Jot Magazine October Mood Board

 

We're celebrating Spring at Jot Magazine with the release of another fabulously bright and sunshiney Mood Board Challenge designed by our Jot Girl Raquel Bowman. Here's what it looks like...

The way I usually approach my projects for these mood boards is to find an old kit or a collection that has similar colours in it and then start gathering a little pile of supplies. I usually end up with way more things that I'll ever be able to use on one project, but it sure is fun trying to fit as many of them in as possible!

Somewhere along the line I'll find something that can act as a centrepiece for my card - on this occasion I found two pieces - that Studio Calico wood veneer floral arrangement, as well as the Dear Lizzy butterfly. And from there I start to build up a background behind it, making sure to try and represent all the major colours from the Mood Board in varying proportions.

Now you know why my cards always end up with so many layers!

Will you join in with us this month over at Jot Magazine? You can find all the details on the challenge right HERE!

The Story of the Kinder Mini

I shared with you in my last post how the inspirational Kim Archer had me excited about dabbling in a little Project Life for the first time. Well, in her jam-packed class she also had the time to take us through the creation of a little mini album as well!! So I'm here with you to share what I made for this too :-)

This is a super-cute little miniature mini! The outside covers only measure 3.5x4.5" and are constructed from chipboard covered in calico fabric which we sprayed with mist to decorate. I ended up covering most of mine up with an exclusive APOCD Wood Veneer Card which tells you exactly what the topic of my mini is about ;-)

The inside was sooo easy to construct that the creation of this 8 page book was finished in a flash. Because each page is simply a Project Life card with a photo and a touch of decoration! Can you believe it? What a great idea! Now I won't bore you with a thousand explanations of what I've used on each page. Suffice it to say there was lots of rummaging at the bottom of my past Studio Calico kits for all those little embellishments and bits and pieces that haven't been used yet, with a recurring theme of some new Dear Lizzy Stickers from here.

Happy memories of the first day of kindergarten all wrapped up in a nice little mini-album.... and only 2 months after the event! Pretty happy with myself right now ;-)

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 ;-)

Office Hours Sneaks

In just a few short hours it's going to be time for the reveal of the March Studio Calico kit "Office Hours". Can't believe how fast this month has flown by... I know it's a short month, but it feels even quicker than that surely?!

I'll be honest... I was a little worried about how they were possibly going to follow on from the success of the February Sugar Rush Kits. Those babies flew out the door at record pace and were sold out within minutes. They were some of the most talked-about kits in the history of Studio Calico! But the Office Hours kits have not disappointed ;-) They're absolutely fabulous, and I'm certain they're going to go just as fast! Let me share some sneaks of the pages I've made...

The sneaks above and below were both created with the Main Kit Only. What I really loved was the range of papers and embellishments in the kit allow for some quite masculine colour combinations, as well as girly combinations too. So I've made my 2 pages using the different approaches to show you what I mean.

The raindrops cutting file comes in the Card Kit Digital Stamps and Coordinating Cuts 'kit'. These are such good value for money - they're only a few dollars each, you don't need to worry about shipping, and you get heaps of images that can be used as digital stamps or imported into Silhouette and converted into cutting files. I always get the whole lot of them!

This next page (above) is something really different for me. Inspired by this image on Pinterest, I've created a page that recreates this look. It was awesome to cluster all the piles of embellishments that come in the Coffee Break Add On.

The other bunch of clustering I did was with all the stamps from the Rolodex Add On. I'd be lying if I said I used the new Color Theory Ink Pads (I'm still waiting for mine to arrive), but I've linked up the Color Theory Inks that would be almost a perfect match to these anyway in case you were keen to recreate the look ;-)

Oooooh, now this sneak is of my favourite page out of the 7 I made this month (or 8 if you count the double as 2 layouts!) Most of it is from the Main Kit, but it has a sprinkling of embellishments from most of the Add Ons too. It seems as though the entire Creative Team fell in love with the watercolour diecuts from the Main, and most of us have used the 'Rad' is one way or another. I chose some blue paint and glitter for mine ;-)

Ahem.. so this page might actually be about bugs... see the photo?! Which is why I think I tried to overcompensate by making it really girly and feminine. I've used the Coffee Break Add On for this page for the lovely Dear Lizzy stickers that come in it.

Lastly, here's a sneak of the page I made with the To Do Add On (everything except for that banner which comes in the Main Kit). I absolutely loved the sprinkling of gold bits throughout all the kits, but the lion's share comes in the Maggie Holmes Styleboard Vellum Shapes that's included in To Do. See that butterfly? Perfection right?!

Get ready for an awesome reveal. The team has really rocked these fabulous kits. Not too much longer to wait!



Here's What I've Used:
 

Office Hours In a Creative Bubble Printables Office Hours Hello Forever Printables Office Hours Printable Labels Office Hours Card Kit Digital Stamps and Cuts Office Hours Project Life Digital Stamps and Cuts Color Theory Ink: Deja Blue Color Theory Ink: Clean Slate Color Theory Ink: Something Blue Color Theory Ink: Emerald City Color Theory Ink: Yes Peas Color Theory Ink: Blush Crush Color Theory Ink: Orange County Color Theory Ink: Sunny Day This to That: Foam Circles Acrylic Paint: Bone Black Mister Huey's Inky Black Bamboo Brush: Size 4 Precision Pen Glossy Accents Glue Glider Pro

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