The Story of You and Me

I'm super-lucky to be working with the gorgeous Maggie Holmes collection "Flea Market" for my DT assignments this month at Paper Stories. I love that Georgia knows me so well that she chooses collections that suit me perfectly! It's got enough greens and yellows in it to make neutral or even masculine projects, but the initial impact of this collection is that it's prefect for vintage romantic girly pages.

Well... this is about as romantic as you're going to get from me! I still prefer my pages to have more of a graphic layered effect than a shabby chic look, but you could just as easily go that way too. I began with white cardstock and created some mixed-media effects in the background with stamping, modelling paste and mist. I find this gives me lots of texture without creating too much bulk, and it's a chance to get more complimenting (or even contrasting) colour onto the page. You can totally take a collection to different level by using varying colours, but here I chose to stick with the mint green.

After creating a basic structure to the page with the gorgeous pink Fine China paper and the hearts from Treasure, I cut the Heirloom paper into all it's various tags and strips and layered pieces of them on top. I love that manufacturers are making papers like this that effectively give you a tonne of embellishments at very little cost.

But speaking of embellishments, they don't get more luxurious and decadent than the gold pieces out of the Adhesive Chipboard sheet. Pure love! I used the "Me & You" banner pieces (and turned the phrase around so I could create my rhyme) for a title and placed the little gold hearts in the opposite corner to create some balance. I think if you're going to use gold you should limit it to just one or two areas otherwise it can become quite overwhelming. But as a title it makes quite a bold statement!

I'll be back real soon to share some more adventures with this stunning collection. Just you wait to see what I've got in store for that Gold Doily Vellum!!

The Story of the Wonky Birthday

Sorry for the radio silence over here, but with one last huge exam pending tomorrow I've had to scale back just slightly on the scrapping this week. Meanwhile, all prayers for success tomorrow will be much appreciated!

But there's still life, and when Munchy was invited to a last-minute girly birthday party on the weekend then a last-minute girly birthday card was in order.

I literally just grabbed the scraps that were sitting on my desk to create this. The only part that needed any effort was getting out the Silhouette to cut 'birthday' (because the 'happy' was already printed on the pink Dear Lizzy paper). Super-happy with how it came out. Lots of glitter and sparkles were the obvious choice, and an Evalicious badge button to top it off.

I just love it when my girls see something I've made and then gasp in delight! Especially because they don't notice the details like how I sewed on 'birthday' wonky and how I got too over-zealous with the silver mist and had to cover it up with bling ;-)

The Story of Small Packages

I have to be honest, when I first saw the bright colours in the Glitz Designs Finnley collection I was a little daunted. I wasn't quite sure how I was going to make it work, and I actually decided it wasn't for me. Boy am I glad I decided to try it out anyway, because it turns out it's now one of my current faves!! 

I used turquoise cardstock for the base of this layout because it brings a new colour into the mix of red and green which stops it from looking too Christmassy and also makes it a little different from 'all the rest'. But it was another quite bright colour so I had to be sure to use lots of black and white to tone it all down a notch ;-)

The speech bubbles stencil was an exclusive in a past JBS kit and I simply gessoed over the whole thing here to give me lots of little places to add my journaling. After I told my story I simply filled the other ones with a few cute embellishments.

I cut up one of the Finnley journaling cards to use as my title and allowed it to prompt me into my layout topic. This saying "great things come in small packages" is something I hear a lot! At only 5ft 2" and having quite a petite frame I often get mistaken for being much younger than I am, and I don't carry much 'oommph' when I walk into a room. That is, until I open my mouth ;-) So I think people commonly offer this quote to me as some sort of condolences. I promise you, I don't need it.

I don't think my girls will have to worry about it though. Everyone on The Man's side of the family is quite tall - even the females. So I figure with half of his genes they'll probably balance out somewhere nicely in the middle. I can already see Munchy shooting up like a beanstalk. I reckon she'll be fitting into my clothes by the time she's 10. That'll make for some interesting times!

I had this layout up earlier in the month on the Paper Stories blog. I've been back there since then sharing the projects I've been making with the new Maggie Holmes Flea Market collection. I just love it! Here's a sneak of what's coming up next....

The Story of Sew Much Fun

I've got a bit of a thing for neutrals lately. I love the idea of creating a whole project with just kraft, black, white and cream. And then perhaps just adding a splash of one other colour. I've got a couple of other layouts in the pipelines that follow these principles that I can't quite show you yet. But here's one that I can share...

You may have seen this card posted recently on my Facebook page as part of a giveaway to promote the Jasper Lane Designs "My Favourite Things" showcase (which is still open by the way, with some beautiful handmade goodies still up for sale. I purchased the sweetest dress from the showcase for my little Moodles. She's going to love it!)

But anyway. On with the story.
So I started the card by doing a little background work. On a kraft base I layered white cardstock, then added kraft paper-mache tape and painted it with a soft wash of gesso. Then came the drip drip splatter of some Glimmermist. 

Next I grabbed some cute Maya Road chipboard sewing pieces which of course inspired the sentiment, and added more Maya Road flower embellishments. The white flower scored itself a few sprays of mist as well, and the alphas got covered in glitter. So there you have it, an (almost) neutral card that's really quite textural so as to still keep your interest.

My Munchy giggled so much when she saw this and understood the pun ;-) Hee heeee!

The Story of the Peacock

I grew up surrounded by animals. Living on a dairy farm means obviously there are cows, but at one time or another there were also horses, pigs, goats, dogs, cats, a variety of different birds both 'decorative' and practical such as chickens..... and there was also a family of peacocks.

The peacock himself was a creature of mystery. He simply flew into the farm one day (fully grown) and decided to stay. Feeling sorry for the lonely bird we purchased a female companion and together they raised many litters (? pretty sure that's not the right word!) of baby peafowl.

Peacocks aren't the first animal that comes to mind when you think about farms, and it was always a dichotomy of values to come across one of the beautiful discarded feathers in amongst the cow pats! Ever since that time the peacock has remained an enigma in my mind. Surely they're amongst the world's most beautiful creatures. They remind me of the intricacy and depth of the splendour of Creation.

So when I heard my sister (from Jasper Lane Designs) was doing a celebratory Facebook Showcase for her 30th birthday that features 30 of her favourite things and that one of the themes up for grabs was "birds" I knew just what I was going to do. I hand-painted and stenciled this peacock design with India Ink and then filled it in with watercolours and Glimmermist. I added detail to the body with Liquid Pearls and shimmer to the feathers with Martha Stewart glitter.

The photos don't really do it justice, and it's quite a textural piece in real life. Now I'll be sorry to see this go because it's making a lovely display on my bookcase right now, but it is up for sale in the "30 Favourite Things" Showcase tonight. It begins at 8pm (Victorian time) and I would love for you to come over and check it out. The other 29 items are pretty spectacular too!

The Story of the Princess Bride

Another day, another scrappy challenge. I can't get enough of them this month. Call it inspiration striking perhaps. Or more accurately perhaps call it procrastination..... I've got another exam looming at the end of October ;-)

Either way you look at it I'm happy to be scrapping. I really liked the look of the Mood Board at Scrap Around the World and couldn't wait to play along. Initially it was mainly the image of the cushion on the bottom left that I wanted to emulate, and hopefully you can see the resemblance to the design on the left of my page?

Next I wanted to just generally capture the feel of the overall colour scheme so I've kept lots of white and added in the pink and blue.

I've been giving a lot of love to my JBS stencils lately and this layout is no exception. I used gesso with the 6x6" graphic feather stencil before liberally spraying it with pink mist to highlight the shapes. All the papers on this layout are from the JBS August Papercrafting Kit.

Moodles loves to dress-up. It's certainly her favourite activity at creche - she always heads straight there as her first priority. This wedding dress is amongst her top choices of outfit. But she insists that she's not a bride, that she is in fact a princess. She claims it's not a veil but rather a crown.

I've tried to clarify her confusion but to no avail. Never mind, I'm not ready for her to be practicing getting married yet anyway!

The Story of my Jot Kids

Have all you Mum's out there heard the news? Jot magazine is holding their very own kid-version of the popular Mood Board challenges. What a great idea! And it gives them something extra to do on school holidays to stop the constant "I'm bored" mantra.

I don't know about you but my kids love the idea of scrapping almost as much as I do. I've given them their own pizza box that I keep on replenishing with supplies and they use them up at alarming speed. So when I showed them this Rainbow Mood Board challenge they squealed with delight and dove straight into their stash. Here's what they came up with....

Bethany just turned 7 and needed no prompting whatsoever. What I love most about her layout is that she chose to scrap about her sister and..... look at all that journaling she added!! I'm so proud!! At this point in the activity we hadn't yet found any glue or adhesive so she used stickers to hold her photo on. Can you see how she's even matted the photo? I think she's been watching me scrap too much ;-)

Moriah is 3 but she wanted to do her own thing anyway. I literally did nothing on this apart from pierce some holes so she could add brads. Yes she went a bit crazy with the stickers but she was singing a little song about putting flowers in a garden so that's what they're representing. She also added her own version of journaling down the bottom - she likes to squiggle some lines and pretend she's writing. It was her sister that stuck on the title and translated some of the journaling.

So thanks Jot for the great Kid challenge. They had an absolute ball!

The Story of Once Upon a Time

I've had a bit of fun with this one, going with an almost 'fairytale' theme. Light and airy whimsical embellishments with a soft colour scheme.

I can't take credit for it though as I'm following along with the gorgeous colour scheme,  embellishment and journaling prompts that is the current challenge at CSI: Colour, Stories, Inspiration. It's their special Scrapbook 365 special edition challenge that will run all month long.

I'm starting to really like the idea of a colour scheme challenge as it forces me to go through my stash and pull out all sorts of new and old product, mixing and matching them as I go along. I end up using lots of stuff that I might not otherwise use, and it usually forces me in directions I might not have thought of.

On this page I went with a tonne of leftovers from very old Studio Calico kits - from 2011 I think! Just so I could get all these lovely soft-coloured papers. I did some stenciling and stamping in the background just to fulfil some criteria but I absolutely love how much more interesting it makes the page. And the clouds came courtesy of some Evalicious tags that I've turned around so they're just plain white!

This story is one of my Dad. It's written in the form of a fairytale, starting off with 'Once Upon a Time' there was a man. A good man. Trying his hardest to be a good Dad in the way that he was taught. He worked hard for us and provided everything we could ever need, but when it came to showing affection or talking about matters of the heart it was difficult for him. When my boyfriend (soon to be my husband) came along he started to crack that exterior shell and by the time the 2 girls came along he was ready to learn how to be a jolly jovial cuddly affectionate grandfather.

I don't blame him at all. After all, he grew up in a generation where 'men were men'. They didn't show emotion and they certainly didn't hug one another! So when he wrote this public declaration on Facebook about how much he loved and felt blessed by us kids and grandkids I knew it was a moment to be captured. A screenshot of a status update doesn't make for a fabulous photo, but it's the meaning behind it that's most important here.





 PS. Yes, my dad's name really is James Bond

The Story of the Guitar

Sometimes it's really fabulous to be wrong about things isn't it? Like when I first saw the reveal of the JBS September kit I wondered how I was going to be able to use all those bright colours.... and then this happened...

And it's quickly become one of my most favourite JBS kits ever!
It's filled with lots of the fabulous Glitz Designs Finnley collection which I noticed matched the colours perfectly with the latest Yummy Scrap challenge at Scrap Friends, so I couldn't help but play along.

I'm still working through my huge pile of Evalicious badge buttons so I added a couple to this page. But pretty much everything else is from the JBS Papercrafting kit. I really wish I had got some of the add-ons now (which are all sold out!) Lesson learned.

That's the exclusive Quilt Star stencil you can see misted in grey in the background. All of the kits either have an exclusive stencil or stamp (usually both!!) in them which you can't get anywhere else. That alone is reason enough to subscribe in my opinion. But then you also get 2 exclusive papers designed by Lisa Dickinson as well which is icing on the cake. The white and green stars are cut from one of them, and the other I'm hoarding ;-)

I don't have much musical ability. I learned the organ for a couple of years in Primary School, and I can hold a tune, but there's no way I can read sheet music these days. The Man on the other hand has played acoustic and bass guitar for many many years. So it surprised me to find out Munchy, who normally takes after me predominantly, has quite an ear for music. She can pick out single instruments from a band and tell me which parts she likes.

We've got her doing Piano lessons this year which is all in aid of her actual desire to play the Flute. That's the one she specifically picked because it has such 'a beautiful sound'. But on this occasion she had commented that it was the guitar in the sound mix that she was enjoying, so out came The Man with his trusty acoustic and it quickly turned into her first impromptu guitar lesson.

The Story of the Journey

Catching up on a few of those photos that need to be scrapped because they're important life moments (even though they actually happened quite some time ago and I just haven't got around to it yet!)

I was inspired by the October challenge at Once Upon a Sketch 'cos it's been just as long since I last played along there too ;-) I love how Nadia's sketches push me in ways I wouldn't go by myself, and I love LOVE that she always encourages (in fact, demands) that her challenge participants journal a meaningful amount on their layouts.

I used my July JBS Papercrafting kit to put this one together. It's filled with lots of Basic Grey Carte Postale goodies which seemed appropriate for the theme of 'journey' which is what the OUAS challenge is about. At first glance you might wonder what the photos have to do with this theme, but here's what my page is about....

At the end of her first year of school Munchy was awarded the "Shooting Star of the Year" which recognises her Confidence, Organisation, Persistance, Resilience and Getting Along. Chosen from amongst all her classmates it was a great honour and I'm super-proud of her. This girl of mine is strong-willed and has a strong sense of direction. She knows what she wants from her future already and I anticipate that this award will be the first of many.

To some I know that might sound a little cocky, but I don't mean it that way. I merely see that she has the God-given talent and drive to strive for everything and anything she wants from her future. To that I say, "Let the Journey Begin"!!