The Story of She

Sorry for the blogging silence around here last week, I didn't mean for that to happen, but it's been a little crazy busy for me. As you would have seen if you follow me on Instagram (where there was anything BUT silence!) then you know I've been away taking part and teaching at a fabulous scrapping retreat called "Escape 2 Create" for the past 5 days or so. What an absolute ball I had! And as soon as I edit a few photos I'll be blogging all about that experience as well. But in the meantime let me share with you a page you might have already seen floating around the web.

Created for my little stint over on the American Crafts blog where I participated in Glitter Week (love glitter!) this was the first page I created once I received my box of goodies. Sometimes when it's a really daunting task (like creating for AMERICAN CRAFTS... EEEK!!) then I settle back on some of my go-to techniques that I know work for me, or that I'm really loving currently so that I feel a little more comfortable. Then I find it flows a lot better.

I stuck with a white background, and then picked out a bunch of papers from the Dear Lizzy Polka Dot Party collection to work with. I limited myself to an almost monochrome palette of blue, aqua, grey and black for something a little different. I knew I would then need a black & white photo and this one of my daughter's increasingly gappy smile made me giggle, so on it went!

The glitter needed to be the highlight of the layout, so I wanted to do something big and bold and make it really obvious! I am just loving the brush-script trend at the moment and can't get enough of it ever since I did Kal Barteski's class at Studio Calico. I painted out my title word "she" with black ink and waited for it to dry. I always paint on a separate piece of paper and then cut it out to use on my layouts. There's no way I'm confident enough to paint directly onto my page!

Then I painted back over the word with my paintbrush dipped in slightly diluted glue before sprinkling it with two tones of blue WOW Glitter for a bit of an ombre look. I am actually quiet chuffed with how this turned out and it's going to become something I do again I feel ;-) For sure there's more brush-script layouts on the horizon at least. Maybe I'll go back and add some glitter?

The Story of Learning to Express Myself

A couple of weeks ago X-Press It Australia advertised on their Facebook page they were looking for a few people to test-drive their new products. Like any curious crafter I immediately applied and was lucky enough to be chosen!

X-Press It are best known for their adhesives and what I received was their new Wide and Extra-Fine Glue Markers (along with the original too). To be honest I've never really bothered with glue-pens before. I'm preferentially a tape-runner type of girl. I guess I like speed and no fuss. I'm also too impatient to wait for drying time, and I want my product to stay exactly where I place it. But turns out these Glue Markers are actually fabulous!! Truly!

In order to do a true product review I figured I needed to something to show off the 3 different widths of glue. I first started off testing them on a scrap piece of paper. I ruled some lines and then sprinkled them with glitter so I could actually see it. Mainly because the Extra Fine pen is so fine that I was convinced it wasn't working because I couldn't see it! But after sprinkling the glitter it stuck perfectly and my fears were relieved. You can see my test piece in the photo above.

That's when the genius of the moment struck me and I thought... why do anything more fancy than that? Ruled lines of glitter, fresh white cardstock and a handful of Basic Grey Hey Girl embellishments. My cards are simple, but (I think) still striking. And they show off the Glue Markers perfectly.

I made sure I used extra-fine glitter so it would stick even to the Extra-Fine Glue Marker, but still being convinced it would eventually fall off I sprayed the card with a gloss varnish to finish and seal it all in.

What I also learned while doing these cards was how fabulous the Glue Markers are going to be for my 'normal' scrapping. See at the bottom of my cards I've got that strip of coloured paper, and then the really thin Doodlebug Designs border strip? Normally to stick that on with my tape runner I would try and apply just a little bit because it would run over the sides and I would then have to try and tidy up the overlapping glue before sticking it down. That's why I'm always sewing things down with my machine. Yep, seriously.. that's how I work!

But talk about being super-easy to just run my Glue Marker along the entire length of the back of it without worrying about overflow and then knowing it was going to stick precisely in place. And as far as my other prejudices are concerned.... this stuff dries really quickly, and really strong too. In fact, now I have to be more careful with my scrapping because once it's down it's going to stay there!

In summary...
I'm really glad to have been given this opportunity by X-Press It to try out their Glue Markers because it's really opened my eyes to a new method of adhesion, and I'm sure these are now going to become a staple in my stash. You can see my review they posted on their blog here.