The Story of the Forks... and a winner!!

Thanks everyone for your interest in my latest giveaway - a seat in the upcoming BPC "Grammar-Free Journaling" Class. I've combined all the entries from my blog and my facebook and then let random.org choose a winner.

A great big congratulations goes to.....
RUTH BONSER!!
Yay! Please get in contact with me via email and I'll hook you up with a code to get free access to the class :-)

For everyone else, don't forget that if you sign up for the class and use the code:
GOGRAMMAR
You'll get $7 off the full price. But hurry, because the offer ends on the first day of class which is the 24th of July. I can't wait! 

And just because a post feels empty without some kind of photo or project I thought I'd very randomly share this wooden cutlery set I altered back when I was a Guest Designer for American Crafts. 

A very simple project, mainly consisting of dipping cutlery in paint and then covering them with glitter! But really... messy painty glittery projects are quite possibly the best kind ;-)

My girls quickly claimed these after I was finished photographing them, and have been using them for afternoon tea parties ever since. I have to admit, I love it when my kids enjoy what I make.

The Story of the Glitter Album

Back in February when I was a Guest Designer for American Crafts one of the things they asked me to make was a mini-album. Still reeling from my dismal failure at completing (AKA: barely even starting) my December Daily, I thought this was going to be one of the harder parts of the assignment. 

I have to admit with the DD attempt still fresh in my mind I said to myself "better make this fairly simple then, if I'm going to make it through" :-) One thing that really helped was working with fabulous product. Give me all the Guest Designer gigs in the world..... but only if I actually enjoy working with the supplies and love the designs. It's just not worth it otherwise.

So inspired by two main products, the Amy Tangerine Stitched Vellum Pockets, and American Crafts Glitter Tape (it was Glitter Week after all) I set to work creating my quick and easy mini-album in a flash!

The album really is actually "mini", measuring only 5x4" with the base of it simply being two long strips of patterned paper (5 x 12") folded up accordion style and stitched together. Then I alternatively adhered photos and the Vellum Pockets to each page.

Inside each pocket fits a journalling card so there's plenty of space to write down all my rambling thoughts. I say rambling thoughts specifically here because I've just chosen a bunch of fun random photos that haven't made it onto any of my layouts. Not really what you'd call a proper theme! But happy to be getting them out of my pile and into a project all the same.

I've decorated each Vellum Pocket with Glitter Tape that's been cut into different designs. Some more intricate than others. The Glitter Tape comes in different widths, so if you're thinking about cutting it up then I suggest the thicker ones. But what I love most is that when you're done snipping and chopping you simply peel off the backing and it's adhesive.... so no fussing around with fine-tipped glues!

Most of the other paper details come from the Amy Tangerine Cut & Paste collection, with just a touch of the Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm collection. Both are equally awesome and can mix and match a little.

Ultimately this mini album ended up only taking me an hour or so to make. Waaaayyyy shorter time that my average layout ;-) So I'm quite happy that I came to the realisation that they don't have to be overly complex or complicated to be effective. Occasionally I can do clean and simple too... in fact, might need to do more of it now!

xxx

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 the Americanism

Oh dear... so what to do when your pre-packaged embellishment set comes with a great big gorgeous sentiment that's spelled in the American way, leaving out the 'u' which us Aussies include? It's quite the dilemma isn't it? And one that we face not all that rarely. 

On the one hand I've got the patriotic side of me which says, "don't buckle to the pressure, don't let our Aussie culture be completely replaced by the American one!" and, "don't let people think you don't know how to spell!" But on the other hand I've got the scrapbooking side of me which says, "but it's soooo pretty and everyone will know what you mean anyway." Plus, it would be such a shame to let this one sentiment on the set of Dear Lizzy Polka Dot Party Dimensional Stickers go to waste when I'd already used so many of the others.

Ha! I guess you can see which side won the argument!

PS. What ultimately turned out to be a little embarrassing was when Munchy chose this card to give to her teacher for Valentine's Day. Out of all my cards, and out of all the people to give it to... she chose the card with a 'misspelling' on it to give to her teacher. I had to laugh!
And then I quickly augmented the front of it to stick a 'u' over the top ;-)

The Story of One

Following on from my post about the extremely yellow page I did the other day, I must have subconsciously continued on with the monochrome idea when I whipped up this layout on a whim soon after. It's not truly monochrome though, there are lots of other colours in here, but certainly pink is the dominant colour.

I tried to balance it out a little with some cream colours, and I ended up using the pop-out letters from the Fancy Pants stencil that was in my original yellow page. I didn't consciously plan that similarity either!

What I did have in mind when I thought about the design of this page was the idea that I should cluster cluster cluster everything in the bottom half, and then leave the top fairly plain. After I had layered up my papers (Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm collection) I started hunting through my embellishment box for anything and everything I thought would work. So there's quite a mish-mash of older product here which I just love because it means it's finally getting used!

Another fun moment came when I stood back at the end and looked at my finished page and decided the original white stickers that spelled "one" weren't as prominent as I needed them to be considering it was the key word for my layout. The little photo collage here on this page is from my niece's first birthday party last year, so I wanted the "one" to be rather obvious. After thinking red might be a better choice I wanted to try it out first before I committed so I lightly stuck them over the top so I could see how it looked. Happy with the result I then figured why bother with the fiddly task of trying to remove the original stickers and I just mooshed the red ones down over the top! 

I was also still feeling very glittery following my glitter binge as the American Crafts Guest Designer and the letters got a bit of a sprinkling to finish off! Speaking of which, I really must be back here soon to share all those projects I made. Can't wait to show you.. and there's also the countdown for the next Studio Calico reveal so that'll be coming real soon too :-)

The Story of Guesting for American Crafts!

Ok, so this is where my scrapping journey reaches an even higher pinnacle. Being a Guest Designer for American Crafts?! A great big YES and a whoooo hooo! And where it gets even better is that American Crafts is celebrating glitter week.. and you all know how much I love glitter!! It's like they knew I was coming and planned accordingly ;-)

Here's a sneak of each of the projects you're going to see over on my guest post. I ended up with 2 layouts, a card, a mini-album and a home-decor item. That's what happens when inspiration hits... a great big whirlwind of creativity hit my scraproom and I didn't stop until I was done!

I absolutely loved creating with the Dear Lizzy Polka Dot Party, and Amy Tangerine Cut & Paste that I received. It's much easier to work glitter into your projects than you imagine. And it doesn't have to be as 'messy' as the layout above. Here I let the wet glue run down the page and then sprinkled loose glitter all over it (and myself, and everything else in sight). It was so worth it though, that sunflower yellow is the best!



The first sneak, the scripted 'she' uses a similar technique of painting on glue and then sprinkling glitter. I love it because of it's vibrancy. But if you're not into mess, then consider trying Zazz glitter glue instead, like I've used on the cutlery set above.
 

A little messy just because it's wet, but if you're careful about not smearing it you won't need to worry about having to clean up at the end. My card (above) is a little hard to see from this angle, but I've used Pow Glitter paper, while the mini-album below uses the Glitter Tape.

So if you're interested in seeing all my complete projects, pop on over to the American Crafts blog and say hello. There's a chance to win your own truck-load of glittery products on this post too. And stay tuned for more glittery inspiration from the team over the coming week, they're sure not to disappoint ;-)

Happy Scrapping,
xx

Page Drafts Christmas Sketch Release

The Christmas scrapping continues here as I whip myself up into a festive frenzy! I really love this time of year!

Today is the release of the new bunch of Christmas sketches from Page Drafts, and to celebrate we've put together a sleigh-ful of inspiration from a bunch of designers around the world.

Em makes such wonderful sketches that really drive me to create, so I couldn't help but play along and I chose this particular sketch below to inspire my page.

I struggle a little with the concept of round photos so I scrapped with my usual square Instagram pic, but apart from that I tried to stick to the sketch as closely as possible. With so much detail included in the sketches it's really not hard to find direction, and you don't have to do a lot of thinking for yourself! Especially useful in this busy season where creative time is commonly in short supply ;-)

So I added some clusters of October Afternoon banners top and bottom, plenty of bling and sparkle of course (how fabulous is that American Crafts gold glitter corrugated cardstock I mounted the layout on?!) and a fair sprinkling of Studio Calico paper and Evalicious tags.

The layout tells the story of our family Christmas last year. For the first time ever we stayed put and celebrated at home just the 4 of us for Christmas Day. Usually we are travelling to the country to spend it with family as I have been blessed with many years of not having to work the Christmas week. Unfortunately that wasn't the case last year, and it won't be the case this year either :-(

However, I have to admit that in some small way it was nice to be able to just relax at home and not be worried about getting to the next location on time. It was also lovely to be able to watch the kids open their presents from underneath our own tree for the first time too. And it didn't mean that we skimped on all the 'essentials'... we still had a proper roast turkey and all the trimmings for lunch as this photo proves!

Now this is only one of the fabulous Page Drafts sketches that have just been released. You ought to see what the other designers have created based on the other designs. Check out all the details on the Page Drafts blog here, and get inspired to do a little Christmas scrapping for yourself today!

The Story of the Home Alone Christmas

It's time again for another round of the latest challenge at CSI: Color, Stories, Inspiration where I'm a Special Deputy this month. The common theme linking all the challenges for December is Christmas (not that you have to follow the theme of course) but I do have a bunch of last year's photos still waiting to be scrapped.

Case File #101 looks like this:

Love the cool colour scheme we had to work with, although I found it a little difficult to get the right tone of green unfortunately. I think this would look particularly awesome if you have White Christmas photos in your collection. Here in Australia though Christmas is generally a boiling hot day spent in your t-shirt and shorts around a BBQ perhaps, so I didn't have any photos of snow!!

The evidence I incorporated into my layout (the embellishments) included: numbers, silver accents, something shiny, circles and Christmas accents. And perhaps frames if you count all those square Ali Edwards stamps I used in the top half of my page as 'frames'. But perhaps not ;-)

And for my testimony I stuck with the rather obvious prompt to 'journal about the holidays'. I wrote all my journaling on a tag hidden behind the photo, not because it's anything private, but more just for space issues. I thought originally it might fit underneath the 25 but after I painted in a few stars for their pop of colour I decided I didn't want to crowd it in beside them. 

I wrote about spending Christmas at home last year just as our own little family of 4 (rather than on the road visiting with all the extended relatives) which was quite a different experience for us. A bit more relaxing I have to say, but certainly misses out on lots of positives too. More on that in my next blog post. Stay tuned ;-)

The Story of Her Story

Don't forget I've got a giveaway going on here currently!

I was feeling quite sentimental as I went through my large pile of photos to scrap and came across some that I snapped at my friends' wedding. This girl means the world to me, and her happiness means even more. One of my best friends for over 10 years now. We've been through many trials (lots of medical exams for a start) and celebrations (so many celebrations) together. Watching her marry the man of her dreams (and they were no small dreams!) in such glorious fashion was so emotional. I'm pretty sure I cried more than she did :-)

The only problem that left me with was my own high expectations of what a page of this magnitude was going to look like. Complex, elegant, refined, sensible and beautiful, just like my friend herself. Not frilly, frizzy, complicated, messy or grungy.

And one that captured the essence of love of course. Crazy, joyful love.
Inspiration struck when I saw the current mood board challenge at Jot Magazine. The colour scheme is light and happy. I knew I wanted to recreate all those ombre tones of pink and yellow.

Butterflies were my embellishment of choice. They speak volumes about truth, beauty and love. I cut them on my Silhouette, painted them in acrylics and then ran a few through my Cuttlebug for good measure. Just a little touch of bling was what was required as a finishing touch.

Ultimately I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I sure am glad to have put this story down on paper.