Just a quick post to share some great news with everyone. You may remember that a few weeks ago I was working on some secret projects for Canadian Craft company ‘Bisous’. Well, Bisous have now published my projects which means that over the course of the next week, I will be posting pics of all my Bisous Projects…SO watch this space! :0)
Great News
July 3rd, 2009‘Kiss Kiss’ – A Summery, Fun Scrapbook Layout
June 28th, 2009
“Blow a kiss for Uncle Craig” we said – and she did. She blew several in fact, pausing at the correct moments so I could take photos. My niece Abbi is such a poser (I hope it stays that way forever).
This scrapbook page was inspired by a layout I saw published in one of the recent issues of The Scrapbook Magazine. The layout was by Kathleen Glossop and she had used three photos at the bottom right corner of the page, and placed the title to the left, and I thought it looked great so gave it a go myself. In my ‘ready to scrap’ box, I had already printed out these photos of Abbi blowing kisses so they were the perfect choice for this particular design.
Given the fact that the sun has been shining down upon us lately, which I am entirely grateful for, I was in a mood for bright, playful, summer colours. I picked blue for the background, like a clear sky on a summers day, and chose pink, green and orange as my core colours to embellish.
Because the bottom right of the layout has a lot of photos and embellishments, I decided to add these in layers as this gave the layout more depth and interest. Using sraps of pattern paper, I cut shapes and frames to lay under the photos to act as a way to both anchor the pictures to the page, and link them to one another. This is a great way to avoid that abstract ‘floating on the page’ look. Plus, the faux stitched frame around the whole page further anchors the whole design together, rather than the top left and bottom right areas looking disjointed. or at least that was the general idea anyway!
Mainly because I was having so much fun with my scallop edge punch, I also decided to mirror the scalloped edging along the main green coloured panel, by using strips of coloured paper at the top left corner, where I created a cluster of embellishments. This cluster also acts as a counter balance to the heavily embellished opposite corner.
Frugal Finds
Did you notice the cute and colourful heart, flower and star buttons? These I picked up at ‘The Early Learning Centre’ last weekend, a whole box for 99p. BARGAIN!! I can imagine that these are going to be used in a lot of my projects. So remember to keep your eyes peeled even when you aren’t in craft stores, as you never know what yo might be able to find.
Also the little pink fabric flowers with gems on them actually came from a batch of fabric which my Granny donated to me many many years ago. The fabric was a salmon colour and in all honesty looked simply horrendous. I’m so glad I decided to cut out the flowers as I have used them on so many projects.
Top Tip
And now a tip for you. You all know I love chipboard, and I have lots of different packets, tins and boxes full of both plain and patterned types. But I often find that when I buy a pack, I may like most of the contents, but there are always some stuff that I can never imagine ever using. The pink arrow which I have mounted my title upon, for example – was a glossy silver arrow with glitter. I loved the shape, but the colours didn’t match and weren’t really my style. So my tip is this, simply cover it in paper that does match! The key is to look beyond the obvious uses for your products and tools, and you will discover that you can make endless variations even with limited supplies.
So there you have it, another layout from me, I hope you like it and don’t forget to leave me a comment here. Kathleen, if you see this, thanks for the inspiration and if you have your page online somewhere, let me know and I will link to it so everyone can see where I found my inspiration.
Cute Flower Hair Accessory -Handmade of course!
June 26th, 2009
I was just messing one day and I was running my hands through my tub of flower embellishments, smiling at the pretty colours and designs. I had an idea!
Ten minutes later, I had a pretty little flower hair barrette as a fashion accessory fit for even the classiest fashionista!
All you need is the following humble list of craft goodies:
- Flower embellishments -preferably fabric ones such as these ones by Do Crafts, as the paper ones will disintegrate especially over here with the wet weather we often get.
- Jewel Brads, from Dovecraft
- Charm Brads, from Dovecraft
- A kirby clip
- A small piece of felt
- Glue gun
Assemble the barrette by pushing the gem brad through the charm and the flower. Fold back the legs of your brad to secure the flower. Cut a small rectangle of felt slightly smaller than the flower, and push between the legs of your kirby clip. All you have to do is stick this to the back of the flower with a hot glue gun, and if you are really clever you will be able to hide the legs of the brad under the felt.
I want to make a selection with as many colours as possible so I can wear these with every possible clothes combo this summer. :0)
A Cute Wall Hanging For Erin.
June 24th, 2009
One of the ladies in my building is about 8 and a half months pregnant and is counting the days until her family is blessed with another little bundle of joy. We’ve been chatting over the last few weeks and she has been telling me about all the exhausting preparations that her and her husband have been putting in place. Their daughter Erin was moving to another bedroom, so that the new arrival could have Erin’s old room, which is already decorated as a nursery. I found her stories hilarious, as she told of how little miss Erin picked out the colour sheme and design features for her new room. She knew exactly what she wanted: lilac and silver, with butterflies. She has been loving the control of picking out wallpaper, window blinds, and even door knobs for the cupboards and drawers in the shape of butterflies. After our brief conversation, I was feeling inspired by Erin’s choice of colour combination, and decided to make a little something for her as a finishing touch to her room.
I made this cute little wall hanging from bits and pieces in my craft room, and when I was done, I realised that you could even use this as a bedroom door name plaque. So let me walk you through how I made this cute little gift.
I wanted the base of the project to be pretty sturdy so I considered using foam board or mount board. Then I stumbled across some Bind It All white book covers in a small 6 x 6 size, and I knew this would be perfect. Next I cut a piece of lilac cardstock from Stampin Up to be 4″ x 4″. The original idea was that when this lilac cardstock was stuck down, the white area around the outside would look almost like a photo frame, but I found the difference between the lilac and the white was too stark. So to add a soft feminine touch, on top of the white chipboard cover, I stuck a piece of pattern paper from the DCWV Floral Prints paper stack, which I had cut to 5.5″ x 5.5″.
Instead of placing the lilac cardstock straight unto the lilac pattern paper, I reached for some white cardstock & my Stampin Up scallop border punch, as I knew this would both carry the soft feminine theme, and also create a frame of contrasting colour around the lilac monotone cardstock. Before matting all the layers together completely, I drew on some fake stitching around the edges of the lilac cardstock using a paper piercer, a ruler and a white gel pen. Cute!
Next I hunted out all my chipboard letters and found some which would fit nicely into the lilac area, with just a little overhang for artistic effect. I went for these ones from Maya Road and painted them quickly with some white gesso. I stuck these to a piece of scratch paper using a temporary adhesive tape runner, and stamped some cute flowers and bugs on them using some Stampin Up stamps and some Studio g clear stamps along with ‘Wisteria’ fluid chalk ink from Colorbox. I love this fluid chalk ink, and I am often overcome by the urge to by more and more of them. I stuck the chipboard letters to the project using foam dots, for added dimension.
For a finishing touch I definitely needed some butterflies, so I embossed these great butterfly stamps from the Garden Whimsy collection from Stampin Up. All that remained was to add a few gems, a little touch of ‘crystal’ stickles glitter glue, and two eyelets using my crop-o-dile. The cord which I have used is actually some which was left over from a few Christmases ago, and I believe we got a roll for less that £1 at tescos, and it looks great on craft projects such as this.
I hope Erin likes it.
“Nothing But Me” Layout & 3 Techniques To Share
June 20th, 2009
The most frustrating thing about taking it upon myself to take photos everywhere I go, is that I never seem to have any photos of me – i’m always on the wrong side of the camera! But when I looked through some photos which were taken at a friend’s BBQ a few weeks back, I was delighted to find a few of me. This one in particular was a little over exposed, but I played around in photoshop for a bit, and this was the result. I loved it, and finding a photo of yourself that you really like is such a rare occasion that I decided that it needed to be scrapbooked. After all, I hardly ever scrapbook about me.
It’s a little hard to see but I made the photo black and white except for the little pink flower barrette in my hair, so I thought that I would try to experiment with a black background with pinks and other bright, summery colours. So I pulled out a few scraps from my scrap stash in coordinating colours, and in all honesty I just had a great time playing, placing embellishments here and there, and sticking them down in layers to create interest and dimension.
Three techniques
Today I want to draw attention to three things in this layout in particular, and share these three techniques so you be inspired to use them on your craft projects too.
1. Pinwheel Paradise!
Do you remember those little windmills on a stick which would twirl manically in the wind, making a whoosh of colour as it spun round? I do, and I loved them, but I forgot how easy they were to make. I was feeling particularly inspired to make a little pin wheel and put it on this layout, as I had been reading a post on the Studio Calico blog about this fun and easy technique. It shows a step by step instructions on how you can make these little beauties which can be used as embellishments like I have done here, or you could make larger ones and use a brad to attach it to a straw or a stick for your kids to play with. Check out the instructions here.
2. Paint it the colour you need
The second thing I want to share with you is the letters I have used to make the word ‘me’. I must have lay down about 5-6 different colours and styles of chipboard letters before I found the perfect ones. Well, they weren’t quite perfect because they weren’t the right colours, reds and pastel pinks which would definitely not have coordinated with the other elements on the page. Determined not to let a little thing like that stand in my way, I considered tracing around the letters unto a suitable piece of pattern paper, when I noticed my Adirondack Paint dabbers sitting on the shelf.
You may remember me posting a blog entry a little while back when I bought them, and luckily for me, one of the colours I bought was a pale blue which was the perfect shade to use with this layout. I used a temporary tape runner to adhere the letters to a piece of scratch paper, and ran the dabber over the top of the letters. I was instantly impressed by the thick coverage and great even finish, and it only took a few minutes to dry – even better! So if you haven’t already got your hands on these Adirondack Paint dabbers, you really should try them out as being able to adapt the colours of your embellishments and papers will give you the freedom to use up old crafting supplies instead of buying new ones. See the difference in the before and after pics below.
Before
After
3. Lollipop flower frenzy
The third thing that I want to share with you today is the little flower at the bottom right of the photo, which I also made from scratch in order to match the colours of my layout. Prima sell sets of very similar and very cute embellishments called lollipop flowers, and these are super easy to make using scraps of paper: Here’s a quick tutorial for you:
How to make your own Prima-style lollipop flower embellishments
1. Roughly cut out 5 circles from scrap paper, each one slightly larger than the other. Don’t worry about making them perfect circles as I find the shabby imperfect look gives a great result
2. Lay onto a craft mat, or scratch paper and spray with water or glimmer mist to dampen the paper. Scrunch each circle in your fist and then gently flatten out again. Curl up some of the edges to give added dimension.
3. Dry with a heat gun or leave overnight to dry naturally.
4. Use your finger to rub gesso or paint unto the edges of each circle, then leave to dry again.
5. Layer all five circles on top of one another and punch a hole in the middle, and insert a brad.
6. If necessary, spray with water again to dampen so that you can mould each layer to create the dimension you want.
So give it a try yourself, and you can even stamp unto the layers as well, which works great if you are using plain paper or cardstock, but please remember to use an ink that wont bleed when in contact with water, such as this Archival Ink from Ranger.
Sorry the post is so long, but I hope you like the layout and please leave me a comment here.
Other Products Used:
Pink Paper – Bisous
Pinwheel & tab – Bisous scraps
Owl & Stars printed Chipboard – Bisous
Black and blue brads – Do Crafts
Striped paper – unknown
Pink frame, pink & white polka dot diecut & photo corner diecut – Bought from Poundland :0)
Polka dot parenthesis chipboard & blue frame chipboard – Bought from Poundland :0)
Ornate Rub on – letraset
Nothing but wording – Dymo
Die Cut letters – Making memories
Flourish – Foam stamp by Do crafts
Number rub ons – ki memories, favourite things collection
xoxo rub on – Fancy pants designs, crush
Flowers rub on – Three bugs in a rug, full bloom
Life is good rub on – Basic grey
Paint dabber – Adirondack, aqua
Bling – Creative Imaginations self adhesive gems
