The Story of a Boy with a Hose

Just popping in real quick to share one of my "boy" layouts. It's always so novel to me to do a bold and graphic masculine page given that the vast majority of my scrapping is either about my two gorgeous girls .... or myself ;-)

But my recent exciting adventure into boy-scrapping came about because I wanted to challenge and extend myself. And because I wanted to put together an album for my sister about her fun-loving son.

So I managed to score a whole bunch of photos from her, and amongst them was this series of photos. They made me giggle!! Just look at the awe and wonder on his face as he discovers the hose..... and then the outrage as it squirts him in the face! Heee heee he!

But after layering up the three 4x6" photos it really doesn't leave much room for too much more embellishments. Which is fine. In fact, I really like that this layout is more about a cool colour combination with a bold impact that focuses mainly on the photos.

And it meant that I could put that handmade Amy Tangerine "He" tag to good use after all (I'm pretty sure I used my "She" tag lllooooonnngg ago!)

I'm on night 4 of 7 y'all. Woohoo for hump night!

The Story of Meeting Amy Tangerine

Little Moodles has quite the quirky personality at times. I can't help but giggle every time I see this photo of her. It captures her craziness perfectly.

Shoving handfuls of noodles into her mouth, not to mention sitting up at the dinner table topless with scribble marks all over her belly! (Yes it's true that perhaps this photo also captures a mother who might not be too fussed about being "proper ladies")

So a crazy photo needs some crazy fun bright colours and happy embellishments.... and messy stitching to emulate all those dangling noodles. All the patterned paper here (apart from the background one) is from my new 6x6" Amy Tangerine Sketchbook paper pad.

I'd heard that the Amy Tangerine collection (and other American Crafts and Crate Paper too) was on sale at Spotlight which for me was enough of an excuse to pay them a visit. If you read my blog you know that I've long been declaring the Sketchbook collection one of my most favourite.

So imagine my surprise and delight when I walked in the door at Spotlight and saw advertising everywhere saying that Amy Tan herself was coming in a few days for an in-store appearance! I instantly signed up of course, and last weekend with nervous anticipation went along to her demonstration class.

 

A lot of people were quite interested in my Instagram pics I took on the day, so I'm reposting them all here for you as well. The first one is quite blurry I know (sorry about that), but there's Amy holding up two of life's basic staples..... pretty paper and caffeine :-) 



There was about 15 of us there, sitting around a well-decorated table. And we all set about making our own versions of her pretty card. Yes, we got to keep that packet of Stickers!! And any of the other scraps you might have wanted to stuff into your handbag (ahem!!)

Another blurry shot - this time of Amy and I!!! (I guess that's the unfortunate reality of only taking your iPhone and getting a non-iPhone user to take photos with it!) Never mind... it's still totally scrapable ;-)

And one more of the pretty lady being so generous with her time and signing all her papers for everyone. It was such an awsome morning.... and I'm all inspired now to do a few more Sketchbook pages, so stay tuned for that!

xxxx

The Story of the Day that Changed your Life

Today (or should I say tonight) I start another round of nightshift. Booo!

It almost effectively puts an end to scrapping for a week.......
But then I get a week off. Which always begs the question of how should I fill it?

In the meantime I've got a bit of a back-log of projects still to share with you so it won't be too quiet around here. And even luckier still, you can see that my mind isn't very focused... which makes for short blog posts ;-)

Ta-Ta for now
xx

The Story of Jumping Hurdles

Told you it wouldn't be long before I joined in more of the fun and games for the Olympic challenges happening on the Jenni Bowlin forum!

This the layout I created inspired by "Hurdles". How you say?! Well I don't have a lot of sporty photos to scrap (my girls are too young, and lets just be honest... I'm not the athletic type!) so I had to think outside the square when it came to scrapping a page inspired by an Olympic event.

So I thought I would scrap a page about all the 'hurdles' Munchy has had to jump in her first year at school. You know, all those new things to learn, reading and writing, maths, music, art... phew! Specifically this is about the aptitude test she had at the beginning of the year so her teacher could help determine what level she was at in order to help maximise her learning.

Given I didn't have a photo of her actually sitting her test I used this photo which highlights her ability and creativeness. Can you believe she sat down one day with a sheet of butcher paper, a ball of wool and some album packaging and assembled her own guitar?! I love this! My daughter amazes me!

Lots of Jenni Bowlin goodies on this page of course. I'm so glad I actually plucked up the courage to cut into my letter stencil paper that I had been hoarding up until now! Then there's the butterflies, banners and buttons. Love my JBS :-)

You can see in this pic where I hid all my journaling. I made a little flap with the photo on top which allowed lots of space for all my thoughts, whilst hiding them away so it doesn't sound like I'm boasting. Because she passed with flying colours I have to say! LOL!

The Story of a Momentous Occasion

I'm pretty sure I didn't appreciate the Olympics nearly enough when they were on. I watched quite a number of events in bits and pieces, but I did not spend hours and hours in front of the TV (like some people I know!! LOL!)

One thing I did (and continue) to appreciate though is the Olympic challenges that are going on all month on the Jenni Bowlin forum. Last weekend was the Swim Medley Relay challenge where a new set of instructions on what to include on your layout was posted each day for 4 days.

Ultimately it came down to making a background with a messy medium (think ink, paint, gesso.... or at least I did!), including some butterflies, buttons and something tied, and then whatever else you wanted to include. I had such fun creating my background layers, and I finally managed to cut into some old-school JBS butterfly paper I had been hoarding forever :-)

I must have been still chanelling some purple vibes from my last layout as I found myself adding some splashes of lavender shades. And to fit with the theme of momentous occasions in time I finally managed to scrap about what we were doing at 11:11am on the 11th November 2011...... I'm only 9 months late!

As you can see, we weren't actually doing anything very exciting - just travelling back to Melbourne for a wedding after dropping the kids off to stay with their grandparents. Bt still.. it was a moment captured, and therefore worth documenting.

I'm planning on participating in more of the Olympic challenges which are running until the end of the month. All the details are on the JBS forum here if you're interested in joining?

The Story of the Colour Purple

What is it about the colour purple that so many of us scrappers are afraid of? Before now I used to think it was because we were unsure of how to match it with other colours.

But surely the latest colour combo challenge from Scrap Friends proves that a lovely dash of purple can be the icing on the cake in an otherwise more neutral palette. How yummy does this inspiration piece look?!

Since I was a little scarce of purple products in my stash I bought up big in the Scrap Friends shop (did you know that you can search products by colour?! That makes it so easy!!) but in the end used the stunning FWAB Purple Chloe Pearl Flourish as my focus piece.

Then I concentrated on layering up lots of yellow and orange pieces on my grey background to complete the colour scheme. The idea of adding purple to my layouts came at a perfect time for me I have to say.  Just in the last couple of weeks Moodles has firmly declared that purple is her favourite colour.

You know how kids at this age can be very particular and only eat one thing, or only wear a certain outfit etc etc? Well Moodles has decided right now that everything for her needs to be purple! So not only is it purple clothes but it's purple shoes, purple food, purple paint and purple paper. You get the idea :-) I guess it makes a nice change on the traditional pink!

So if you can bear the idea of scrapping with a little purple then I would love to see your take on this eye-catching colour scheme. See all the challenge guidelines and the other beautiful DT examples here in this post. And just to inspire you even more..... here's the prize....!!!

Supplies:

Colour Conspiracy Texturize 6	ICC My Diary	ICC My Diary	Glitz Design Dance in Sunshine Polka
Studio Calico Take Note Cubicle	Amy Tangerine Sketchbook Garmine Collage	Amy Tangerine Sketchbook Remarks Palette	Colour Conspiracy Texturize card set
Authentique Blissful Icons	American Crafts Foam Thickers Journal Black	Teresa Collins Fabrications Brads	FWAB Chloe Pearl Flourish: Purple
Shimmerz Spritz Plum Pudding	Ranger Liquid Pearls Daffodil

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