The Story of Sunshine

Super jealous of you guys in the Northern Hemisphere as you enjoy the final days of summer. It's still very much the cold of winter here in Australia and I'm shivering my way through the mornings. I think I could probably do tropical all year round if given a choice. I think I'm by nature a sun-lover (very ironic given my once-red hair and freckled skin).

We recently enjoyed a family holiday in Queensland which was just spectacular. Sunshine, beaches, swimming, simply awesome! I agree with the catchphrase of Queensland who describes itself as "beautiful one day, perfect the next". It kinda makes a great title for a layout too don't you think?

I used my favourite JBS Modern Mercantile collection for this layout, but mixed in a generous amount of pink to coordinate with my girl's bathing suits. Those butterfly stickers are still ranked amongst my most used supplies. And the gold feather rubons? Perfection.

On a slightly related topic, have you seen the new class my fellow JBS designer Jill Sprott is leading at 2Peas? It's called "Scrapbooking from the Soul" and I'm part way through it. I have to say, it's one of the best classes I've ever taken. It really resonates with my way of thinking about scrapbooking, although I'm no where near her level of insightful journaling. I'm not associated with it in any way, this is not me trying to sell it. I just really think you should check it out if you want inspiration to take your journaling to a whole new level. It's really powerful.

That's all from me tonight.
Over and out.
xx



Supplies:

The Story of Great Expectations

Did I just throw a whole bunch of supplies onto a page to create this page? Why, yes I did!

I have a lot of trouble actually 'killing' a kit because in my definition it does actually mean using up everything. Or at least using up all the large chunks of paper and making a big dent in every packet of embellishment and alphas that you received. I find it easy to make the first couple of pages where you're able to carefully pick and choose what will coordinate together, but when it comes to using up the last pieces it becomes a little more tricky for me.

Ultimately, I'm not 100% sure all these elements work well together on the one page. It feels a little bit like 'product vomit' but guess what? I sure killed that kit!! I'm not entirely unhappy with how it turned out, and I think every layout gives me a chance to learn something different. Here I learned that I like blue, white, yellow and kraft as a colour scheme, so I might try that again for some beachy photos in the future.

And even more importantly, I still scrapped an important story in our lives. Here I'm documenting some of my daughters personality traits and characteristics through a simple example. The story goes that she's been learning about what 'tempt' and 'temptation' means in her kids group at church. And when she's come home she wants to actually apply it to her life, so she's emptied out her bedroom of all books. You see, she finds one of her greatest 'temptations' is to read books when she's been put to bed and the lights are out.

The story says so much about my little girl. She's strong-willed and disciplined. She's willing to learn and grow and self-improve. And the fact that she thinks one of her biggest faults is her love of reading.... well I'll take that any day!!

Sneaky sneak

Earlier in the week my first project share went live at Paper Stories. I would love for you to pop over and check it out! You can see it here on the PS Blog.

I'm working with the gorgeous Hello Again collection from Carta Bella and let me just tell you I am truly in love with these papers! The quality is top-notch and the colours are so rich and vibrant. The sneak above with the hearts is the first layout I'm sharing, whilst below you can see a sneak of my next one.

I did a little background work on this with Gelatos and Twinkling H2O's and over the weekend I'll pop up a video showing you my process. I can't wait!

The Story of Sugar & Spice

I thought I'd follow on from my last post sharing my layout of when my daughters met their new baby cousin, to this one of that same moment. This time the photo captures me meeting my new niece. She's super-cute isn't she?!

I took on the colour challenge in the last Scrapbooking Memories magazine for this page too. It was a little tricky as the colours to work with were black, white, cream and blush pink. It's almost a monochrome combination in a way, and I have never really excelled at monochrome layouts.

But I ended up really enjoying the process of this. What I did was to go through some of my older stash and pull out some packets of product that would work. I grabbed these Kaisercraft rubon birdcages for black, Doodlebug border strips and a Pebbles journal card for white.

The cream chipboard clouds and wood veneer frames are from Studio Calico, and the flower is Prima of course. Otherwise most of my pink came from the papers and a bit of paint. Then I went to town layering up little bits and pieces of all of them along with some scraps of paper and a good splash of mixed-media in the background.

I felt really satisfied with this layout for a few reasons. I'm always happy to have scrapped another important life-moment for a start, but it was especially awesome to work through a process that is initially quite challenging and find that you can still make something pleasing at the end of it. And I'm glad to have debulked my stash of old product somewhat too!

The Story of Attempt #4

This is the last layout I've got to share in my series of 'failed' attempts whilst working on my application for Masters. This one was for the challenge of making an interesting and unique background. You can see 3 other attempts at this challenge here, here and here!

Whilst it never made the final cut for my Masters entry, I don't actually consider it a failed layout. I still like how it turned out, albeit quite different from my original idea. It involved a lot of fiddling and experimenting which is part of the fun and I loved playing with new techniques along the way.

I used some of my most favourite supplies - including reigniting my fondness of these JBS rubon butterflies. I've had this one in my stash for so long that unfortunately it got a little stuck on the packaging, but I'm never one to shy away from imperfections (!) so on it went anyway. I think it makes quite a bold statement on this page about my girls meeting their new baby cousin for the first time.

And sticking with the kraft and red colour scheme I chose these JBS feathers as my only other real embellishments. Given the nature of the challenge I didn't want to distract too much from all the background techniques that are supposed to be the focus of this layout.

First I made a Silhouette cut file with all this text of baby Zylee's name and date of birth. When I first cut it out I used it as a stencil and sprayed it with grey mist. The mist didn't really cut it for me so I lined up the stencil again and this time spread gesso through it. Much better! And you still get the faint outline of grey which is a bit cool. I stamped in between the words and splattered my usual paint and pearls. I ended up using the same cardstock letters from my original Silhouette cut for my title rather than mixing in another font. As I said, it all became a bit fiddly, but I kinda like it anyway :-)



Supplies:

The Story of Freezing This Moment

I've still got a couple of layouts that I haven't shared yet that I made in the lead up to my final entry into this year's Masters competition.

I'm not sure why the layout with a 5x7" photo challenged me so much. A year or two ago I used to scrap with this size quite commonly. But perhaps I've grown accustomed to using my smaller 4x4" or even 3x3" Instagram shots because suddenly I felt lost with what to do with a page where the photo takes up so much space.

The challenge specifically asks for a page using a 5x7" print that's engaging and with eye-contact. I have to admit even finding suitable photos was slightly difficult in itself. I take most of my photos with my phone these days, but those won't convert into fabulous quality large prints so I had to go back through my old files to find something taken with my proper camera. And then there weren't many candidates that had eye-contact as most of my photos are 'caught-in-the-act' shots rather than staged ones.

But I ended up printing out a few different ones with no real plan in mind of how to approach the page. Black and white seemed like a good option, and I added some digital elements to them for a little more interest. I stuck with quite a simple design of squares and circles, and whilst I like how it's turned out it doesn't seem like it's a true representation of my normal style so I shelved it and started again. Obviously I can't share with you the page I made next as I chose to enter it instead, but lets just say it's more recognisable as being mine ;-)

This one is called 'Freeze This Moment' which was taken from the Ali Edwards digital stamp on the photo. But in the journaling I question whether or not I would actually want time to stand still if I had the option. Whilst it would be nice to keep my girls at this age forever, sweet and innocent as they are, I can't help but be more curious about what their amazing future holds. So no, I don't think I would want to freeze this moment.

The Story of Happy Days

Sorry for the bloggy silence. Work always seems to get in the way of crafting doesn't it?! 10 babies delivered on my shifts over the weekend. Exciting (and absolutely exhausting) stuff!

But did you hear the other big news? I've just joined a new Design Team and I could not be any happier. I'm so thrilled to say that I'll be working alongside the amazingly talented Georgia Heald and Anita Stokes at Paper Stories for the next 6 months or longer if I'm lucky ;-)

This month I'll be working with the smash hit new collection from Carta Bella called Hello Again. I can't wait to share with you what I've been making.

But here's a Design Team project I can share with you. For the month of July the team at Jenni Bowlin Studios were asked to create projects that celebrate summer. I made both a layout (which you can see here) along with this card too.

I used my favourite JBS Modern Mercantile papers and added a splash of red for a contrasting colour. I'm lucky enough to have a little stash of hoarded butterfly rubons that Jenni released a couple of years ago and I bit the bullet and broke one out for this. I transferred it onto acetate and then cut around it so that my butterfly was sturdy enough to give it dimension but kept its translucent quality.

Totally worth it!


JBS Supplies: