The Story of the Awesome Supporter

Oh it's been such a long long time since I had the time to participate in an online bloggy challenge. I love these for prompting my creativity and forcing me to try new techniques and designs that I never would have tried otherwise. And these days I'm really finding the colour combination challenges to be my favourite.

Enter the Jot Magazine Mood Board challenge for May!

So at first glance I'm thinking to myself "oh no... green and orange? Nup. Totally not my colours at all!" I'm more of a pink and aqua scrapper. You may have noticed?! But then a further thought occurs to me that the whole idea behind a challenge is to challenge yourself ;-)

A couple of the Jot girls had used their vintage Sassafras blooms on their inspiration pages, and if nothing else I'm still a sucker for pulling out some of my old Sass stash! I simply had to follow suit and chose a packet of these bright greens ones. What a perfect match for the colour and theme of the Mood Board! So happy to have these seeing the light of day and making it onto a page at last.

Combined with a bunch of my faithful new favourite Printables labels and journal tags from Studio Calico, as well as mixing and matching items from lots of my past kits I was actually able to throw this layout together quickly and easily. Love it when that happens. Love when I don't have to struggle and agonise over every decision!

The story of the page is about my Moodles. She's such an active supporter of her sister - in all things really, but especially on the athletics field. Even just the other day she was telling me how proud she is of her sister. She actually used those words! "Bebesh won a trophy.... I'm so proud of her" she said. Awww. Heart warming moment to see how much they love and respect one another :-)



Supplies:

Color Theory Paper Pack Camelot Main Kit Camelot Printables by In a Creative Bubble Camelot Printables by Tina Azsmus Camelot Printable Labels Bluegrass Farm Hello Forever Printables Essentials Gold Stars Color Theory Ink: Orange County Color Theory Ink: Deja Blue

InLinkz.com

The Story of 10 Years

I know the challenge site CSI: Colours, Stories, Inspiration has been around for a long time and I've often checked them out, but until now I haven't played along. This month though I finally found the time since my DT commitments have reduced somewhat and I made a page for Challenge #86.

Here was the inspiration piece. The colours are totally 'me' aren't they? But what I love most is the focus they have on expressing yourself through journaling and they always include prompts for what to write about as part of the criteria. I'm still going through Jill Sprott's online class "Scrapbooking from the Soul" which is also all about concentrating on telling the story so it's all coming together for me right now.

The photo I picked to scrap was one taken on our 10th wedding anniversary while we were out for a romantic dinner. We actually went on a long-weekend away (sans kids!) and it was a really terrific time, although we missed them terribly of course!

Taking my cue from the photo I then chose to journal some of the reasons why I love my husband. One of the criteria for the challenge was to pick a journaling prompt from this list by Ali Edwards (I picked #12). I'll definitely be keeping this for future reference - there's 12 other great prompts on there too!

When I'm faced with a colour challenge I tend to go through piles of my stash and pick out lots of bits and pieces that will coordinate. It often turns out that I throw a whole bunch of them on my page in random arrangement, and most of the time they're older products or things I've often overlooked before. It feels good to use up stash like this! But I had a whole 'eureka' moment when I saw that empty Sassafras alphabet sticker sheet in the right colour and realised I could use it to represent our initials! "M" and "N" all lined up down the bottom of the sheet.... it was perfect!!

And the little pink foam dots? They're the leftover pieces from a sheet of foam Thickers - they're all the extra dots for the top of i's but I'll never use them for that purpose and I've nearly finished the sheet otherwise, so I sprinkled 10 of them across the page to represent our 10 years together.

I'm already looking to the next CSI challenge to try and play along again!

The Story of Bling for Boys

Because the vast majority of my scrapping is all about my girls, when it comes to scrapping masculine topics I tend to carry over some of my usual habits. I've got no fear of adding things like butterflies and flowers etc on boy-layouts!

So when I heard that the October challenge at Flourish With a Bling was going to be about using 'Bling It On Boys' I didn't even  have to hesitate. In fact, I already had this photo on the top of my pile to scrap so it couldn't have come at a better time.

I'm not sure if it's cheating or not, because I think any celebratory project deserves some bling, and DEFINITELY a birthday party should have some bling involved... even if it's a boy's!! And because the photo already had some sparkle in it the rhinestones only served to enhance that.

I used FWAB Kate's Corner Flourish in Silver to frame the photo, and scattered some of the 'spare' rhinestones in my paint splatters. How fun! And speaking of fun... have you been scrapping long enough to recognise these papers I've used? LOL! Old-school Sassafras! Love it to bits, and i am SO glad I finally gathered the courage to dip into my stash of Sass :-)

The Bling It On Boys challenge is open until the end of the month, so there's plenty of time to get your entries in. There's a bundle of goodies to be won, including the same Kate's Corner I've used on my layout. All the details can be found on the FWAB blog here.

Supplies:

FWAB: Kate's Corner Flourish Silver

InLinkz.com

The Story of My Porcelain Doll

Do you wanna know my favourite piece out of the kit I was sent from Scrapbook Kits With a Difference? Well it would have to be a coin-toss between the woodgrain chevron paper from Echo Park, or the Sewing Girl journal spot. So what better thing to do than combine both of those on a page together?!!

In fact, I think all my favourite things from the kit got used on this page. Because there was also the Maya Road envelope, those good-ol' Sassafras alphas and that gorgeous lace that also deserve a mention.

I'm sure I'm not the only Mum who gets all choked up when they watch their kids sleep. In fact, aren't those some of the best moments? I swear, it doesn't matter how bad they've been during the day, or how many tantrums they may have thrown... the minute they're asleep it's like they're the cutest thing ever, and all is instantly forgiven.

I remember when I first posted this photo on Instagram and someone commented on how my Moodles looked just like a porcelain doll. It's true - this is just about as perfect as she gets! Well perhaps not. Probably it's that moment where she throws her arms around me and says "I missed you today Mummy" and then plants a great big kiss and a lick on my cheek.

Oh how I love her :-)

Supplies:

Scrapbook Kits With a Difference: October 2012

InLinkz.com

Ms Pacman

Last month on the Jenni Bowlin forum there was a fun little game called 'Ms Pacman' that I instantly wanted to join in. It's a stash-busting game, with the idea being to use up some old supplies. It starts with creating your own kit according to the following rules.....

The Ms. Pacman Kit must include and is limited to the following items:

1. 7 pieces of patterned paper scraps.  the papers must all be used/none can be an entire sheet.
2. a total of  1 yard of trim, but no individual piece can measure more than 11 inches.
3. one sticker sheet with at least one sticker missing.
4. an "old" alphabet set dated pre-2010.  we'll use the honor system here.
5. one jar/bottle of embellishments.  look in your space for something you've stored in this way.
6. one unopened package of scrappy product.
7. one roll of tape.  if you don't have washi or bookbinding you'll have to get creative!
8. one jbs item.
9. unlimited cardstock.
10. unlimited technique type product.  (paint, ink, embossing powder, pens, glitter, etc.).

And then you needed to create at least one layout and two cards with your kit. These are the projects I made - I shared them on the JBS forum at the time but totally forgot to get them up here. Sorry!

I started with that old Pink Paislee cherry blossom paper that I've been hoarding the scraps from for like ever! I had cut out chunks of cherry blossoms for previous projects so I just hid those gaps with more layers.

One of the big challenges I found was only having one alphabet to work with. Especially because I used this large Sassafras font which I love.... but I had to limit it to just one short word. So I stamped my subtitle istead (all within the rules!!) and worked it into the journaling.

I scrapped a recent favourite photo of Little Moodles dressed to the nines in her princess costume, but chillaxing in her recliner chair. Such a juxtaposition of styles... it makes me giggle!

I featured more Sassafras golden oldies from my stash with that floral paper I build my first card on. And I'm not sure if it was cheating or not, but I chose an American Crafts die-cut sheet as one of my pieces of paper. That made it easy to trim out and use these butterflies as an embellishment.

 And if die-cut paper wasn't cheating, then using the packaging from my Webster's Trim (which counted as one of my ribbons) might just be even more of a grey area?!

This second card was such a hodge-podge of scraps, which I guess it just the point of the challenge! Webster's packaging as the background, JBS butterflies and chevron scraps and Fancy Pants ribbon.

Someone left a comment for me praising my choice of having the Simple Stories '2' travel off the side like that. But to be honest - it's because I had already accidently chopped the 2 in half like this from a previous project. Another bonus of the game hey? Happy designer discoveries :-)

This was such a worthwhile exercise. If you didn't join in the JBS game, why not give this a go now?

You're Beautiful

I told you recently how I had the revelation that to increase my card stash I should just make one with the scraps of the layout I've just finished making. Takes all the hard work out of making paper and embellishment choices from scratch. I've still been pretty slack in that area, but here's a card I made out of the remains of this layout I shared here.

I'm still in love with those Sassafras papers so lucky for me I've got quite the hoard to get through. But I think it's the fuzzy cloud from ScrAp This! that was the perfect finishing touch :-)

This card barely made it to my pile though..... I've already sent it off to a dear friend!

Calvinball points = 31

Baby's Got Blue Eyes

Another share from my scrappy closets today...... this one was made a couple of months back when the Hambly call was on. 'Bout time it made it to the light of day I thought ;-)

Some of my favourite techniques can be found here. A combination of handwriting, Silhouette-cut and traditional alpha stickers for my title. Lots of messy stitching, and splashes of paint and mist. And a must for me... some meaningful journaling.

I almost got too truthful and vulnerable here in fact. It talks about how Moodles is lucky she still has these bright big blue eyes, because at least it gives strangers something to compliment her on after they've finished heaping praise on her sister for her beautiful curly hair.

Because I sometimes just glance this moment of disappointment on people's face when they say "oh, she's got such STRAIGHT hair" as though it's almost an insult! I certainly don't want her to feel like she's less special than her sister, or that she's not as attractive because we know that'll never be the case.

In fact, it annoys me that there has to be a comparison at all. Both of my girls are unique in their appearance and their personality. And they're both beautiful beyond measure.