by Lesley Oman on 10 October, 2012
Ever have a project which has been lurking in your house for years? A forgotten project, once started, never finished? This was one of mine.
When I spent a year in France as part of my Uni degree Craig and I wrote letters to each other every week. I kept these all in a box along with some postcards and brochures etc from Lyon. When we moved into our previous house in 2009 I decided that i was going to make a mini book to hold all these items. I was going to make a video and I designed the whole thing and pre-cut all the papers and everything. Then I hit an issue. The video i was started was rubbish- the lighting was really bad, so much that the colours were not true and that bugged me soooooo badly. We also didn’t have a proper camera mount. Because of these things my inspiration flew out the window and hit itself in the face on the way out. I packed everything away together and then it lay in hibernation.
Fast forward. Geez, has it been three years?!
Then one day for no apparent reason, I did it!
I faced the giant and decided that it was GOING to GET MADE! I didn’t want to do a video any more, that ship had sailed, but it was silly having a half finished project staring at me all this time.
And here it is. And I LOVE IT! I like the design, (i wanted a vintage, timeless yet french inspired romantic feeling), I love the textures, I love the content, i love the story behind the project getting made and i love the fact that it is finished.
My bind it all had its work cut out for it because there were so many things to go in to the book. The final thing doesn’t even close properly but i don’t care. Because its done. and its great.
Do you have any projects which are dwelling on your mind? Go get inspired and face your own giant!
by Lesley Oman on 23 August, 2011
Hi everyone,
This is the last of my layouts about my first month as a mumsy, in case you missed them, you can check out week 1, week 2 and week 3 here.
Its so weird looking back at these layouts, and its crazy how much I have already forgotten, i am just so glad that i have these little snippets immortalised in these pages.
This is the first page I made, and it’s Craig’s favourite. Once again I took inspiration from the wonderfully talented Nichol Magouirk. Love her style!
I used a technique tuesday stamp to emboss on vellum. I am LOVING this look by the way. It gives such a tactic feel to the page. I used my Stampa-ma-jig to make sure the words were (roughly) lined up. Oh, and i purposely started with Wednesday because my chicken was born on a Wednesday, so the start of this fourth week as a mom began on that day.
See those little tags peeking out? They were little titchy pieces of pattern paper hiding in my scraps box. Now they have a new life on this page. Sometimes with pretty papers i just cant throw them away no matter how small they are…especially that yellow paper which i loved – it is so bright and cheery, and sometimes its just kinda hard to find a nice yellow paper.
Hand written journaling for this one. Well, at least for the journaling which refers to Piper which i have cut intot journaling strips. For the bits of info about me for this week I typed up on the computer – can you see the wee box. I just made the pink border myself in photoshop.
Thanks for joining me as i scrapbooked this memorable journey of my new life as a mother. Its been five months now, and it really is amazing how much you pick up really quickly….
..and how much you just make up as you go along! heehee
by Lesley Oman on 9 June, 2011
Another project that will likely end up in Piper’s room! Soon there won’t be an inch of free wall space!
When I started this project I thought I was making a kinda scrapbook layout… but then it sort of evolved! Does that ever happen to you?
This is a clean and simple project that makes good use of your punches. I took a piece of card and started sticking down punched squares of pattern paper. I’ve used the Quite Contrary paper from My Minds Eye – i love their bright, colourful style – I think it creates a happy mood! I decided to add some variety by dry embossing one square and heat embossing on another, and then I also swapped out some squares for buttons and punched flowers. But the show stopper must be the little cupcake charm!
After I had put everything together on the pink cardstock background, I came across this blank canvas. So i simply attached the card to the canvas using the two brads. Best thing is – If i want to reuse the canvas all i need to do is take out the brads and the front will just pop right off!
Products Used
Quite contrary papers MME
square punch
Flower punches
Circle punch
Buttons
Gluedots
Gems & pearls (meiflower)
Charm from Meiflower
swiss dots embossing folder
cuttlebug
heroarts houndstooth stamp
distress ink embossing ink pad
white embossing powder
glossy accents
Ribbon from meiflower
brads – trimcraft
Stamps – Unity Stamps
Broken china distress ink
by Lesley Oman on 17 May, 2011
Some times the best things come in small packages, and the same is sure true about these flower sequins from Meiflower. One of the items in the goodie bag that you can win in our current competition is these flower sequins. They are tiny and sweet and already my head is packed full of different ways to use them.
Today I want to share how i have used them to accent a design. As they are little flowers, i thought that they would look lovely with a flourish stamp, to create the impression of flowers on a vine. I started to look through my stamp collection but then this cuttlebug embossing folder came to mind -perfect!
First I made my own background paper using distress inks in broken china, faded jeans and chipped sapphire. I love using distress inks to cover a piece of white card as this gives a great multi-tonal effect, rather than using a plain monocolour piece of cardstock.
Instead of using the folder to emboss the card, I used the folder the other way around to deboss the image. OKAY, so the next bit was time consuming…but SO worth it! To create a faux letterpress look, I took a white gel pen and drew along all the debossed image. All that remained was to add a few finishing touches – first I stamped a greeting and mounted onto die cut card and mounted onto the card along with some of this adorable scalloped edge ribbon from Meiflower. All that remained was to add some flower sequins and seed beads to the design, and what a difference that made!
Tiny little embellishments that give a big WOW effect, don’t ya think?
Don’t forget to enter the Meiflower giveaway competition, before you head off!
Products Used
distress ink
kraft cardstock
white cardstock
blending tool
cuttlebug
cuttlebug embossing folder
white gel pen
flower sequins
seed beads
personal impressions clear stamp
Archival ink
Scallop edge ribbon
tacky glue
gluedots continous strip
