Dotty Divas Ad Challenge #6

Dotty Divas have launched their first Ad Challenge for the year, and it's an awesome one! Create anything you like, can be a card, altered canvas, a mini book, a layout, anything goes, but the only thing you must do is use the AD above for inspiration.

You've got until the 5th of February to email your entries to Katy (Top Diva!) at scrapmad@hotmail.co.uk. International scrappers are all welcome.

The reason for the short turn around is because we are going fortnightly, yep that's 2 challenges a month, how cool is that? The next challenge will be up on the 1st of the month and the second challenge with go up on the 15th.

This month we are being sponsored by the one and only Cosmo Cricket. The winning entry will receive the amazing Early Bird Kit, pictured below. A few posts ago I said that Crate Paper and Sassafras Lass were 2 out of my top 3 manufacturers of the moment. Well Cosmo Cricket is the other one. I absolutely love their stuff. I'm currently playing with Earth Love and Nutmeg, and drooling over the reveals of their new lines. But you certainly can't go past Early Bird without stopping. Stunning!



All of the Design Team have taken the Ad inspiration and created a wonderful array of layouts, cards and even wearable art. Go over and have a look, you won't be disappointed. Here's what I have created.



I used My Mind's Eye paper for the background, and a variety of alphas from Jenni Bowlin, American Craft Thickers and Adornit. The butterflies were created using my Cuttlebug and some new dies/embossing folders I got for Christmas. I then sewed them on so that I could still get some dimension from them. Like they're actually in flight.



Let's see what you can create using that spectacular ad for inspiration. Use the colours, use the butterflies, use a black and white photo? The possibilities are only limited by your imagination! Leave me a note and let me know if you're going to give it a go, I'd love to see what you come up with.

Lucky

There's 2 reasons why I'm calling this post 'Lucky'.

One is this layout I did yesterday



The journaling reads "We're so lucky that when Bethany first met Moriah she said "she's so cute". We're so lucky that all Bethany wants to do with Moriah is pat her and stroke her and check her all over. And she regularly says "I love my new baby sister". We're so lucky to have not one, but two beautiful girls."

If you follow my blog you may notice a few familiarities on this layout. Like the purple felt bunting on the border. They were the offcuts of making the felt bunting from the last layout. And the purple deer has been sitting on my desk ever since I made that single card from a few posts ago. And the doves, well they just happened to be pretty stickers that were left on my daughters scrap table (yes, the 'borrowing' goes both ways!)

The second reason I'm feeling lucky is because I've won two prizes on different blogs in the last few days. Both based completely on chance, no skill involved! So, lucky me!

Work Complete

It's taken me a couple of days to complete the two projects I started before the weekend. Now here's the full reveal.

Firstly, this blue bucket thingy. I think I'll be storing my cotton and embroidery thread in this.







Origami flower, die-cut leaves. Eh.

And then there's this.



As previously mentioned, I want to do more scrapbook pages that are created rather than assembled if that makes any sense? I like to handmake elements and backgrounds, rather than always just cutting and pasting paper. And trust me, this one had quite a few processes involved in it.

Firstly, that background. It's calico, then tissue paper, then glue, then paint, then stencilling and masking and other details. I based it on a video tutorial that was posted recently on the Shimmerz blog for making 'fabric paper'. Then I added my own twist. Fun, fun, fun.

Then there's the felt bunting. After a few little mishaps and practice goes on how I would attach this to my page it finally came together. I mean, should I sew the bunting on it's own and then just glue it to the page, or do I sew it on directly? And as I wanted a double bunting effect (notice each little triangle is actually 2 little triangles?) this added a degree of difficulty!



And because it had a bit of a party theme, I've added these letter stickers randomly to resemble confetti, and used glitter (something I rarely do.)

I'm sure I'll be making more of these types of backgrounds in the future. Let me know if you're interested in perhaps having a bit of a tutorial on this and I'll be happy to accommodate.

Winter Canvas

One hot summer's day I made a Winter canvas. Why you might ask? For 3 very good reasons.
1. For my second appearance as a Guest Designer for Fussy and Fancy Friday Challenges.
2. I wanted to work with some canvas as I haven't done a lot of that. And
3. Perhaps making cold and wintery art will help me stay a little cooler in this heatwave we're having. (Wishful thinking?)






Perhaps you would like to peek into my process?

Step 1: Collect all ingredients for the background



You need your canvas (I used an 8x10" size).
Paintbrush and Gel Medium.
And paper of course.

This method is great for using up a lot of scraps as you can see from my picture. You could use a variety of different colours, but for this I wanted a monochrome look so I chose all my papers from the same colour spectrum. I did however, try and pick papers with a variety of patterns on them.
Ok, now rip up all your paper into pieces. There's no method or rule to this, just start ripping. In fact, you probably don't want all your pieces to be the same size and shape, it's better to be a bit haphazard.
You want to rip up lots of your paper now at the start. I run out of pieces about 2/3 of the way though and needed to rip some more, but my hands were all sticky from the gel medium. So instead of getting up and washing them, I just asked my husband to do it for me. Now he's proud to be part of the art too!

2. Start Sticking Them Down!



Again, there's no particular method to this. Just pick a piece of paper from your pile and glue it to your canvas using the Gel Medium. I'm sure you could use PVA glue, or Mod Podge or something similar for this. I happen to like Gel Medium. Perhaps if I were truly arty I might even know of a reason why you should be using one of them rather than another. But I don't. So just use what you have I say!

It's good to make sure the entire back of each piece of paper is covered in your adhesive otherwise the corners might lift off. I also put a coat on over the top to make sure this doesn't happen.

Keep going until you're finished and there are no white spaces left.



My canvas had edges that I made sure I covered completely too. Otherwise it might look a bit funny from the side!
Now let all this dry properly.

3. Paint

To make the background a bit more uniform and blended I covered the entire thing with a coat of watered-down white acrylic paint. You could also use watered-down gesso, but sometimes I find this doesn't mix up very nicely. Again, this might be a question for the real artists out there. I think if you wanted to write or stamp or draw or any other kind of detailed work on it later on then you should go with the gesso as it's a primer rather than a paint.

Anyway, water down your chosen medium fairly well say about 50:50 because if it's too sheer you can always go over it with more coats, but if it's too opaque you won't be able to see the colours coming through.



So mine looked like this after about 3 coats of the paint.

4. Details

Next I wanted an icicle effect. I mixed together some cream and silver acrylic paint and dripped and dribbled it from the top of my canvas until I was happy.



Let this dry completely. I get impatient at things like this and want to hurry up and get on with the exciting bits like all the toppings. I guess that was the one good thing about making this in the heat - it speeds the drying up a bit.

5. Embellish

Now you can go to town putting on whatever you want on top. I've used some digital elements from CK Muckosky's Peace on Earth collection which I bought on sale at Little Dreamer Designs. I printed them off and cut them out (a bit of a fiddly task with all those snowflakes! But totally worth it).



Decide on placement and attach. I glued them all down with Gel Medium too.
Then add everything else!



I've used alphas by Arctic Frog (fitting, yes?), sequins with seed beads glued on top, a chipboard bird by Collections Elements which I painted white, then coated with glitter and inked around the edges with silver. I used another bead for it's eye, and simply hand drew the music notes.



I've used a Bible verse for the journaling, printed off and cut into strips. It reads "Praise the Lord O Jerusalem! Praise your God O Zion! He gives snow like wool, He scatters the frost like ashes. He casts forth His ice as fragments. Who can stand before His cold? He sends forth His word and melts them. He causes His wind to blow and the waters to flow" in Psalm 147:12-18

I'm contemplating doing a series of these canvases, one for each season. What do you think?

Work in Progress

This is what I've been working on today.



And this....



Both unfinished. And going away for the weekend. It frustrates me leaving projects undone. But it does have it's advantages sometimes. Like I get more time to think of different ways they might be finished, or extra details to add, and it usually works out all the better for it.

Oh the Choices....

Does anyone else dream scrapbooks? Does anyone else have that inspired layout idea come to them just as they're drifting off to sleep? When you have to decide whether it's worth getting up and sketching it, or do you just try and remember it again in the morning?

That surely is a sign of the obsessive. Although maybe it's not so bad if I choose to wait until the morning.

The only other problem with this is that usually my ideas in my sleep never quite match up with reality. Like, I'm not quite good enough to work out the right dimensions and measurements. So while my dreamed layout has all this negative space, I find that my photos are actually a lot bigger when I put them on my page. Or my patterned papers are a slightly different colour than I think they are. Anyway, I'm rambling.

So I dreamed this layout the other day, and then tried to put it together. My main problem was that I couldn't decide whether to use my Crate Paper products or my Sassafras Lass products, as these are 2 of my top 3 manufacturers of the moment. (Can anyone guess who my 3rd is?)



In the end the solution was easy ...... just use both!



The journaling reads, "you went through a stage where you insisted on taking photos of us (seems only fair). However, you kept pointing the camera the wrong way."

Your Time Starts.... Now

I taught my first class on the weekend. At least, that's what I would like to think! In actual fact it was really just 2 of my friends who came over so we could put together an album for a close friend who is moving away soon. It was a fun day apart from the oppressive heat. And 6 hours later (!) we had a pretty decent album full of bad photos and great memories. I say bad photos because most of the ones we used were before the age of digital cameras, so it's all red eyes and poor exposure. But it's the memories associated with the photos that make it count.



Here's a bit of a look at what we put together between the 3 of us. I won't tell you which pages I did and which they did because I don't think you would otherwise be able to tell the difference. These girls were naturals!

What's Black & White and Read All Over?

I'm having a bit less time lately to enter challenges, but when I read the current challenge at The Creative Type I was so inspired that I simply had to do something about it! Their challenge is so create something using newspaper. That's it, no other criteria. Can be anything you like. I loved this challenge because I really enjoy incorporating recycled products (or upcycled really) into my projects. After all, isn't scrapping really supposed to be about using 'scraps'? At least, that's what my husband keeps telling me when I suggest that I need to buy more products!

So here's my entry:



Creating the background paper for this out of newspaper was a bit more of a time consuming job than I first planned. It might look at first glance like I've simply slapped some strips of newspaper down, but what I was actually going for was a herringbone appearance. So I only used pieces of newspaper with full text (ie. no pictures or column breaks etc), cut them on the diagonal and then glued them down changing the direction of the text each time.

I've also covered my chipboard alphas with newspaper (a lot quicker job!) before painting and glazing them. I used some home made glimmer mist over home made masks (see, lots of 'scraps' being used!) to complete the background.

I really wanted the embellishments to have a tonne of colour to balance the black and white background so I've painted my "Oodles of Doodles" by Leeann Pearce with bright acrylic paint and glazed them. I applied them with foam dots for extra dimension. And added some felt, stitching it on with bright orange cotton for some extra texture.



Pretty happy really with how this turned out. Oh, and I purposely used a photo of No.1 girl that was oversaturated (I did this in Photoshop) to add an extra punch of colour too.

PS. You can download your own "doodles" by Leeann Pearce from her blog and customise them to suit your own layout. And you'll get a bunch of inspiration for how to use them too. Do it!

Blogspiration

You must go and join in the frivolities of the Scrapbook Nook blog-hop happening now. Lots of inspiration to be had, not to mention great deals and giveaways. Start your adventure here.....

Cards anyone?

I have to admit, I don't like making cards very much anymore. I'm not sure why. When I first started scrapping I actually started off mainly doing cards. My first magazine subscription (ever) was to a card-making magazine. And yet now, I find it really difficult to do them. You would think it would be an obvious transition between layouts and cards. They are very similar in their essence. Can anybody explain this to me?

So sometimes I have to force myself to do these things.



I actually took my inspiration from how I wrapped my Christmas presents. I was meaning to take a photo to show you but didn't get around to it in the craziness of it all.

I thought it was a little bit cute. Not sure of it's purpose. I guess a "together" card could be for Valentines, or a wedding, or an anniversary. Hhhmmmm......

A little bit of reflection

Having just put a bunch of my 2009 layouts and projects in a Flickr gallery (see it in my sidebar there?) made me contemplate my scrapbooking journey over the last year. Well, for a start it's really only been about 3 months since I started having the time and mindset to really pursue my scrapbooking. I started my maternity leave in October and suddenly had the time to read blogs, and enter challenges, and just create things for the fun of it. I was quickly inspired to start my own blog in November, and got accepted to my first Design Team in December. What a quick and amazing journey it has been! And I hope it's only the beginning.

So just a quick share today of my favourite layout for 2009.



I love this one for the shear process of creating it. It allowed me to get out lots of different mediums and play around with no rules! It's got layers of texture paste, paint, spray ink, oil pastels, water colours, masking tape and book pages. It's topped off with rub-ons, felt, wire, ribbons, beads, chipboard and of course a photo and title!

I plan on doing more of this!!

Tutorial - Gel Transfers

Back on my layout a few posts ago "Watch Me Grow" I stated that I did a gel transfer in the background and I was asked (by the amazing Kathy Link no less) how I did it.

This is a technique loved by collage artists, and from whom I've learnt it from. I hope this tutorial explains it easily for everyone else. The idea is to transfer one paper image onto another one whilst making it somewhat translucent so it blends better into the background, rather than just pasting a cut out image onto your page.

Step 1. Collect all necessary ingredients.



Your 2 main ingredients are of course, the base cardstock (or art journal, or mixed media piece, basically whatever you want to transfer onto) and the image you want to transfer. Keep in mind that the image you transfer will end up reversed, so don't use anything with words (unless you don't think it matters, like I did with this piece of music).

You also need gel medium, a paint brush, a brayer (I use an old credit card) and water to spray (I use an empty kid's hair de-tangler bottle!)

2. Apply your gel medium



Paint your gel medium onto your base cardstock making sure you put on a reasonably thick layer, a bit like spreading your butter onto toast (unless you're on a diet!). Spread the gel medium further than just the area of your transferred image because it will also act to waterproof the card which will become important later.

3. Place the image on your card



This is important - place the image you want to transfer FACE DOWN onto the gel medium layer. It's hard to tell in my picture because both sides of my music paper have music on it, but the side that I want to be able to see later on is stuck onto the gel medium.

4. Brayer



Use your brayer (or credit card) to firmly smooth down the image and really make it stick into the gel medium. Try not to drag the gel medium from the background card on top of the image you are trying to transfer as this will make it harder, if not impossible, to remove the excess paper later on.

5. Let it dry.

Make sure you let this dry properly. No cheating and trying to rush the process. Leave it alone!

6. Spraying and Rubbing



Now the fun begins! Spray your image with water - get it reasonably wet but not saturated. You can always spray more water as you go. Let it soak in for a few seconds, then start rubbing away at the paper with your fingers. You'll soon start to see the 'crumbs' of paper coming away leaving the image behind.



Keep rubbing, rubbing, rubbing until you've removed enough paper to make you happy. Remember, we're not after a PERFECT transferred image, the point is to make it look a little shabby and worn so it doesn't matter if parts of your image come away as well. But the more paper you rub away the more translucent the end result will be and the more 'blended in' it will look.

7. The End Result



You can see in my photo that parts of my transferred image have come away as well, and they're actually in the form of my original brush-strokes of gel medium which means I didn't put a thick enough layer on to begin with. But never mind, it's all in the process of learning right?

8. Drying Time Again

This is equally important drying time as the first time so don't start making your layout yet. Let it dry properly because you'll likely notice that as it dries the image starts to become more opaque again, and you'll probably want to go back with the water and rub away at those areas some more.

9. Now create!



I sprayed my image with some glimmer mist and then created my layout with Crate Paper embellishments and Arctic Frog alphas.



What I've learnt so far from my attempts at Gel Transfers........

- If you use a lighter image on a darker cardstock you'll get a lot more of an obvious opaque outline. One way to conquer this is to then go over it all with some spray ink or paints as another layer. Alternatively, try and match the colour of the cardstock and the background of your transferred image a bit closer.

- If you keep on rubbing too much you'll likely rub away some skin off your fingers too! Typing this long blog post hurts a little!!

Somthing New

Now I wanted to share my latest 2 layouts. Both made with Keandra's amazing kits.

This first one is actually my Guest DT submission over at Fussy and Fancy Friday Challenges. I was lucky enough to score myself this guest spot designing for their new blog. It's up and running with challenges every other Friday. The very first challenge is to create something (any kind of paper craft) be it a layout, or card, or ATC, or OTP etc with the theme 'new'. You can interpret this any way you like. And to fit with the colour scheme of their blog they have an optional criteria of using black and hot pink. Unfortunately, I had already created my layout before they added the colour criteria, otherwise I would have done that. Interpreting the theme 'new' was easy for me, and I obviously scrapped about our new baby.



This was made with the Kreatorville November kit. See it uses both her hand made title and embellishment on the one page. I know, I know, using all the best bits in one layout... but this year I'm trying to use my stash rather than thinking I'll save it for something 'special' because I realise that theoretically I'm creating something special every time!



And this one I whipped up last night with the Kreatorville December kit. Once again, I used all 3 of the lovely Prima flowers I got in the kit on the one layout. Usually I would have used them all separately. I've sprayed them with some Iridescent Gold glimmer mist to give them even more of a Christmassy feel. And I love the vintage colours in the Cosmo Cricket's Golly by Jolly collection that I've used in this. I altered my photo in Photoshop to match the colours better. The journaling describes how No.2 girl played baby Jesus in the church play last week. She was head-hunted at 4 weeks old!!

Somthing Old

I've noticed some other very clever bloggers out there who have summed up their scrapping year by posting about their favourite layouts for 2009. But when I thought about doing that I realised that since I've only really been churning out the layouts in the last couple of months (which has coincided with about how long this blog has been going for) I'm pretty sure I've posted all my favourites and you will have seen them all.

So instead, here's a few older layouts that I haven't yet posted (but which aren't necessarily my favourites).



This one is when my No. 1 girl turned 3 and insisted on feeding everyone on the table her cake.



This is a very old photo of riding on the carousel at Melbourne Zoo. That's my husband in the foreground and my brother on the left. You can just see my head poking up over the horse as I'm desperately making sure No. 1 doesn't fall off!



This is the one and only layout I've scrapped of our wedding (so far) despite being about to celebrate our 7th anniversary on the 4th of this month. That's our real (photocopy) of our wedding certificate in the background!



No. 1 girl just loves to paint and 'scrap' whenever I do. She's even got her own scrap table, complete with plastic on the floor underneath it, and must wear her giant art-smock whenever she's creating. This was learnt the hard way.



A happy family snap (before No. 2 girl came along).

There's actually plenty of other old layouts to show you but they may just have to wait another day.

Happy New Year

I'm just loving Sassafras Lass at the moment and have recently bought a bunch of their stuff. Here's the fist layout I did with it.



And just because it's the New Year and I'm feeling generous (not really, it's more likely it's because I'm excited about this new project I just finished and can't wait to share it properly with you!) here's a couple of sneak peaks......





See those lovely swirls with their gorgeous colours? They're from a digital collection by CK Muckosky that I just printed off and cut out. Love all her stuff too! You too can buy her amazing collections here at Little Dreamer Designs.