The Story of the Rotten Apple

This post first appeared here on the amazing Christina Collins' blog "Don't Worry, Be Scrappy" back in February. I was lucky enough to be invited there as her Guest for the month. Following hot on the heels of the last guest Tina Walker who is one of my scrappy idols I knew there was going to be big expectations!
I'm now re-posting this here because even though a lot of this is not new information for those of you who follow me regularly, I thought you might still be interested in a little more detail.

About Me:
My name is Natalie Elphinstone and I live in Melbourne, Australia - it's a city that boasts all four seasons in a day. Dressing in layers is the key! I'm a wife and a Mum to two gorgeous girls aged 6 and 3. They constantly keep me inspired and are the one of the main reasons why I love this hobby. I want to document their lives, the funny things they say, the everyday moments and my thoughts for them to look back on later.
I'm also a full-time doctor, specialising in Obstetrics and Gynaecology which keeps me ridiculously busy. Often people ask me how I manage to find time for things like scrapbooking, and I say that when you love something you'll always find the time for it ;-)

About This Layout:
It's made with the Block Party kit from Studio Calico, with the addition of a few Evalicious Getaway badge buttons. I grew up on a farm and it's always a treat for my girls to visit their grandparents who still live there. They've got a lovely orchard and the girls enjoy wandering through it and picking the fresh fruit. Of course, not every piece straight from the tree looks as perfect as the ones you find in the shop and I snapped this photo of my eldest with a less-than-impressed look on her face as she inspected an apple. I find it very funny!

I always add journalling to my pages, it's something I strongly believe in. A long time ago I quit worrying about how neat it looks or whether it will destroy the design of the page. I think this is what the future generations are going to be interested in seeing - not what line of products you used!!

About What's Inspiring Me:
1. Colour Combos
I've always thought I've had a bit of a weakness when it comes to colour combos so this year I made it my scrappy resolution (does anybody else do that?!) to focus on making better colour choices.

I made up my own little colour palette to help me when I put this layout together. I was thinking about the colour of those apples - what do you reckon?!

2. Products I love
I'm very lucky to be on the Design Team for some fabulous companies. Companies whom I really believe in and whose products truly inspire me. I mean - look at it!! And this is just the stuff I've been playing with lately! So blessed :-)

JBS Stamp: Writer Evalicious Stamps: Journal Prompts Set Evalicious Love You Lots Tags FWAB Adhesive Pearls: Latte

InLinkz.com

3. Trends I'm following
I've jumped right onto the 'feather' band-wagon! This is one trend that I can't get enough of right now! Looking forwards to getting my hands onto these rub-ons from Jenni Bowlin.

Just to prove a point - here's a link to some of my own feathery creations:

JBS Fountain Pen Card Evalicious Feather Card Congratulations Feather Card Soul Dyed

InLinkz.com

Well that's about it from me! I'd love to hear from you scrappy folk out there. Tell me about what colour combos or products you're loving right now, and what trends are you following?

xx

The Story of Never Enough Stash

Sometimes it doesn't matter how much product you have in your stash, you just can't seem to find the perfect embellishment that you're looking for. And it's the mere fact that you've got piles upon piles of unused product in your drawers and upon shelves that you really can't justify going and buying something new, so you know you're just going to have to customise something you've already got.

That's what happened here. I had visions of using the Pink Paislee Photogram as a frame for some giant birthday numbers. But the biggest numbers I had (with the appropriate degree of funkiness) were some lovely green/blue patterned ones by Sassafras. Fabulous.... but didn't match the look I was going for.

So here's what I did.....
I coated them in gesso twice so they were now a blank white. Lucky they were a sturdy chipboard and took the gesso well. I used a waterbrush to pick up the Raspberry Distress Ink and painted back in the numbers. A black felt-tip defined them once dry, and I added some final touches with Liquid Pearls. Hope you're as impressed as I was with the result?!!! LOL!

Since I was now in the mood I went and added a few more doodles, this time with my white gel pen. And some bling never goes astray. Never.

I tell you - by this time I was on such a roll of customising my embellishments that I even went to town on the envelope that I put the card in too. I painted and glittered my Imaginarium Designs chipboard phrase and cut some October Afternoon paper pieces to make it all pretty. It was all worth it of course. The recipient was pretty pleased I have to say :-)

 

Supplies:

Imaginarium Designs Chipboard: Just You Pink Paislee Portfolio Photograms Pink Paislee Portfolio Tiny Tabs Pink Paislee Portfolio Stamps Tim Holtz Distress Ink Pickled Raspberry Ranger Liquid Pearls White Opal

InLinkz.com

The Story of Stretching Your Stamp Techniques

This post first appeared on the Evalicious blog here earlier in the month. But I wanted to share it here too because there's an awesome challenge happening there at the moment that you all need to know about ..... and this layout and tutorial are part of it ;-)

 

I've made another video which takes you through my process from start to finish as I put this layout together. It's in fast-forward because it would be tedious to take you on the very long journey in real life (I'm a pretty slow and indecisive scrapper, and if you've watched any of my other videos you'll see that I like to put things here, then move them there.... then move them back again to where they began! LOL!)

 

                  

What I wanted to focus on today is the technique that I've called 'repetitive stamping'. What I mean is taking one single stamp and using it over and over to create your own pattern. There are a few different ways of doing this. For a start I used the Cloud Outline stamp to make my own patterned paper (and I've painted in the clouds to add some more colour). I used the Seriously Arrow stamp to create my own border strip. And I used the 'hello' from the Typewriter Love Set to make a little text embellishment.

Even though I've done a tonne of stamping on this page, because I've only used the 3 images it keeps it from looking too cluttered and busy. What it also means is that apart from some other Evalicious Tags I've not needed to use any other embellishments (and that's always good for the budget! LOL!)

My page is about that look of wonderment and awe on my youngest' face whenever her Daddy tells her a story. I know that in a few years time those same stories are only going to generate an eye-roll and perhaps a groan of "I've heard it all before" so I thought I better capture it whilst I can!!

Now let me tell you a story of how you can go about winning yourself some Evalicious supplies of your own! Right now and until the end of the month we've got a challenge to use any of the DT's tutorials (you can see the list on this post here) to inspire your own project or layout. Link them up for your chance to win!

Happy Scrapping :-)



Evalicious Supplies:

Evalicious Stamps: Typewriter Love Set Evalicious Stamps: Cloud Outline Evalicious Stamps: Seriously Arrow Evalicious My Week Snipsnip Tags Evalicious Documented Circle Tags

InLinkz.com

The Story of My Doctor Husband

I'm so very blessed to have a husband like mine. One who is willing to stay at home and look after the girls, who cooks all the meals and does most of the housework too.

I think some men would find it tough to take on that role, whilst allowing me to go out and work full time as a doctor. But that is the way we always planned it to be before we even got married, and long before we ever had children. And it works for us.

I began this layout with the idea that I wanted to use those fabulous Evalicious "You and Me" stamps and sprinkle them like giant confetti. I wanted to mix them up and make it almost confusing which ones said "You" and which said "Me". I wanted them to be a contrasting cascade of ombre colours.
I think I achieved all those goals?

I wanted the stamped circles to be all mixed up like this to represent what I've said in my journaling. It reads, "We're so perfect together that sometimes it's hard to tell where you finish and I begin. Even our bank occasionally gets us confused".
So does the school too actually.
What I mean is that we sometimes get mail that's addressed to Dr Michael and Mrs Natalie. I guess they're just taking the stereotypical approach that the doctor of the house must be the man.

It doesn't actually bother me that much.
And I think it secretly pleases The Man! ;-)

xx


Evalicious Supplies:

Evalicious Stamps: Me Now Evalicious Stamp: Take Note Evalicious Stamps: Hello Arrow Evalicious So Daily Large Tags Evalicious My Week Snipsnip Tags

InLinkz.com

BlogLovin'

So I guess I'm going to try out this Bloglovin thing that everyone is talking about as an alternate to Google Reader. 

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

I'm still working out all the quirks of course.
Does anyone know how to get the blog feed to come up with the whole post by people (rather than just the first paragraph and half a photo? 'Cos I have to admit, if I'm going to have to click through to each blog individually then it's just not going to happen!
;-)

The Story of the Linear Layers

Just to keep things rolling along in theme I thought I'd now share with you my take on the March sketch challenge at Scraptherapy (since in my last post I shared my February interpretation).

Sometimes I think I'm so focussed on scrapping the 'everyday moments' that it can take me a little while to build up the courage to scrap the big events as well. But this is highly important too of course, so finally I've come to scrap the photos from Munchy's 6th birthday..... from September last year!!

I interpreted the sketch in quite a linear way, and translated it into a grid design. But I've still got the main elements of the two photos on the right, and the equally weighted large decoration/embellishment on the left.

I recently picked up a few more 6x6" Crafter's Workshop stencils at the Scrapbook Expo and I literally just traced around this lovely graphic number stencil with a black pen. I cut out the number six separately and misted the background to add emphasis to it alone.

I had fun with this colour scheme in case you couldn't tell!! Reminds me of lollies.. which is perfect for this party layout. I'm so glad I've finally finished this. Now I've got to work on Moodle's last birthday, but at least that was in November so I guess I've got a couple of months left up my sleeve ;-)

Sometimes I try to define my design style or wonder how I would describe it to someone. I've decided that I'm going to call my current style "linear layers". What do you think? Does that sound right?

 

The Story of the Whinging Song

What a good mother I am......

She bursts into tears (could be she's throwing a tantrum, could be she's actually sad) but the point is - my scrapping instinct took over and I stop to take a photo first before I comforted her.
Please tell me I'm not the only one that does things like this?

Before I show you how I took on the Scraptherapy March Sketch Challenge I thought I better show you my February attempt first. I found this sketch was quite inspiring and challenging as it left so much open to interpretation.

 

I started off by making that large square into a stencil feature. I chose one of my favourite TCW Balzer Designs 6x6" cloud stencils, sprayed it until saturating with a couple of mists and then plonked it face-down onto my paper. Fun hey? They rest of the layout built up from there.

The story behind this layout is a little bit strange. I'm not sure if other families are like this, but on regular occasion we've taken to disciplining our girls in song form. What I mean is that instead of yelling back at them when they throw a tantrum (which is rather tempting.... and still happens too of course) The Man made up a catchy little tune with lyrics that teach a good lesson and we annoyingly sing that to them instead ;-)

We've got a couple of songs, but the most commonly sung lyrics go "you can whinge all you want, but the answer is no, the answer is no, the answer is no!" etc.
Certainly this is one family oddity that needed to be documented. I'm sure as they grow older they're going to complain about these crazy things, and I needed to get the true story out before it turns into legend.