The Story of the Princess and the Dragon

Last month at Jenni Bowlin Studios we put the spotlight on our favourite punches, as well as modelling paste and gesso. I decided to combine the two and have a little technique fun with my projects.

Now it's not one of the new ones, but it's still a favourite punch of mine. It's the Classic Bird Shape.

Just for something different, instead of simply punching out the birds what I did was to make myself a stencil by punching a row of birds out of heavy cardstock and then using the negative or 'leftover' bit.

I laid my stencil along the bottom of my page and then smeared modelling paste over it. Whilst it was still wet I sprinkled glitter on top knowing the modelling paste would act like glue, before carefully peeling away the cardstock to reveal the birds on my page. By spreading on the modelling paste quite thick I'm left with a raised image which I think adds a lovely textural element.

Sticking with the bird theme I chose my papers from the Wren collection. I loved this paper in particular for my background because of the title 'A Letter from Birdland'. It worked perfectly with the story (or fairytale) I wanted to share with this layout. Recently the 2 girls went to a Princess birthday party with the works. They all dressed up, the made paper crowns, the cake was a castle etc etc. But little did they know their father was going to become the villain of the day by dressing up as a dragon and blowing fire and smoke every time they walked by.

The only problem was whilst all the other girls screamed and ran away as they were supposed to, my girls didn't blink an eye-lash. In fact I even have some shots of them taunting the dragon. I guess that's what happens when you grow up in a house where your Daddy does crazy things on a regular basis ;-)

Since I'm working more 8.5 x 11' layouts into my repetoir I decided to turn all those off-cuts into a card. The cardstock and paper was already cut to the right size - all I did was fold it in half. And because all my supplies were already out I didn't even need to make any new design decisions!

I even included the punched out bird shapes from my stencil so nothing really went to waste here. And it was such an easy-peasy way to add another card to my dwindling stash.

Hope you're enjoying the last remnants of your weekend.



JBS Supplies:
 

JBS Wren Bird JBS Bingo Card JBS Printed Tags Vintage Flags JBS Vintage Mini-Deck: Silhouettes 2 JBS Star Banner Stickers: Green JBS Skinny Alphas Red JBS Printed Tickets: Smilies JBS Fiskars Classic Bird Punch Liquitex Light Modelling Paste JBS Rhinestone Stars

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The Story of My Sweet Girl

Now that I've figured out what all my favourite techniques are (see my last post here) I find it so much easier to create quickly and still be happy with the results.

And when faced with a challenge or an extra criteria (like this sketch by Nadio Cannizzo for The Scrapbook Store this month) it's now quite a simple matter of making the challenge fit what I want to do, rather than trying to fit into the challenge.

But even when sticking to your own 'rules' that you've created for yourself doesn't mean that you can't have fun and take it a step further. For this page I started with my plain(ish) base paper and built up a bit more interest using some mixed-media techniques. It didn't quite come out like I imagined but that's ok. All part of the creative journey.

After spreading on some gesso, and applying texture paste through a stencil I had in my mind that the mist would add a water-colour effect behind all the paper layers... which is kinda has. But I was aiming on having the blue extend up the top and the yellow down the bottom - to reflect what's in the photo. Instead it merged a bit too much together and spread too far. Never mind.

Then it's onto my brightly coloured linear layers of paper, building up as I go. I didn't really suffer over my choices of paper, or even measure. In fact, these are just the leftover scraps from a kit. I try to add some dimension between the layers by curling up the edges a bit and not gluing the corners down. I'd like to say I have a never-ending packet of foam dots that I use but the truth is that would probably end up being quite expensive so instead I just glue scraps of packaging cardboard between them.

I cheated a bit on the title / typography front. In my SC kit that I was killing (which I probably haven't touched in over a year) I actually found this title that I cut with my Silhouette way back then. It was one half of 'Sweet Memories' and I used the negative from that cut on a layout years ago. So whilst it wasn't planned, it actually worked really well, so there it stayed. Told you this layout came together quickly ;-)

The Story of My Most Favourite One

It's actually a reasonably hard question to answer, but one that we're asked quite commonly as scrapbookers, and that's the question of "how do you describe your style". I guess it's about asking what are your favourite techniques and colours or what do you include on a page that makes it uniquely and recognisably you?

This is what I cam up with....
I like my linear layers piled up on a neutral (but not completely plain) base.
I like a good quote and good typography... and sometimes I even combine the two.
And lastly, I like my colour scheme to be bright and happy, but it's usually in pastel tones.

I think this layout ticks all those boxes. I think the only big thing that's missing on this layout which is typically me is a whole bunch of journaling. But given how long the title is I thought I had already captured everything I wanted to say here.

It's a good exercise to do though. Given for me it usually takes a couple of hours to put together each page (I'm very indecisive!!) it can be a little disappointing when you're still not happy with the outcome. So I've been trying to work out what it is about the pages that I like that makes me like them. That way when I scrap in the future I can just concentrate on doing it 'my way' rather than trying to do it according to other people's style.

I don't think this will stop me from evolving as I go along, but for right now it's going to save me time. And money too.... because it helps me to decide what's worth my while buying. Have you even done this little exercise? Tell me, what did you come up with - what's your most favourite one?


Supplies:

Heidi Swapp Vintage Chic Bookkeeping Heidi Swapp Sugar Chic Drama Heidi Swapp Vintage Instaframes Heidi Swapp Vintage Chic Buzz Words Pink Paislee Portfolio Photo Tabs Pink Paislee Portfolio Tiny Tabs JBS Fiskars Classic Bird Punch SODAlicious Start Counting Evalicious Buttons: Internet Slang

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Sharing the Love (FWAB winner announced)

A bit of a random posting today with a few items on my list of "things to share"....

Firstly, can you believe Mother's Day is around the corner already? I mean, I only recently just took down the Christmas tree (yes, yes.... in March... ahemm) I contemplated leaving it up until next December. Might have saved a bit of effort.

Someone who scored a few more organisational genes in our family was my sister. Since she started maternity leave she's opened up a Facebook store called Jasper Lane Designs, and in a couple of months she's already got more than 3500 'likers'. She sells the most gorgeous vintage-inspired kids clothing and jewellery. My girls have done some modelling for her recently and I was tempted to buy half the stuff myself!

What does this have to do with Mother's Day and the cards I'm showing you? Well...... this weekend she's hosting a "To Mum, With Love Showcase" where she's gathered a bunch of talented artists from around Australia to showcase some of their wares for sale. All of the products are handmade and would make great Mother's Day gifts. Because she's my sister and she asked me every so nicely (and because I love crafting so very much) I'm selling sets of these personalised cards as my contribution.

This is what is looks like up on the Showcase. I would love it if you checked them out. But it's not just me of course. There's 70 or so other sellers with everything from jewellery to aprons to wall art to maternity products.... the list goes on.

Alright... now the next thing that I couldn't help but scream from the rooftops was finding out that one of my recent layouts became a 'featured project' at Two Peas in a Bucket!! Super stoked!

Not only that but it's also hit the "Top 3 Projects by Views" which is just unbelievable to me. Here I am nestled in between projects by scrapping celebrities Waleska Neris and Celine Navarro, so forgive me for jumping up and down over here please?!

And lastly, it's time for me to announce the winner of the Flourish With a Bling Blog Hop. Congratulations Gillian - you've won the RAK from my blog! Shoot me an email with your address details and I'll have your prize in the mail as soon as I can.

xx

The Story of Autumnal Moments

Personally, I much prefer the warmer weather. I'm a sunshine-seeker despite my pale white and freckled skin which puts me in mortal danger every time I step outside. So generally speaking I'm always regretful when summer passes away and we skip into Autumn.

However.... there's really no denying that Autumn is a very beautiful time of year. There's just something magical about the vibrant and beautiful colours of nature in all it's glory right now. It was that classic colour scheme that inspired me to sit down and create this layout for one of my latest Evalicious posts.

After pulling out my base papers I started hunting through my Evalicious stash to figure out what tags and badges might work for me. Once I figured out the So Daily SnipSnip tags were a perfect colour match I went ahead and grabbed everything from the So Daily collection because obviously it would all work!

Too easy! Now I've got the basis of my whole layout sorted, it was a quick job to layer up some gesso, mist, paper and plenty of tags. I like my layouts to be quite textural but I don't necessarily want them too 'fat', so the badge buttons work fabulously for me. By placing these two together side by side it only adds more emphasis to them.

I tend to leave my stamping until the end. I use my Evalicious stamps like the final embellishment, usually stamping in black ink to add little details that still stand out. What I love about Eve's stamps are her focus on the written word and typography. So it's almost like adding extra journaling for me.. and you all know how much I love my journaling!

And speaking of Evalicious stamps..... I have some exciting news to share! The new release stamp sets are only a few days away! Eeekkk.... you need to get ready for this awesomeness! There's a few sneak peeks on the blog here, but let me also share a couple of my favourites....

I'm loving the ampersand (it just may or may not have been my suggestion!! wink!) But trust me, I've seen the whole bunch of them and this is only tipping the iceberg. It's going to be amazing! They hit the shop on the 20th.



Supplies:

Evalicious So Daily Large Tags Evalicious So Daily Snipsnip Labels Evalicious So Daily Page Tabs Evalicious Badge Buttons: So Daily V1 Evalicious Stamps: Look Here Evalicious Stamps: Label It Set

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