Friday 31 May 2013

Tintagel

My photo printer has been out of action so I have been scrapping older photos for the past few weeks. It's back in working order now so I want to finish my 2012 album. In particular I have photos from our holiday in Cornwall to scrap. The Birthday Bash at Sketch-n-Scrap ended today, but some of the challenges are live for a couple more weeks. Lynette posted a double page sketch challenge at A Work in Progress earlier this week and it was perfect for my photos from Tintagel:







I do struggle with double pages sometimes, as I have a tendency to pick my photos and then print them all at the same size. I found that using the sketch meant that I fitted the photos into the prescribed sizes (though I swapped square photos for landscape/portrait photos and used one less on my page). I have a few more doubles to do from Cornwall, so I think I will seek out more sketches for those.

Supplies
Paper - American Crafts Dear Lizzy Neapolitan, K&Co Life's Journey, V&A Linen Paper Pad
Letters - American Crafts Thickers
Embellishments - K&Co Life's Journey
Gems - Making Memories
Ink - Dovecraft

Tools
Woodware Flower Punch

Tuesday 28 May 2013

Growing So Fast

I'm still following along with the Birthday Bash at Sketch-n-Scrap. I had been doing the challenges roughly in order, but as soon as I saw Sunday's I knew exactly what I wanted to do. It was the turn of Kelly at Creating with Paper and More to set the challenge and she chose buttons.

I have a big bag of gorgeous purple buttons that I had been planning to use with three photos of my daughter as a baby. I don't scrap with purple very often and she was wearing a lilac outfit that day. Being three 4x6 landscape photos, I used an oft-repeated layout and stacked them in a column, next to rows of buttons and ribbon. I cut my title on my Big Shot and ran it down the opposite side of the photos.


This turned out to be another monochromatic layout so I am also linking it to Challenge #139 at Scrap Whispers which was to create a monochrome page (or to scrap a photo where we have enhanced the colouring).

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania
Paper - Scraps for Die-Cutting
Buttons - Part of a Prize from Scrap Whispers
Ribbons - from Stash
Thread - DMC

Tools
Big Shot & Provocraft Alphabet Dies

Saturday 25 May 2013

Boy in a Box

I'm carrying on with the Birthday Bash challenges from Sketch-n-Scrap today with a colour challenge from Crystal at Crystal's Garden. She asked us to use at least four colours from the inspiration photo (right), plus grey as a neutral. 

I initially though that I would be confined to plains and subtle single colour patterns, but a good rummage through my scraps box produced a whole assortment of green and blue papers that match the shades in the picture. The colours drew me to photos of my son as a toddler and I picked one of him buried in his toy box.


Supplies
Cardstock - American Crafts
Paper - Provocraft Blue Stripes, Authentique Loyal, Basic Grey Periphery
Letters - American Crafts Thickers
Buttons - Meiflower
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Kreaxions Circle Cutter
Woodware Scalloped Circle Punch
Hobbycraft Star Punch

Friday 24 May 2013

Five Years Older

I'm back with another of the Sketch-n-Scrap Birthday Bash challenges today. This time it's a Recipe Challenge from Monica at Document Moore Memories. She asked us to use multiple pictures, twine or ribbon, brads, gems and multiple alphabet sets. None of this was particularly difficult, so I decided to combine it with this month's scrap map at Creative Craft World.

Our children's passports needed to be renewed  earlier this year and we had extra photos left over; I dug out the spare photos from their last passports and decided to scrap old and new together.

There's no real colour in the photos and I knew I had this green paper with the subtle passport/travel motifs on it. While pulling that out, I found the orange with more passport stamps, and I used the stripes to bring the two colours together. 


The sketch was a starting point this time, rather than sticking to it faithfully, but I think the resemblance is clear. I have all of Monica's recipe ingredients - multiple photos, two alphabets, a length of ribbon held in place with two brads, and three strips of gems.

Supplies
Papers - Sandylion Travel Paper, MME On the Bright Side, Unlabelled Paper & Scraps
Letters - Papermania Alphaminis, October Afternoon Mini Market Stickers
Brads - Papermania
Gems - Making Memories
Ink - Ink It Up!, docrafts
Ribbon - from Stash

Tools
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circle Template
Papermania All Aboard Postmark Stamp

Monday 20 May 2013

James at Six Weeks

The new team scraplifting game at Scrap Whispers is under way, and I'm going first this time, but you'll have to wait a few weeks to see my page. In the meantime, the first couple of weekly challenges have been published and I've made a start on those too.

First up is Challenge #139 which was to either scrap a photo where we have altered the colouring, or to make a monochrome page. My photo printer is temporarily out of order, so I opted for the monochrome page. I'm still using the kit I made last week which has a variety of aqua papers in it, so I chose those and picked out photos of my nephew as a baby. 



Additions to the kit this time were the large teal/aqua letters and the grey background paper.

There's no journalling as I have already made a page from this day and I have nothing to add to what I wrote before.

EDIT (23 May): I'm also linking this page to My Creative Endeavours where Lisa's challenge today in the Sketch-n-Scrap Birthday Bash is to use the kits we created in response to her original 'Create a Kit' challenge a couple of weeks ago.

Supplies
Paper - Echo Park Yours Truly, First Edition J'Adore (double-sided), Bo Bunny Garden Chic
Letters - American Crafts Thickers, October Afternoon Mini Market Stickers
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
EK Success Corner Punch

Sunday 19 May 2013

Die Cuts Card

I'm still making my way through the Birthday challenges at Sketch-n-Scrap, and there is a good variety of them. This one is from Ria at Heart for Handmade, and she asked us to put our die-cutters to good use and make a card.

I have my sister-on-law's Big Shot on almost permanent loan, but I only tend to use it for alphabets and tickets; I had a rummage through her dies and picked out a fancy envelope die as a starting point for a card on a card. I also used dies for the ticket in the envelope and for the two stars.

  
Supplies
Card - Craft Creations
Paper - Magazine Freebie
Cardstock - American Crafts
Sentiment - The Robin's Nest

Tools
Big Shot
Sissix Mini Elegant Card & Envelope Die
Sissix Stars Die
X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Kreaxions Circle Cutter

Saturday 18 May 2013

Garden Swings

I'm continuing the Birthday Bash challenges from Sketch-n-Scrap today. I've got up to 10 May and a Tic-Tac-Toe challenge from Kerry at Scrapbooking - For the Love of Paper. She gave us a grid of nine different elements and asked us to use any three of them, so long as they make a line vertically, horizontally or diagonally.

The central element of the grid is 'Two Photos' (which is why my last page used two photos as well) so I started from there and my kit from earlier in the week, keeping the different elements in mind as I worked, and eventually choosing two photos, yellow and stars. The only things that I added to the kit this time were the small red letters and some red cardstock for the photo mat. The yellow is the reverse of the number print.


I love the fact that this page uses the same kit as the last page, but they have nothing in common.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania Kraft Basics, MME Kraft Funday, DCWV Neutral Stack
Paper - MME Miss Caroline
Letters - Basic Grey Curio
Border Stickers - Crate Paper Farmhouse
Washi Tape - Trimcraft

Friday 17 May 2013

Cathedral of the Marshes

The mid-month 'Sketch with Stash' challenge has been published at Scrap Our Stash, with this sketch and also the requirement to use at least three shop-bought flowers.

Having assembled a kit at the beginning of the week, I was determined to put it to use at once. I  decided to adapt the sketch for two photos as I was originally going to combine this with another challenge, but it didn't ultimately work out.

My photos are of Blythburgh church in Suffolk, not really a cathedral, but it's pretty impressive and can be seen for miles around as the land is so flat. They were taken just after the death of the Queen Mother, which is why the flag is at half-mast.



I did add a few things to the kit - some brown cardstock, the ric-rac, the journalling card, more flowers and the flower middles, which are yellow paper and epoxy circles. I'll keep these items with the kit for future pages.

EDIT (23 May): I'm also linking this page to My Creative Endeavours where Lisa's challenge today in the Sketch-n-Scrap Birthday Bash is to use the kits we created in response to her original 'Create a Kit' challenge a couple of weeks ago.

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV Linen Closet, American Crafts (brown)
Paper - Bo Bunny Garden Chic, K&Co Hannah
Journalling Card - Donna Salazar
Letters - October Afternoon Mini Market Stickers
Flowers - Bo Bunny, Papermania
Pearls - Dovecraft
Ric-Rac - Papermania
Epoxy Circles - from Stash

Tuesday 14 May 2013

Altered Tin

I'm continuing to celebrate Sketch-n-Scrap's birthday now. The next challenge was a word scramble game hosted by Kelly at Creating With Paper and More. I'm pleased to say that I have handed in a complete set of answers for this one. Then it was on to A Work in Progress, where Lynette has posted instructions for how she altered her plain wooden tool caddy into a thing of beauty and challenged us to do the same.

I have had this tin sitting on my bookcase for several months, that I thought would be useful and it just needed prettying up. Recently I have looked at it a few times and thought that I really ought to get on with it, or just throw it away. Lynette's challenge was the push I needed to finally get this done.

I cut a piece of paper to size and used a thin layer of PVA to stick it onto my tin, then I covered the join with a strip of washi tape. 

It needed something more and I tried a few different ribbons around the tin, but they made it look shorter then it is by covering some of the pattern. I considered lace as it could be seen through, but I found that I don't actually have any. While on my lace hunt I found some old fringe that was the perfect colour and added some interest to the tin without obscuring the pattern.

It's a very simple alteration compared to Lynette's tool caddy, but I really like it, and my tin is now sitting on my desk holding all my washi tape and glitter tape, rather than languishing on a shelf awaiting some TLC.


Creating a Kit

After the madness that was a stream of NSD challenges, it's nearly time to get back to normality. But first we have to celebrate Sketch-n-Scrap's first birthday. I've only been following them for a short while, but I'm keen to join in with the fun - a challenge a day from 7-31 May. I have some catching up to do, so let's get on with it.

The first challenge in the Birthday Bash came from Lisa at My Creative Endeavours and she asked us to put together a kit consisting of: 8 patterned papers; 5 pieces of cardstock; 2 alphabets; 4-10 flowers - can be punched, handmade, store bought etc; 2-3 sets of stickers (not letter); bling - pearls, rhinestones, stickles, glitter, sequins etc; 3 misc embellishments - e.g. doilies, journalling cards, chipboard, washi tape etc

Here's what I came up with. My patterned papers are (l-r) My Mind's Eye On the Bright Side, First Edition J'Adore, MME Miss Caroline, Bo Bunny Garden Chic, 2 from K&Co Hannah, Sandylion Green Wilderness, Basic Grey Phoebe. Five of these are single-sided; the second photo shows the three b-sides and my five pieces of cardstock - MME Kraft Funday, DCWV Linen Closet, cream from American Crafts, Whirlpool from Bazzill and kraft from Papermania.





My alphabets are brown American Crafts Thickers and teal & cream Mini Market Stickers from October Afternoon. Flowers from Bo Bunny, label stickers from October Afternoon and border stickers from Crate Paper. My bling is two part packs of gems and pearls from Dovecraft and some gem-topped brads from Papermania. I chose four miscellaneous embellishments: some Lily Bee journalling cards, Prima butterflies, two colours of embroidery thread and some washi tape from Trimcraft.



Now to create something from all of this...


Sunday 12 May 2013

Car Wash

I'm finishing off my scrapping for National Scrapbook Day with a double page which rolls as many of Shimelle's remaining challenges as possible into one layout.

Challenge 2 was a simple one - to use 4x6 photos. I could have entered several pages that I have made this week with one 4x6 photo into this one, but I wanted it to be a multi-photo page. I started this page with six 4x6 photos, but I cropped one so there are five now.

Challenge 13 was to highlight our favourite supplies. I did make a page for this earlier in the week, when I said that Crate Paper is my current favourite and I used DIY Shop for that page. This one uses products from a slightly older collection - Random.

Challenge 14 was fairly straightforward - to make a double page. I do find these harder than single pages, but if I have enough photos to warrant a double page then that is what I do. Here I had a series of photos of my son helping to wash my car.













Challenge 23 was to stretch your supplies. This could be interpreted as either using a neglected tool or stamp set, or the clever use of paper to disguise a partial sheet. I stretched both the floral and the yellow papers, as I only used one piece of each across a double page. I deliberately cut the floral at six inches high because a taller box would have required two sheets, and I cut the yellow into four pieces, placing them above and below the floral to look like one larger piece. I stretched the blue border sticker too, as it is only 12" long but it appears to span about 22" because I cut it up and left gaps behind the photos. Finally I put my Big Shot to use cutting letters for my title.

Supplies
Paper & Border Sticker - Crate Paper Random
Ink - Ink It Up!
Gems - Papermania Dew Drops

Saturday 11 May 2013

Who Moved First?

With the web full of challenges for National Scrapbooking Day, I suppose it's normal for duplicates to be issued. It certainly cuts down the number of pages I need to make to complete them all. This page is for both Shimelle's Challenge 6 and Two Peas in a Bucket's Challenge 8 - Scraplift Yourself.

I started by looking for a page that was a bit 'different' as I frequently scraplift myself anyway, and I came across an old one that used overlapping paper strips, something that I haven't done on a page in a while. The photo is of my son and two other babies from our ante-natal class. It's a bit blurry as they all moved, but it's the only shot I have.


This was the original. I changed things up with softer colours, one less photo, an extra paper strip, inked edges and some cross-stitches, and I moved the title and journalling too.

I prefer the new page to the old one, which feels a little unfinished now. I think this may be an indication of my style evolving as time goes on. I may have to see what I can add to this one, or I may just leave it alone as it is part of a finished album.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill Butter Cream
Paper - Crate Paper DIY Shop, K&Co Hannah, Basic Grey (Doily), Sandylion Travel Stripes
Washi Sticker - Crate Paper DIY Shop
Letters - Basic Grey Curio
Ink - Ink It Up!
Thread


Friday 10 May 2013

New Baby Card

My final project for the fairy tale challenges at Scrap Whispers. This is for the Thumbelina challenge - make a card for or a layout about a small person (i.e. a child). With no time left for another layout, I decided on a card and went hunting for bits to use.

Finding the little pink rattle, I decided on a card for the birth of a baby girl and put it in a small bag with a piece of paper, a piece of princess vellum and lots of micro-beads so that the card itself rattles:



Here's a close-up of the bag:



No supplies list this time, as these were all bits and pieces that I had lying around, and I don't know where most of them came from originally.


Little & Large

This is the last page that I'll be making for the fairy tales challenges at Scrap Whispers as they are closing shortly, but I think I have time for one final card before then.

It's for the Sleeping Beauty challenge which was to use bling, sparkle or glitter, but also fits with Shimelle's Challenge 11 - make it sparkle. I've chosen a spotty paper, where all the spots are glittered, with a photo of my son and my nephew in co-ordinating outfits when they were babies.


Having chosen such a glittery background paper, I didn't want to cover it up, so I stitched a bracket-shaped square on the page for interest and I kept my other papers to just small pieces stacked up under the photo.

Supplies
Paper - First Edition Spring Feast, plus Scraps
Letters - American Crafts Remarks
Thread - DMC
Ink - Ink It Up!

Tools
Bracket-Shaped Square Template
Paper Piercer

Thursday 9 May 2013

Paper Strips Card

It's time for a card now, in response to the Princess and the Pea challenge at Scrap Whispers. Rosey made a card with lots of strips of paper which look a bit like all the mattresses that the princess slept on in the story, and she asked us to scraplift it. 

Here's my version, made for my brother's birthday next week:


And this was the original card from Rosey:


Supplies
Card - Craft Creations
Paper - Making Memories Fresh Anthology 6x6 Pack
Ink - Ink It Up!
Button & Tag - from Stash

Tools
Sewing Machine
Woodware Medium Scalloped Circle Punch

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Silly Faces

The next challenge from Scrap Whispers was based on the fairy tale Cinderella and has the theme of old and new. I decided to try and use some of my oldest stash and picked on my ancient (pre-2008) shaped eyelets.

My 'new' is a set of photos from the photo booth at my sister's wedding last month. Her wedding colours were pink and turquoise so I chose a pink background paper. This ties in with the very first NSD challenge that Shimelle Laine set - scrap in pink; her fifth challenge - use brads or eyelets; and also her twentieth challenge - use smaller photos.

I backed my pink paper on grey cardstock to give it some stability, sprayed it with white mist (which is almost invisible now it has dried) and marked out a circle of eyelets around my photo. I initially just put a strip of washi tape below the photo, but then I decided to turn it into a frame. The letter stickers are more old stash. I've discovered over time that I don't really like multi-coloured titles, but they seemed just right for this page.



Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV
Paper - HOTP Pink Swirls
Eyelets - Unknown
Letters - Lakeland
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Ink - Ink It Up!
Mist - Mr Huey

Tools
Circle Template
Eyelet Setter

Tuesday 7 May 2013

Fish for Tea?

I'm back to a more normal schedule now after the Bank Holiday weekend here, and my next page is for another Scrap Whispers challenge. This time it's based on Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and more specifically the number three. We were asked to create a page with three of everything - three photos, three papers, three embellishments etc.

This ties in nicely with the 18th NSD challenge posted by Shimelle Laine, which was to embrace the Power of Three. I picked my three photos and decided to scraplift a page from Shimelle's alter ego Glitter Girl, and this links in to Challenge 7 at Two Peas in a Bucket - be inspired by a Garden Girl (their design team). 

My page has three photos, three patterned papers, a three word title and three areas of embellishment made up from strips of washi tape, three pieces of yellow border sticker, three punched circles, three die-cut tickets, three brads and three fish cut from a fishing border sticker.


I'm really quite pleased to have used some of those fish. I liked the rest of the sheet of outdoors stickers, but I thought I'd never use the fish borders and they were destined for the bin once I've finished the rest of the sheet. 

Supplies
Paper - Basic Grey Wisteria, Basic Grey Archaic, Imaginisce Sole Sisters
Washi Tape - Queen & Co
Border Stickers - Doodlebug Fancy Frills (yellow), Sandylion Camping Sticker Borders
Letters - Basic Grey Periphery
Brads - Bazzill 

Tools
Big Shot & X-Cut Ticket Stubs Die
Woodware Medium Scalloped Circle Punch


Monday 6 May 2013

So Sleepy

Another day, another page from the NSD Fairy Tale challenges at Scrap Whispers. This one is based on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and we were asked to make a page using one of the dwarfs' names as a title. 

The obvious name for me to use was Sleepy as I have an assortment of photos of sleeping children. The first one I found was actually of my son and my husband together so I went with that one, and pulled a turquoise and green paper out of my scraps box as a starting point.

But then I was stumped, not sure where to go. I started playing with a circle of the paper, cut as large as my scrap would allow, but it was too small to have any impact on the page. Just messing about really, I turned the circle into a hoop and then cut a series of concentric circles. Inspiration finally hit me and I joined the circles into a chain, spritzed and spattered my background with mist and backed two of the circles with vellum. Then I added my title around the largest circle and a few brads near the joins to finish off.



I'm linking this page to a couple more of Shimelle's challenges too. Challenge 3 was to use mist on a page, and Challenge 22 was to use square photos.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill?
Paper - Authentique Loyal (double-sided)
Vellum - Paper Adventures
Letters - docrafts
Brads - Papermania
Mist - Mr Huey's

Tools
Kreaxions Circle Cutter
Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circles Template

Sunday 5 May 2013

Wheel Birthday Card

On with the NSD challenges at Scrap Whispers. Their fourth fairy tale challenge was based on Rumpelstiltskin, or more specifically the spinning wheel that he used to spin straw into gold. Georgina put that wheel in a rough sketch for us to use for either a card or a layout. 

I'll admit that I didn't fancy the careful measuring and cutting that would be required for a wheel of photos on a layout, so I decided to make a card instead. It's all from scraps again, offcuts from a Princess Fairytale 6x6 pack - perfect for a fairy tale themed crop:



Supplies
Card - Yellow Moon
Paper - Dovecraft Princess Fairytale 6x6 Pack, We R Memory Keepers (brown)
Peel-Off - Goldlabel
Ink - docrafts

Tools
Kreaxions Circle Cutter
X-Cut Small Circle Punch

Hop It

I'm skipping the second NSD challenge from Scrap Whispers for now because I wasn't immediately inspired by it; on the other hand I knew exactly what I wanted to scrap when I saw the third challenge. You may remember that the challenges are all based on fairy tales and this one is The Frog Prince. We were free to take whatever inspiration we like from the story and I decided that this was the perfect opportunity to finally get my metal frog with brad eyes onto a page. I've had this frog for ages, he even lives on my desk so that I will remember to use him.

It seems a little odd to start a page from one single embellishment, but it wasn't as hard as it might seem. I've always thought that I would pair the frog with photos of my son in the garden as a toddler, but looking through my album I found one of him on a frog-shaped rocker in the park. Perfect. Everything else on the page came from my scraps box; I cut the odd-shaped pieces into rectangles and layered them up.

I used offcuts of the specific outdoors-ey paper to fussy cut extra decals and layered them over the same images on the page using pop-dots. This fits in with Challenge 9 from Shimelle's blog where she asked us to do some fancy cutting on the page (be this from an electronic or manual die cutter, or just a plain old-fashioned pair of scissors like I used).


Supplies
Cardstock - American Crafts
Paper - SEI Be Bop, Basic Grey Aged & Confused, Basic Grey Perhaps, KI Memories Love Elsie
Letters - American Crafts Fabric Thickers
Frog - HOTP
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Ink - Dovecraft

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Cousins

Yesterday's NSD challenge from Scrap Our Stash was a real stash-buster. The prizes will be awarded by random draw, and the more stash we bust the more draws we get, plus two extra draws for using one of about 60 sketches. The stash list included ribbon, tags, brads, layered stickers, washi tape, twine, paint, wood pieces, bling and the use of two or more punches. I don't actually have any layered stickers or wood pieces but I managed six of the others.

I decided to scrap a photo of my son and niece that I had considered for the last page I made, and then I looked for a sketch which would be easy to include those tags with the landscrape photo; I chose this one from Rochelle Spears as I knew I could substitute the smaller photos for tags.

I had a lovely new collection of paper just waiting for me to cut into - DIY Shop from Crate Paper. I'm loving Crate Paper at the moment, this is the second full collection I have bought this year (and I don't normally buy the whole collection of anything). Shimelle Laine set 24 NSD challenges yesterday (one an hour from midnight to midnight) and her Challenge 13 was to highlight our favourite papers. DIY Shop are certainly those for me right now. 


The collection includes several sheets with tags already printed. I made hole reinforcers for the tags using two punches and threaded ribbon through them, positioning them to the left of my photo, as in the sketch. A couple of strips of paper lie under the photo, and I used a border punch on one of them. My background paper has a water-colour effect and I spattered some droplets of white paint on it along the diagonal, added washi tape above and below the photo and used a heart brad next to my title.

Supplies
Paper - Crate Paper DIY Shop
Letters - October Afternoon
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Ribbon - from Stash
Paint - Mr Huey's
Brad - Kit 'n' Craft

Tools
Fiskars Bracket Border Punch
X-Cut Small Circle Punch
'Ordinary' Hole Punch

Saturday 4 May 2013

Sports Day

Just a few hours in, and I've completed my first page for National Scrapbooking Day. I decided to start with a challenge from Scrap Whispers. They have a fairy tale theme for their day of challenges and the first one was Rapunzel - to build a tower of scraps (at least nine papers) on the page, and since Rapunzel is normally depicted as being blonde, to use yellow somewhere on the page. 

I pulled a few possible photos with different colours in them and then turned to my overflowing scraps box to see what coordinating papers I could find, deciding on a green and orange scheme for photos from my son's school sports day many years ago.


With so many patterns already on the page, I didn't add any extra embellishments. And the yellow requirement? There are yellow stripes in the vertical paper to the left of my photos. 

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill
Paper - Scraps from Basic Grey, Crate Paper, Glitz Designs, K & Company Etc
Letters - October Afternoon Mini Market Stickers
Washi Tape - We R Memory Keepers
Ink - Dovecraft

Tools
Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

National Scrapbooking Day


National Scrapbooking Day (NSD) is an American invention, but it's spreading and the web will be full of inspiration and challenges this weekend. I thought I would share a few of the parties that I am trying to get to:

One of my favourite sites is Scrap Whispers and the girls there are planning 13 challenges today on a Fairy Tale theme, with a week to finish them. The fun starts at 9am with one challenge an hour all day.

Over in the US, Scrap Our Stash are hosting a Stash Challenge that will be posted at 6am EST. I haven't worked out the exact time, but I reckon I have until this afternoon before I need worry about that one, though it has the shortest deadline - midnight tomorrow PST.

Shimelle Laine kicked off the excitement on her blog just after midnight so there were six challenges online before I even woke up this morning. Luckily she has arranged them so that we can do up to four challenges on each page, and we have until next Sunday to finish them.

And what is probably the biggest crop of them all is being held at Two Peas in a Bucket. Ten challenges are up there already, again with  a deadline of next Sunday.

Some of my challenge pages will be posted in the appropriate site's gallery and some straight into my blog, but they will all end up here eventually so you could be hearing about NSD for quite some time around here. You have been warned! 


Friday 3 May 2013

Drive It

I've had a bit of a scrapbooking lull between the scramble of finishing off April challenges and the madness of National Scrapbooking Day that is to come tomorrow, but I have pulled together a page for the third stash challenge at Scrap Our Stash. They called it the Pretty Paper Party challenge and asked us to use paper from at least three collections and to dig into our stash for some rub-ons.

I decided to try and fill in one of the gaps in my 2012 album with a page from Legoland. It will sit opposite this one so I tried to use a similar colour scheme and I used the same Thickers for a similar title. I don't have a lot of rub-ons but I unearthed some gold stars from a birthday themed sheet.




The turquoise and floral papers are from two different collections from My Mind's Eye but I love how well they coordinate and I was inspired by one of my own recent layouts to stitch around the edge of those papers. The yellow is an ancient piece from Daisy D's and the red is from Fancy Pants.

Supplies
Cardstock - DCWV Linen CLoset
Paper - MME Miss Caroline, MME Lime Twist, Daisy D's Butter Polka Dot, Fancy Pants Wavesearcher
Letters - American Crafts
Rub-On Stars - Royal & Langnickel
Thread - DMC

Tools
Hobbycraft Medium Star Punch
Bazzill Basics Paper Piercer

Wednesday 1 May 2013

Snow @ Darwin Lake

The March/April team scraplifting game at Scrap Whispers has come to an end and all our pages are being unveiled this week. Three teams of scrappers have been scraplifting each others page in turn, all starting from the same original layout. It's always interesting to see the similarities and differences between the pages and the different directions that the teams can go in.

I was in Georgina's team and had Chelsey's page to lift. I was quite pleased when I received it, because it was quite similar to my own style and I didn't really change anything in the layout. My photos are from Easter this year, when we were holidaying in the snow of the Peak District.



and this is Chelsey's page for comparison:

I kept the three photos (but swapped them over), the two colour background, the stitched square and the two font title, but I replaced the label stickers with strips of washi tape and swapped her flowers for snowflakes. Finally I added some journalling below the photos.

Our team's pages were unveiled on the Scrap Whispers blog yesterday; the others will be revealed on Wednesday and Friday.

Supplies
Cardstock - Papermania
Paper - Sandylion (Snowflakes/Winter Words)
Letters - American Crafts Thickers, Jillibean Soup Alphabeans
Washi Tape - Trimcraft
Thread - DMC
Snowflakes - from Stash