges.

The title is a little complicated. Originally I wanted it to be a hot pink and used the Sweet Pea Glimmermist – but the colour of the chippy made it look blerk – so I inked them black with a little alchol ink (as Stazon for some reason would not cover it well – go figure). That made them too dark (feeling like Goldilocks here) – so I coated them with some (shhhh – don’t tell anyone) Pink Glitter nailpolish I spotted in the local chemist. The odd thing is – the pink is very pale – the brighter pink you see is the Glimmermist mixing with the alcohol ink and the nailpolish – cause I used my heat gun to try to get them to dry faster and it all bubbled up together. I have no idea if I could repeat this – but darn it looks good. It does stand out from the patterned paper more in real life.

Page 1

The inside page tells the story of the mini album – or at least sets the scene. I’ve used those gorgeous Carolee’s Creations Flirtacious alphas. The flourish is I think a Twiddleybits one and the brads are again from Marah Johnson. The frame around the photo of “baby pink” is an acrylic one I was given and then altered.

For this flourish I inked it white and then Glimmermisted it so that colour stayed true. Then I applied a layer of Pink Kindyglitz and dried it with my heat gun to give it that mottled affect. Cool huh? All these years of using The Glitz and I am still finding new ways to use it. And isn’t that metal brad the yummiest? Comes in a set of 3 pairs of flowers. Gotta get me more of them too.

The frame is also a mish mash of attempts. I ran it through the Cuttlebug first to give it that pattern. I had not thought it would work as well as it did – but it came up a treat.

I did try inking it pink first and was not happy with that. So I inked it black and again was not happy. Finally (after inspiration from a truly talented scrapper – I have a link to her on my blog) I inked it with metallic ink. Whallah – love it. I dried it out with my heat gun again and that made the embossed pattern fade a little – but since I wanted a worn, grungy look that suited me fine.

Page 2

I love this page – it was one of the first ones I did after the cover. I’ve cut the page out of the bottom of one of the papers and then decorated it with stickers, flowers, a make-your-own frame from Prima packaging and the pram is cut out from one of the other patterned papers.

For the frame for my top photo – I recycled the cardboard insert from my Prima flowers packaging. This year they have been coming with this lovely die-cut insert and I have been hoarding mine to re-use. After cutting it to size, I painted it back and used AED Hot Set powder and Black Glitter to decorate it with a couple of pink Kaiser rhinestones to finish it off.

More flowers, more stickers, more little alphas. The pram is actually up on pop-dots to give it some dimension.

Some of the stickers in the range are three-dimensional. The little pram with words is layered. Very cool. The centre on this flower is a metal bead thingie I found. Wonderful things come in a packet of 10 or 20 and are as cheap as chips (well almost). Sort of dark black/silver metal with Kaiser-pink rhinestones in them – a perfect match for my little mini-album.

Page 3

The main feature of this page is the masking technique. I’ve used a Tim Holtz border mask and simply daubed some black Stazon onto it with a make-up sponge. Pearl flourishes, rubons and more flowers complete the embellishments.

With the masking I made sure that I continued the black ink to the end of the page – this made sure I got a lovely border look to the mask. Where the patterned paper showed through I applied a layer of Kindyglitz for a lovely shimmery sparkle. A strip of lace ribbon hides the other edge of the mask. The little black bits you see on the flower are left-over parts of the pearl flourish. They make the flower look very realistic don’t they?

The Prima pearl flourish was cut into smaller bits to suit the space on the page. If you look back to the layered flowers on the cover and compare them to these ones you can see that they look so much better with the inking, so I guess I will be pulling these off and doing that at some point.

Page 4

Another page combining cut-out elements of the patterned paper, stickers, flowers, brads and rubons. The rubon title at the bottom is actually the end part of the journaling sentence.

Lol on Madame and her fixation with her brother’s ipod/mp3. She steals it/them whenever she gets the chance to share it with Baby – or demands to listen in to one of the ear-buds whilst her brother is sitting next to her in the car.

Here you can see the cut out star/wings from one of the patterned papers. I embellished it with some Kaiser rhinestones and Kindyglitzed the wings as well. The hot pink flower with the metal centre is another Marah Johnson brad – it’s just gorgeous – with lovely velvety petals.

What isn’t clear in the previous shot is that the black flower is [b]Kindyglitz[/b]ed too and that provides a nice contrast to the velvet petals. This photo also shows the inked edges of the photos – black [b]Stazon[/b]. It helps to make the photos uniform throughout the mini album.

This is one of my all-time favourite brads by Marah. Just love the little girl skull (don’t you just adore those little pig-tails) with pink eyes. Whoo hoo – can’t believe I finally got to use it.

Page 5

And this would be another page I love. I cut the paper smaller than the page and sprayed some Graphite Glimmermist along the edges. It’s a very dark metallic silver but a very grungy silver. Very cool looking. Stickers, flowers and brads for the main embellishments and a really neat acetate diecut.

This time the flowers include the Graphite Glimmermist as a colour. It was a perfect match for the silver metal brads from one of the earlier pages. I also had some metallic DMC thread that was a good match too. The photos were matted on some grunged cardboard box lid which I painted with Sweet Pea Glimmermist first. The little roses were also coloured with Glimmermist and are part of (a once white) ribbon.

How cool is this grunge butterfly/skull combination??? Love it. My favourite part of the stickers is this little motif.

More metal brads and layered flowers. And a close-up of the die-cut transparency flourish. I did this the same as the wings on the cover – it’s actually a down-loaded die-cut from the same set as the album pages. This time I heat-dried the Kindyglitz rather than let it dry naturally like the wings. It produced this awesome effect – the Glitz goes a coppery/pinky/gold in patches here and there. It’s a completely different look to the naturally dried Glitz.

Page 6

Stickers and flowers for this page, with a couple of rubon ducks. Madame adores her new changetable/bath combo and poor old Baby is now so clean she squeaks.

Page 7

Time for one last bottle and cuddle before getting ready for bed. The paper is actually three bits of left-overs from other projects – but the joins are hidden behind the photo and other embellishments and you have to look very hard to see the joins. Love the sticker tag – all the embellishments in this range are gorgeous.

Inside back cover

I used some of the techniques I did on other pages to try and keep the ‘feel’ of the album integrated. So there is another Kindyglitz swirl and more of the Prima packaging. My little Poppet all tucked up in bed, fast asleep with her precious baby doll.

And the back cover – which I kept simple so it would sit flat.

So that is my little venture into mini albums – all finished. It might be a bit before I do another one – or next time I will use one with pre-made pages.

Check out the CI Rock-a-Bye range – both 123 and TSE stock it – you don’t have to make a mini-album, but there are endless possibilities to what you can do with these gorgeous, grungy, little girl papers and embellishments. Better get in and get yours before I do a re-stock of my supplies.

August Boys Class Layout – more Graphic 45

Here is the layout I did for this class – using the stunning Graphic 45 paper ranges and other odds and ends.

Very happy with how it turned out.

More Imaginisce ‘Fairest of them All”

For the next layout I wanted to do something a little fun – a bit quirky for me. I had these lovely little photos of Madame peddling herself “Off to the Ball” in her Disney Princess-mobile. Looking at the papers, I noticed that the Magic Meadow pattern looked very much like green rolling hills – and an idea was born. The green paper is actually two pieces, with one overlaid over the other up on pop-dots. Originally I was going to slip the photos under the top layer – until I decided to cut the little cars out. The whole layout is meant to be playful and fun – to reflect my little Madame and her game of make-believe.

To be honest, there is not a lot to the layout in terms of materials. Most of it is a combination of 2 bits of paper and then a generous addition of rubons and chipboard stickers (aren’t they to die for – just love the little crown and the flower centre). Lashings of Kindyglitz on the paper flowers from Green Tara, and the tag was simply traced onto the patterned paper and cut out.

The alphas were inked white and then coated with AED White Fizz embossing powder. This is a lovely white glittery embossing powder, but I added a layer of Kindyglitz over the top to make a lovely dual finish. If you look at the alphas from one direction they are a pure white, but look at them from another and they have a pink tinge to them from the Kindyglitz. Pretty no matter which way you look at them.

Another of those little castles (don’t you just want to own that one?) and more of the rubons and chipboard stickers.

And the final layout to come on the weekend.

cc layout for 123

I got to work with some of the new Kaiser papers for our recent cc. Just loving the papers in the Pennyroyale collection – they are so me!! Chocolate, pink and a sweet photo of Madame enjoying a simple everyday moment in life – what more do you need for scrapping?

I used Kaiser’s new chippy alphas – painted them cream and applied some of the coloured rub-ons from the Pennyroyale range.

One of the bits I like the most was cutting out the tag end to hang over the photo edge – the journalling is hidden behind the photo. Just behind it you can see the gorgeous fleur de lys punch.

Lots of cut-out work and layering on this one. The colour rubons are divine – love the bright coral-pink one you can see here.

Fairest of them All – Imaginisce

Oh I love love love this range. I sooooo wanted to work with it and it was an endless source of frustration not to be able to get my hands on it due to the wholesaler not getting it out to TSE and THEN having the hide to not supply all the papers.

Yeah well – I bought the papers I was missing (the nicest ones of course) from the US – and I did finally get to work with these ones for Mary – so all good in the end I guess.

This was last month’s newsletter work for TSE – I got sick straight after doing this, which is why it is up here late.

You might have noticed that at times I like to try out different styles of scrapping. I know I have a ‘style’ (or so people tell me) that is cluttered, glittery/shiny, detailed and layered. Sometimes that style does not suit the papers I am working with, or sometimes I just need a break from the same old/same old. Working with the delightful Fairest of them All papers by Imaginisce was one of those times.

The papers and embellishments are gorgeous and girly – just perfect for any little princess. Mine was thrilled when she saw them and offered to have her picture taken just so she could get a layout scrapped with them (not that she needs any encouragement to dress up). Soft pastel pinks, blues and greens with just the touch of glitter here and there make for some very soft, sweet little girl papers and the embellishments are just so girly.

The first layout “Castle under Construction” is my usual style. Soft, romantic papers like these deserve a little shabby chic, so I have distressed and inked the edges of the papers to soften the hard lines of the edges. I used all three of the available papers in this range for this layout, overlaying them for interest and visual depth. (I’ve saved the not available papers for a later time as they are a PERFECT match for Madame’s new bed sheets.)

The rubons are the Giggle silver ones – and they are very glittery/shimmery on the paper. I had thought they might be hard to see, but in real life you can see them clearly on the patterned paper. This close-up shows you some of the rubons, as well as the soft shimmery Posies flowers that are part of the embellishment range. You can also see the title here – which has been embossed with AED (Pink Galah) embossing powder and embellished with Kaiser rhinestones.

The smaller alphas were inked with chalk ink and then Kindyglitzed. As you can see here, I also embellished the rubons with Kaiser rhinestones.

My tip for the week involves this gorgeous little castle – check out the forum tips/techniques, where I tell you how to make your own embellishments from rubons and stamps – without ever using the originals.

And that’s it for the moment – I’ll put the rest up another night as I have an online class to go sort out…

123 Scrap Twist Competition

So you think you can scrap do you?
Well why not give our SCRAP TWIST COMPETITION a try.
You could win yourself a $100, $50 or $25 store voucher.

Here is how it works

There will be six scrap twist rounds – a new round beginning each week starting August 2 2009.

Each round will have a nominated product which should feature prominently in your project. The nominated products are listed in the forum here.

On the first day of the round you will need to check back on the forum to find out what the TWIST for that round is. For example : The featured product for Round 1 is paint. The TWIST might be that you have to use red paint. Or you might have to do something feminine. The TWIST for each round will not be revealed until the first day of that round

You will have two weeks to complete each project.

Projects must be uploaded to the correct folder in the gallery by Midnight (AEST) on the due date.

Round one starts today – and the theme is PAINT. But be careful of the twist – check it out here in the 123 forum.

So come on in and register and have a go.

August Sketch for 123

So this month is Big Boys Business month for 123 – and with that theme in mind I did a layout of my big boy enjoying the serious business of having fun in the surf. So much fun, I needed more than one photo to convey just how much fun it was!! Used the stunning new Kaiser range – Offshore - made the layout so easy – it suited my needs perfectly.

So here is the sketch:

And here is my Offshore layout:

To make the circle on the left I combined a cut out section from one of the papers with the bright circle rubon to make a layered circle – which I then put my title (using their #2 alphas) onto to. The orange squares are also cut out from one of the papers.

The little droplets are also cut out from the patterned paper – some are on pop-dots and some are stuck directly onto the paper.

The wave pattern is the stamp from the set and the journaling spot makes a great embellisment in itself – especially when you realise that your journaling is not there. Oops – I need to go put that on and re-take the photos I think. More of the cut out droplets to finish.

A very easy layout to do with these gorgeous summery papers.

3 Stamp/card kits for TSE

Long ago, before the flu hit…. there were some card kits I did for Mary at TSE. They use those gorgeous little Snag’em Stamps from Imaginisce and some lovely papers from Pink Paislee. All three of the cards have moving parts and are very easy to make. So check them out instore at TSE.