Time to Shine

I'll be honest, this is actually a spread I made ages ago.
Might have only just gotten around to photographing it, but the making was ages ago.
Let's see... this is the Poet Society Scrapbook Kit and Add Ons, so that makes it September! 

Not sure why I did a Project Life spread with the contents of a Scrapbook Kit, especially given I subscribe to the Project Life kits as well. But probably I was just challenging myself to use more of my stash. And obviously it really IS all about using whatever you have on hand. The real point is about capturing the memories right?

Anyway, I do love these photos of Bethany with our aging family dog. She's a true farm dog, lives outside, barely trained to any other command apart from the call of food. But she's friendly and calm and just the sweetest thing. Which is why it was weird that Bethany was always deathly scared of her as a child. Somewhere along the way though things changed, and all at once they became best friends.

Meanwhile, I've actually got heaps more PL spreads completed. September holiday snaps now all documented. Working on Christmas next. Really gotta get more photographed though!
Will probably have to resort to a massive catch up post.
Watch for that soon.
I hope!

The Story of the Tassel layout

I always love the February kits at Studio Calico. I don't know what it is, maybe because it's the month of love and the kits tend to be girly and colourful, but without fail it's the February kits that always make it into my top 3 by the end of the year. It's no doubt that Cirque fits the bill for 2015, and I was lucky enough to be sent High Wire and Flying Trapeze to work with! My assignment? Create a little tutorial for you :-)

When faced with a 'challenge' like this I simply just start off with what I know. I make a layout! And whilst I'm piecing it together I look at my products, I look at my colours, and I look at my embellishment choices and wait for inspiration to strike about what I can add that's a little funky and different. What can I do that's a little technique-y and suitable for translating into tutorial form.

Inspired by the feather stamp in Flying Trapeze, and because I'd been perusing all the latest CHA releases which seem to have rather a party focus this season, I thought I could definitely do a scrapbook version of fabric tassels.

The tutorial was up on the Studio Calico blog last week. If you'd like to check it out you can find it here.

And if you were contemplating a subscription then February is definitely the time to do it with these codes for 50% off your first month.

Links: 
Subscribe to the Scrapbook Kit. 
Subscribe to the Card Kit.
Subscribe to the Project Life Kit. 

The Story of My Journaling Bible

Once again I'm here to confess to my slight Instagram addiction. I'm feel like it's so easy and immediate that I'm posting on there all the time, and it seems to give me the impression I'm up to date! Then I realise my poor old blog gets a little bit more neglected each time, so I thought it was time for a bit of a catch up :-)

For those of you who follow me on Instagram you would have noticed that over the past few weeks I've 'discovered' the world of bible journaling and it's quickly become a main staple in my creative ventures. It's not necessarily a daily routine, but perhaps every second or third day I start out my morning looking something like this : breakfast, coffee, journaling bible, Handbook full of stamps, printables and some old Studio Calico kits.

I don't think there's any right or wrong way to do this, and I'm certainly still feeling my way along and working out my style. Not that I think you have to have a style either! I see it as very similar to art journaling in a regular journal. Sometimes you want to test out different mediums, try a specific supply, work in a certain genre. Sometimes you want lots of words, other times it's visual impact you're going for.

What I do know is that since I started it's been like a lightbulb moment when it's finally dawned on me that the creative talents He has blessed me with, and the desire to get more involved in the Word could be combined into this one glorious outlet. Now one craving drives the other, instead of my previous impression that they were competing interests.

I really can't credit anyone else more highly than Shanna Noel for inspiring me to begin this journey. I've been following her on Instagram for the longest time (I'm certain I was following her there even long before we were both on the Studio Calico Creative Team together last year) and that's because she's one of the most genuine people 'I know', and because her scrapbooking style is out of this world!! So when she started what she called "Illustrated Faith" slowly but surely last year I watched eagerly to see where this was going. She just launched her website last week (?) and I've been devouring it ever since. It's definitely the place to go for bible journaling inspiration!

Anyway, so that's just one thing I've been up to lately, and I felt it was worthy of blog-post status! ;-) Here's some other things that have happened recently too:

• I've got a tutorial up on the Studio Calico blog showing you how to make paper tassel embellishments for your scrapbooking and card making.
• I've also got a tutorial on the Jot Magazine blog showing you how to make a quick and easy shaker box Valentine's Day card.
• I received my first Makers' Box from the Makers' Collective and it's fabulous! Projects coming real soon ;-)

The Story of the Fruit Card

Despite appearances that suggest I'm on a Project Life and Card-making rampage there is also quite a bit of Scrapbooking happening around here as well. Most of these pages can't be shared at the moment though as they're all in preparation for the next Jot Magazine issue. If you fancy having a shot at being published in it too then you should check out the submission themes here and shoot Kim an email. I know she'd love to hear from you! But you better get in fast, submissions close tomorrow.

So yeah... in the meantime... here's another card!!

You can see I had a lot of fun with this one. And it came together really quickly too. A diecut circle, a transparency and a bunch of chipboard fruit pieces, that's all it took for this one. All the bits and pieces for this is from my stash of Studio Calico South of Market collection. It might be 'old' in the scheme of scrapbook collections but I really find that the stuff Studio Calico makes is truly timeless. Plus, I'm still on a fruit bender at the moment!

The other reason why this card came together quickly is because I was scrap-lifting this amazing creation by Aimee Dow which was featured on the APOCD blog! Don't worry, I asked her permission first ;-)

Commonly when I scrap-lift I take a fairly literal interpretation. But I always like to take one element and change it around slightly. So what I did was change the square transparency window and the rectangle elements and substitute them with circles instead! Not overly imaginative ... but something different all the same ;-)

How do you scrap-lift?

The Story of the First Day of Prep

Wasn't it only just a week or so ago I was spouting my resolution to stick to my Handbook for any of my Project Life adventures this year? Yes, yes I think it was ;-)

And then this happened....

So I'm pretty sure I was talking about how the larger 12x12" size of Project Life freaked me out. You know, there's just soooo much space to fill. And that's usually too much space for just one story (which is the way I tackle my Handbook currently). But when I sat down to start documenting this story I just knew I would have way too much to say about it for a 6x8" spread.

Not by the time you take into account the 4 photos I wanted to include, plus some pretties, as well as the story. So after playing around with it for an hour or so the genius idea finally occured to me that I should just take it over to a 12x12" spread.

And honestly, this page then came together quickly and I enjoyed the process so much! Granted it was made way easier by the fact that I subscribe to the Studio Calico PL Kits and by using the January Far Far Away Kit I didn't even need to think about things. I just slipped cards into pockets! I think it's safe to say that you're definitely going to see more of these from me this year. I'm still contemplating how I tackle it exactly. I still don't think I can commit to the idea of doing it traditionally with a spread a week, but I also know that I have lots of little stories I want to get down, and they certainly won't all have a whole page to themselves. So I'm thinking my process might be somewhere in the middle where I just fill in a different amount of pockets for each story as I go along, and when a page is full then it's done!

Meanwhile, I don't think I could have started my 2015 Project Life adventure with any better story! What a big year this is going to be for Moriah as she started Prep last week. As you can see it wasn't all excitement and smiles, especially not in the morning as she nervously prepared. There was certainly a tear or two and it was really difficult to leave her there, although I knew that it would only take a few moments after I was gone before she settled in.

I was right of course. By the time I picked her up at the end of the day she proclaimed, "I don't like school Mum.... I LOVE it!!" So here we go! 2015.. Adventure Awaits!

The Story of the Embroidered Heart

February is here (crazily enough!) and so we're all getting in the mood to celebrate love. To help you out our Jot Magazine Mood Board challenge is sure to inspire you to create something lovey dovey, or possibly something a little more saucy given this bold colour scheme?!

Because I literally can't seem to stop creating cards these days, and because Valentine's Day is surely the peak of the greeting card season I was prompted to whip this up...

It's absolutely 100% inspired from that photo of the cookie in the lower left of the Mood Board! Who knew food photos could inspire a card design? But when the mood strikes I guess anything is possible.

The main focus of my card was that embroidered heart which is a from a free set of Valentine's Day Printables by Studio Calico. It was originally pink so I changed it to red in Photoshop to fit the Mood Board. I pierced all the holes, and pulled out my embroidery thread. Then with the sudden realisation that there was no way I would ever have the patience or skill to stitch it all properly I went with just a few cross stitches here and there instead!

Since I skimped on the technical side of embroidering I figured I better get a little more fancy with the rest of the design. And given there was no way of avoiding the addition of gold sequins I thought a shaker card might be in order. I do love a bulky noisy moving interactive card ;-)

To see what the other Jot Girls have created based on the Mood Board and to check out all the details on how you could win a $20 voucher to Scrappy Canary then take a little wander over to the Jot Blog. You'll be feeling romantic in no time!

The Story of Making More

You may have noticed there's been an absolute flurry of kid-art happening around these parts recently. I think that comes down to the combination of me being on maternity leave whilst the girls were still on holidays which meant we needed to fill in the day with as much quality time as we could manage. Luckily for me what they kept asking to do was "scrapping"!!

'Scrapping' is their term for anything crafty by the way. It usually doesn't actually mean scrapbooking! Their favourite activities usually involve painting. That's their medium of choice most of the time. But anything goes around here.

Apart from documenting all our creative times, I also want to make more effort to actually capture the artwork their creating. You may have seen the watercolour fruit series Bethany made that I shared as free downloads. That was one method of getting the art off the paper and into the computer. But I also want to get them into albums, so that's what I did here for this Handbook spread. I literally just stuck Moriah's drawing onto a spare card and cut it down to size so it could fit right in.

So I guess I'm just giving you fair warning that you're going to see quite a bit more kid-art around here if all my plans come to fruition!