The Story of the Best Day

So yeah.... I am just lllloooooovviiinnnggg the new Maggie Holmes Flea Market collection. Love the colours - pink and teal are my all time faves. And the gold features are such a highlight. I love the fresh funky vintage theme of it all. But sometimes you want your layout to look different from all the rest right? You want to put your individual spin on things and customise it just enough that people won't automatically go 'oh that looks like all the other Flea Market layouts'.
That's where a few simple mixed-media techniques can come in handy.

Now I know the term 'mixed-media' sends chills down some people's spines. It seems arty and funky and you need to do something fabulous with it or don't even try. But at the core of it all it just means using different mediums on your page apart from paper. When you break it down into the idea of using paint or stencils or stamping on your page then you probably realise you already do it!

And if you keep all your mixed-media techniques and tricks to the background then you don't even need to worry about destroying your pretty papers - which I know is the other concern we all have! Here I've taken a piece of Vanilla Cardstock and added gel-medium, gesso, stencils, mist, pen and paint. And then layered on the patterned paper and embellishments on top so they still shine.

Do you want to know one more secret about mixed-media? If you put down a layer of paint for example and it doesn't turn out quite like what you imagined.... then you cover it up with another layer of something else and you call it a technique! Oh yeah.. you'll see what I mean if you watch my video. I didn't like the orange swirls so I put a layer of gesso over the top. Then the gesso smudged everywhere so when it dried I outlined the design with pen. You think I planned it that way? No way!

So now you've heard me talk about it enough, sit back and watch the process happen...

  

The Story of My Confessions....

.... and the winner of the Evalicious giveaway will be posted below too!

Working as a doctor I get to do my fair share of night-shift stints. In fact, in some of my rotations I spend as much as 1/3 of my time rostered onto it. It's quite a different world, and it takes some getting used to. Anyone who does it will tell you their own little tricks for coping. My main staples include lots of coffee, plenty of carbohydrates and some fast-paced comedy entertainment (love 30 Rock!!)

Whilst that sounds like a bit of fun actually, there's also a down-side. It's socially isolating, patients (and even other staff) are more aggressive, I question myself constantly and worry more, I'm perpetually tired and often fall sick. However, I also tend to build better relationships with the other staff when we get the time to sit around and chat because we're much more honest with each other! And it's quite satisfying when everything goes well and you know you've played a vital role in that.

In making this layout I started off with a sheet of Flea Market Jenna paper. You know how I always like to have a border of contrasting colour around my layout? Well this paper already has one built-in! Then I chose some of the chalkboard elements from the Chipboard Stickers and Heirloom paper because I liked the idea of the black representing the 'dark side' of what I was journaling about, and it contrasts nicely against the other pastel colours.

On the other hand, I used the Vellum Gold Doily behind my photo to represent the sun coming up. After all, when you're on night duty that's what you're hanging out for. Seeing the sun rise is the promise that you're soon about to knock off and be able to crawl into your own bed! It's a mini victory every single morning!

I had a lot of comments on this layout that I shared when posting about the Evalicious Giveaway. Specifically, a lot of you were asking about the paper I used, or whether or not I had added the paint splashes/stiches/rubons in the background. The answer is no! All the white that you see is just part of the paper... fabulous isn't it? Makes it look like I had done a whole lot of work when I really hadn't!! It's by a (?French) company called ICC and whilst I can no longer find the exact one I've used here I can see only this one from the same collection that you can buy in Australia.  

Now onto the winner!! Sorry to keep you waiting!

So by random draw the winner is......
LEANNE!
Leanne, send me an email with your postal address and I'll get your prize off to you ASAP :-)

Have a good long-weekend Melbournians!

Bloggin' all around the World

Well not quite, but I have got a lot of posts that have gone up this past week that aren't actually here on my own blog! (And speaking of my blog, have you noticed the clean new look? It's still in need of a bit of tweaking, but what do you think?)

Let me show you some sneaks, and then you can check out the full versions for yourself...

#1

First up, I'm sharing another page made with the gorgeous Maggie Holmes Flea Market collection over on the Paper Stories blog. This is surely one of my favourite lines ever. The colours are exactly me, but that doesn't mean that I couldn't augment it a little with a bit of mixed media.

In fact, I've even posted another video on my YouTube channel that shares the process of this layout coming together. But for all the details and explanation head on over to the Paper Stories blog.

#2

Today I'm super-excited to say I'm Guest Blogging over on the Scrapbook Creations Magazine blog!! Asked to share something that's trendy or inspiring me right now I chose to go with my recent love of scrapping with neutrals. I put this layout together with the September JBS Papercrafting kit. The kit as a whole was actually really bright and colourful, but with some careful choices I turned it into this tone-on-tone page.

I share my tips and tricks for doing this though, as I think if you're not careful with scrapping with neutrals it might turn out a little.... well.. boring!

Scrapbook Creations have got a Blog Hop going on right now (which I'm a part of) where you've got a chance to win a 1 year subscription among other things. Check it out here.

#3

I was recently sent the newest products from X-Press It in order to review them. X-Press It are known best for their high-quality adhesives and they've just released Wide and Extra-Fine Glue Markers along with the standard size. I have to admit... I really loved them!

Putting them to the test I whipped out this set of relatively simple cards with some Basic Grey goodies. The feature piece of each card is the series of glitter stripes running along it's length. It shows you the difference in width of the 3 Glue Markers at a glance.

X-Press It have also got a Blog Hop going on right now where you could win these products for yourself! Check it out here. 

#4

And lastly... over at Jenni Bowlin Studios we're celebrating all things Autumn and Halloween. Slightly tricky I admit, given I definitely don't do Halloween and it's currently Spring here in Australia! But it's not like I don't have a thousand photos from 6 months ago sitting on my desk waiting to be scrapped, so turns out it wasn't that hard after all ;-)

It definitely helps that the October Papercrafting Kit was filled with all things Autumnal too, which I loved. But I have to admit I've got my eye on the November kits and can't wait for them to arrive on my doorstep!

And one last thing..
I've got my own Evalicious Giveaway going on right now, and it's open for anyone to enter. Good luck :-)

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 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 my Heart

When I first started scrapping, cards were something I would make all the time. Then I decided it was all too hard because it required a vastly different style and technique from creating layouts. So I stopped making them for a year or two. But now I've come full circle again, and sometimes people would be mistaken for thinking mine was a cardmaking blog.

The main reason for my change of heart is because I realised that making cards isn't different from making layouts at all. It's just on a smaller canvas and usually doesn't require a photo. The same papers, techniques, design principles and products can be used just as easily, and in fact, I find it the easiest if I go on and create a card the minute I've finished with my page. I can essentially copy what I've just put together and use up my scraps at the same time!

Following on from my "Crazy Like" layout I put together this card with all very similar elements from the Carta Bella Hello Again collection I got from Paper Stories. It features the same gesso/stencil/mist technique that I showed you in my video, it's got the same layers hand-cut banners, a few stickers from the Elements sheet and a gorgeous Flair button from Ormolu.

So if you find it difficult to switch to cardmaking then try just copying your last page! It makes it super-easy to create a reasonable stash of cards for any occasion :-)

The Story of Thick & Thin

With more than enough leftover supplies from the Carta Bella Hello Again collection from the Paper Stories shop I went ahead and made another layout. Remember how I said at the beginning that I thought perhaps the black paper would make an interesting background? Well I couldn't get that thought out of my head, so this is what I did....

Contrasting against the black & white background I wanted lots of bright coloured papers (all my 'scraps') and I used up quite a few of the Element Stickers too. I thought I better stick to a black & white photo with all that going on and even though this one is pretty ordinary in quality it makes up for it in sentiment.

The photo shows me with 2 of my colleagues. We were all posted to work at the same hospital around about the same time. There's been lots of ups and downs over these last 3 years but I can always count on these girls for support, and that means the world to me. The title of my layout "Through Thick and Thin" reflects that idea.

There was a sticker in the Elements sheet that read 'thank you for being a friend' and it worked perfectly here, and even one of the Ormolu Flair Buttons had a cross on it which reminds me of hospitals so it also found a home on this layout. I think it's great when your embellishments are pretty, but I think it's even more awesome when they help symoblise the overall theme.

The Story of Crazy Like

Two Things.....
1. Have you entered my JBS September Spring Giveaway yet? There's still a couple of days to enter!
2. I've got a new(ish) video up on YouTube about the making of this layout.. let me share it with you :-)

I've got some cute kids right?.... but man do they do some crazy stuff sometimes! At this point I'm finding the simplest day-to-day activities and things they say is the best fodder for layout topics. It doesn't always have to be about the big events. So I took this quote from my daughter and based my whole page around it. She looked at this photo of herself in her pretty new dress riding on the back of a tricycle and exclaimed "that's not very lady-like... that's crazy-like", which totally made me giggle out loud!

My page focuses on the pretty papers in the Carta Bella Hello Again collection which are available at Paper Stories. In fact, I've hardly used any other embellishments. But what I have used are a lot of background mixed-media products and techniques and it's this process that I wanted to highlight in my video.

I know the idea of adding things like gesso, mists, Gelatos and Twinkling H2O's to your page sounds a bit foreign and scary to some of you, whilst others will embrace the idea whole-heartedly and might just want some fresh inspiration. I think these wet mediums are awesome for adding another layer of depth and dimension and you can still add all your paper layers over the top like I have.

My video speeds through fairly quickly (otherwise it would take forever in real time!) so if there's anything you didn't quite catch or any questions about what I've used or what I've done feel free to leave them in the comments and I'll get back to you ASAP.

The Story of Name Calling

I can honestly tell you I've been having such a fun time creating with the Hello Again collection from Carta Bella that's currently available in the Paper Stories store. I'm not sure that I had used Carta Bella before the lovely Georgia sent me this kit, and maybe you're in the same boat? Let me tell you the quality of these papers is fabulous! Do you remember the old Crate Paper, or the older My Mind's Eye papers that were thick and soft and velvety? That's what these are like.

For this first layout I've limited myself to only using the yellow, pink and black papers. When I'm faced with an entire collection I find it a little daunting to know where to start. For example, there's way too many fun tags and stickers to choose from! But if I make up a colour scheme to follow it helps me make choices about which ones to use.

I started my layout by cutting out a bunch of hearts into my background paper with my Silhouette. I backed it with a contrasting colour and made sure to stick some foam tape in between the layers to give it some depth and dimension. That's a little technique I've been playing around with lately and I'm really loving the results. I've made another page using this style but it's been picked up for publication by Scrapbook Trends (yep - shameless name dropping here!)

And of course, the cut-out hearts don't go to waste because I've used some here, and the rest ended up on my next layout! I've just doodled around them a bit with black and white pens.

Because most of the decoration on this page was done with the hearts I didn't need a lot more embellishments, but I've layered up some of the Element Stickers plus the Label and Flair from Ormolu which match perfectly. The title stickers also worked well as they continued on with the black & white theme. You can find these JBS stickers in the shop too (on sale!!)

This layout is all about the day my youngest finally called her sister by her proper name. You know how young kids tend to turn long difficult names into funny little abbreviations? Well it's taken my almost-4-year-old that long to be able to call her sister 'Bethany'. Mostly she calls her 'Bebesh'. It's partly our fault too of course, as we rarely call her Bethany either. She's got about a million little nicknames that we call her instead. It's just a family moment in our everyday lives that seems worth documenting :-)