February Giveaway

This month's giveaway has a mixed-media theme to it. I've put together a pile of new and barely-used products which would be ideal for use in dimensional and textural projects, although most of them can be used in your traditional scrapbooking too.

 Here's the complete package of what you could win. Let me break it down for you.......

1. A packet of Fusible Film in Opal Sparkle. I've only used a tiny bit of this so there's miles left! If you're unsure about what this incredible material is I suggest you check it out on You Tube.
2. A packet of 3 stencil brushes. I've used one once, but it's been cleaned. The others are brand new.
3. An unopened flexible push-mold with a variety of baby-themed molds.
4. Buzz and Bloom chipboard
5. Vintage buttons

6. A packet of Angelina Fibre in Copper Flash. Again, I've only used this once or twice and as you can see, there's lots left.
7. A packet of clear photo-corners. It started off with 250, and I don't know how many I've used. Maybe half?
8. 3 hand-made owl buttons
9. Various lengths of lace, paper lace, tulle and mesh
10. Two packets of guaze

11. A packet of clear crystal stickers. One missing
12. A variety of Tattered Angels Glimmer chips
13. Approximately 10 paper doilies in two sizes
14. 5 mini-pegs
15. Some travel-themed rubons
16. Various lengths of sequin-waste in three colours
17. Two fabric butterflies

I think that's about it! But there'll probably be a few extras too I imagine :-)

By now you know the drill to get your hands on this loot...........

• Leave me a comment for one chance to win (can you make it something interesting?! Tell me a funny story, a joke, anything! I'm on night-duty for 7 nights in a row, and need something to keep me entertained in the slow hours!!)
• Leave me a second comment if you post about this giveaway on your blog
• Leave me a third comment if you are a follower

Internationals welcome.
I'll draw a random winner next week when I'm back awake during daylight hours :-)

Happy belated Valentine's Day

Only slightly late!

Remember this project I showed you recently where I had the two doves punched out of the base cardstock? Now you know what they were for! They were just perfect for carrying my banner of love :-)
 

And can you believe how versatile these lovely My Mind's Eye papers are? They're all from the Alphabet Soup Girl collection which of course make beautiful little girl pages. But I still can't resist the red/pink/aqua (ish) colour scheme and think it works wonderfully as a romantic touch too.

Horrible shiny photo I know, but I just wanted to demonstrate the glitter and shine I've added to the pink woodgrain paper by spraying it with Silver Plated Maya Mist. It's subtle most of the time, but in the right light really packs a punch in terms of shimmer. Loove it!

I used this card sketch on the My Mind's Eye blog for my inspiration. But if you know me by now you know my finished product seems to have evolved someone from the original sketch :-)

Curls? Just a hint

If you've followed my blog for any length of time to see numerous photos of my Munchy you will have noticed her great big mop of curly hair. Because of that distinguishable characteristic we quite commonly get asked if our little Moodles follows in her footsteps. There are a lot of questions of "does she have curls like her sister?"

Now I know she's only 15months old and certainly Munchy didn't have curls at that age like she does now, but I have a feeling that Moodles is going to luck-out a bit in that department. She has "just a hint" of curls in the back, but the front is quite quite straight :-)

The February sketch at Handmade by Suzanne (which I used for this layout, can you tell?) has been created by our very own talented DT member Chloe Nielsen. It has a great die-cut paper indicated behind the photos, as well as my favourite embellishment (still!).... bunting.

Of course, the great thing about sketches is that you don't have to follow them to the letter. In fact, they're just supposed to inspire your own creative expression as you interpret them to fit your own needs. Quite often my pages barely resemble the sketch I began with :-)
 

As was the case here!
I had three photos that I wanted to fit into this page, and although the sketch only indicated two photos, I was determined to make it work anyway :-) And because of that I had to shuffle my title and embellishments around slightly too.

I'm playing with the fabulous Paper Crush collection by Sassafras this month, and I cannot stop raving about how awesome it is! This page came together sooo quickly. In fact, it's one of the fastest pages I've made in the longest time - I reckon it was under 30 minutes (which trust me, is quite fast in my book!!) It helps that all of the papers and embellishments are already so detailed and textured and lovely that I merely have to cut and paste and a beautiful page is born :-)

If you want to play along with the February sketch challenge at HBS, follow this link to find out all the details. You don't have to create with products that Suzanne carries, and the winner is determined by chance so you have nothing to lose by entering, and a very big voucher to gain if you're lucky!

PS. If you're planning on taking part in the sketch challenge then I strongly recommend you head over to Chloe's blog also to find out how you can double your chances of winning a prize!

Fusing Plastic Bags

I really like the concept of using recycled, or upcycled materials in my scrapping. The Man has on occasion 'complained' about the amount of money/product I buy (in actual fact, he's really quite supportive and understanding) and has stated "isn't scrapbooking supposed to be about using scraps?"

So a quick tutorial today on how I made this flower out of upcycled plastic bags.

It's a simple method of cutting multiple squares of plastic bag roughly the same size. Here I've used four layers of white plastic bags. It's sandwiched between two layers of baking paper (or other non-stick material) - one on the bottom and one on the top.

With your iron on a low-medium dry setting (no steam) give it all an even and thorough ironing. Keep checking your plastic layers regularly to ensure they're fusing together, but not melting! They'll come out a bit wrinkly at the end, but this just adds to the texture.

Now I've got a material that easily went through my trimmer, and can probably be punched with simple shapes too (maybe? I tried with a detailed punch and it didn't work. I didn't get any more adventurous than that!). Of course, it's easily cut with scissors, and you can now make it into anything you like.

Cut a long thin strip and fringe one edge of it. Then run a strip of glue along the un-cut edge.

 And roll, roll, roll!

This is the bottom of the flower. How easy was that?! Flip it over, squish out the petals a bit, even add a brad or button if you like.

This is what happens if your iron is too hot, or you iron it for too long. You'll get little melted holes all through it. Then again, maybe that's not a bad thing for some purposes?

So that's the secret behind my upcycled fused plastic bag flower.

The butterflies are also made of fused plastic bags, but I used clear ones this time. The end result is much like vellum really. Transparent but strong. And I can foresee lots more uses for this material.
And it also makes me think of all the different coloured plastic bags I've got in my cupboard ready to be packed off to the recycling plant. The possibilities are endless :-)

PS. You can see the whole layout here.

Diamonds in her pocket

Hhhmmmm, it's off-kilter and I'm in two minds about that.
One - It's another whimsical touch to a quite whimsical layout...... but
Two - despite this, I'm a bit of a straight lines kind of gal.
What do you think?

I followed this sketch from the My Mind's Eye blog. I don't do a lot of circles in my layouts, mainly because I don't feel confident to make them work. So I had to come up with something a bit more me.

Everything on this layout, apart from the white cardstock in My Mind's Eye. Apart from the alphas too. It's making something like this which causes me to realise I don't seem to have any MME alphas. I know they make them. How come I don't have any?! It's on my shopping list now :-) In the meantime I used AC Thickers and Sassafras glitter alphas.

I did get to use up lots of my 'scraps' of MME papers though which always makes me feel like I'm achieving something. It's a mixture of So Sophie, Lost and Found and Alphabet Soup. But they work so nicely together no?

The two little doves punched in the corner came about as a mistake too. I punched them out of a new sheet of cardstock to use in another project (which I'll show you soon) and then realised I actually did it quite neatly and I might as well use the card just like it is. Adds an interesting touch I think.

And as for the masked/circle/cloud/journalling thingy...... I felt quite happy with how that turned out. Looked even better before I added lots of stuff to cover it up. I showed it to The Man who gave very encouraging words like 'did you do that from scratch?' and 'you should do a tutorial of that for your blog' and I thought to myself 'maybe I could'.

Then I sat down to read my copy of last months Scrapbooking Memories (Australian magazine) today and saw they had a very similar tutorial in that. Slightly different - hers was just monotone and she used Glimmermist instead of ink like I used, (in fact, it was quite like the technique I used for this layout) but still.......

So I would appreciate your thoughts on this matter. If you would still be interested in finding out how I did it let me know, but if you're lucky enough to own a copy of Scrapbooking Memories Vol 13 No 2 then you can look it up on page 24.

Look out!

She's learning to ride a real bike!

Her great grand-parents gave her a bike for her birthday back in September. At the time we didn't have enough room in the car to take it back home with us (they live 2 hours away) so we left it there until Christmas.

Complete with the bike helmet she was then given for Christmas, she had the best time learning to ride it up and down their front garden path.

And like all learners, one of the hardest lessons is trying to keep looking ahead to see where you're going when fighting the temptation to keep looking at your feet :-)

Did I mention in the last post how much I am absolutely LOVING the Paper Crush collection by Sassafras? I don't think I would have been brave enough on my own to combine blue and red and orange and pink, but the colours were just perfect for this photo, and so there's another perfect memory captured in paper form :-)

Just the Way You Are

I keep getting that catchy Bruno Mars song stuck in my head.
So what else was I to do but scrap it!

I changed it up just slightly to fit better with my page.
The line of the song goes "Her eyes, her eyes, make the stars look like they're not shining" so I just changed it to 'sun' instead given I had this favourite photo of mine with The Man and Moodles with this lovely sunflare effect.

Oh my goodness am I loving my Silhouette machine. Yes I am!!
For the title I didn't have to buy anything or download anything - it cuts out any font I've already got on my computer. How excellent!!

And do you know what else I love?
The Paper Crush collection by Sassafras! I know it'll be just perfect for all my Valentine's Day needs, but it's so easy to use for lots of other general lovely-type layouts too!

Apart from the base paper (which is by Basic Grey), and the transparent Hambly flowers (below) pretty much everything else on this page is by Sassafras.

oh yeah, and the bling is from Handmade by Suzanne - I've used 'Sunflower' 'Blush' and 'Persimmon'. Next time you put in an order there you really should add a couple of packets of these into your shopping basket. It'll set you back only a couple of dollars (literally!!) and they're a fantastic little detail which I add to nearly all my pages these days.

I am loving this page right now. It's going into my favourites :-)
More Paper Crush projects coming your way soon!!

Everything and the Girl

Getting some more challenges out of my system. And scrapping some photos that have been in my pile for a  while now.

The February 1,2,3 Challenge is...
the colour cream
the word "about"
and the technique of upcycling which means "the practice of taking something that is disposable and transforming it into something of greater use and value"

Talk about a challenging challenge :-) The kind I like best!

So I pulled out a bunch of cream embellishments I had and only a few papers (I didn't really have many of those) but I figured I could always paint them cream. And went to to town, trying to incorporate as much texture as I possible could, because in my mind that's how you tackle a monochromatic layout. If you can't create interest with colour then you need to create interest with dimension :-)

I used a few vintage items on this layout like the music paper, lace trims, old buttons etc, but I'm not sure they strictly fulfil the criteria of upcycling. For that I used a technique of 'plastic fusion' to create the sheer butterflies you see above, and the white frilly flower in the embellishment cluster out of old plastic bags.

But I'll tell you all about that next time........!!!!

My Funny Valentine

The new poster is up for your inspiration at From Screen 2 Scrap and I have to say this has got to be one of my favourite posters in quite a while. There were so many possibilities for me, so many different ways I could have used it and turned it into my own layout. In the end I did this......

 

I bet you're hanging out to see what the poster is hey?

See what I mean?
And the extra criteria is so easy to fulfil this month too.
If you use a black background you'll earn one bonus point.
If you use the word 'Valentine' on your layout you'll earn two bonus points.
And if you use a large heart shape you'll earn three bonus points.

Yes I titled my layout "My Funny Valentine" even though it's about my daughter! Isn't Valentine's Day simply about celebrating those you love? Plus, I didn't have any appropriate photos of my husband :-)

And she certainly is funny. As you can read in the journaling below, she's taken to making up her own funny sayings and exclamations. Her favourite of the moment is "Great Gilly-Gumnuts!!" although I'm not sure that she didn't get this off Blinky Bill? Maybe one of the other mother's can tell me. But she's got lots more too.

"Gee Willy Wonkers"
"Geez and Whiskers" (instead of 'Cheese and Whiskers' that Rat in the Hat says)
"Jumping Jillikers" I don't even know what that means!

Hope you'll come and play along - there's plenty of great prizes up for grabs.
If you do join in, and it's your first time, please tell Shazza I sent you - I'll earn Brownie Points :-)

May You Stay

Paper: Jenni Bowlin Studios, Basic Grey Curio, Cosmo Cricket Togetherness, Sassafras Indie Girl.

Alphas: Cosmo Cricket. Embellishments: Sassafras Indie Girl banner stickers, Scenic Route chipboard, 

clear envelope, Jenni Bowlin journaling stickers, buttons, pearls. 

Other: Mister Huey 'Calico White', Maya Mist 'silver plated'

The song "Forever Young" by Bob Dylan has some really lovely lyrics don't you think?
Don't worry, I didn't really know them before now either. But they're the challenge prompt at Get Picky this month so they were all written out for me to be inspired by.

But instead of just taking one line of the song, or the title (which would have been easy too) I just decided the whole song would make beautiful journaling so copied it en masse onto my layout! The lyrics could easily have been written by a mum to her young child and talk about all her hopes and prayers for her future. At least that's how I've interpreted them for my layout :-) 

I titled my layout "Listen to my Heart", a bit like the Roxette song "Listen to your Heart" since I was in the zone of interpreting songs for my page. It fit perfectly because this really is my heart for my Little Moodles (and plus, it also fit the criteria for the challenge at Bird is the Word!!!)

I used my favourite white and silver mists to spray some subtle stars in the background. They really are a lot more subtle than this to look at straight-on, but I was trying to capture the shimmer for you here :-) This was in response to my favourite line in the song which says "May you build a ladder to the stars And climb on every rung"