First Day .... Last Day

This is the final challenge from Scrap Whispers for September; at least next month I'll be able to do one a week instead of cramming them into four days! 

Challenge 99 was a  sketch, and this was perfect for a layout showing my daughter's first and last days at primary school. I already knew that I wanted to place the pictures in opposite corners but I hadn't got any further with my plans when I saw this sketch.

My central stripe isn't as wavy as in the sketch but, as I had no way of easily cutting such a precise shape, I decided to just tear a diagonal panel. I layered it with a straight-edged torn strip and some fibres, adding my rub-on title and dates and a few flowers. The little circle element says "Where does the time go?" and I decided that it didn't really need any more journalling than that.

Supplies

Paper - K&Co Hannah Scrap Pad, Kit 'n' Kraft, Dream Street Papers

Rub-Ons - Making Memories Heidi, Doodlebug Simply Sweet

Flowers - WHSmith

Fibres - Papermania

Circle Element - Crate Paper

Kobra

Wow, two weeks of blogging and this is my thirteenth post which means I've done 12 layouts and an altered notebook. That's pretty good going for me. I've decided to change my post titles from the challenge to the layout name as I think that will make it easier to find old posts. Who can remember what challenge they did a layout for six months down the line? But I might remember the layout's title.

This is another one for Scrap Whispers - the challenge was to scraplift this page from Helen Salthouse:

Initially I was overwhelmed by this one. It's a beautiful layout but there is just so much going on, and I don't do shaped pages as once they are in the album you are going to see the back of another layout around the edges.

I decided to keep the three photos and their curly frames (using up some bought die-cut shapes) and confine my layout to about 3/4 of the page with a bracket shaped top edge, backed onto another piece of paper. I also intended to keep the semi-circle of journalling on the right. It evolved as I worked on it and I came up with this:

I dropped the semi-circle in favour of a cobra, cut from a photograph of the ride and I was going to journal on that, but when it came to writing I realised that there wasn't really much to say. I ditched that idea too and just added the date and location to a tag which I tucked behind the photos. The title was cut from another photo. My husband used to think I was mad taking pictures of signs everywhere we go, but I find them really useful for titles which match the photos perfectly and don't eat into my letter stash. I don't use a lot of embellishments on my pages and while I think that Helen's stitched flourishes and buttons are really lovely, they don't fit into this layout; I shall save that idea for another day.

Supplies
Paper - Crafts House Retro Brown, HOTP Clouds
Card Diecuts - Imagine That... 

Introducing Nibbles

I have combined two challenges for this layout, the latest sketch from Sketchy Thursdays and a colour challenge from Scrap Whispers to use pink, green and brown.

I had this sketch in mind for a page about my daughter's new hamster before I saw the colour challenge and they seemed to fit together. 

I started from a light brown dotted Swiss background, adding a circle of pink and green gingham paper and some pieces of ribbon, and hand-stitching two vertical lines. I then added a quarter circle of the same paper as an anchor for my journalling.

Supplies
Card - Bazzill
Paper - K & Co Hannah Scrap Pad
Letters - Making Memories, My Little Shoebox
Ribbons - Anita's & from stash
Thread - Anchor & from stash

Altered Notebook

Time for something a bit different. While blog-hopping the other day, I found a link to the Scrap Whispers blog with an appeal for more players. They post a variety of challenges each Friday - firstly a tutorial, then a sketch, a scraplift and finally a colour combination. I decided to join in with the September challenges starting with the tutorial - alter a composition notebook.

I don't actually have a composition notebook, but I did have an A5 notebook with an ugly green cover - perfect for a makeover.

The book has a yellow elastic cord which holds it closed so I chose yellow as my main colour, using a piece of variegated card that I have had for ages. I punched a series of holes and cut slits between the edge and the holes to fit around the spiral. I kept the decoration very simple using an autumn leaves sticker and some letter rub-ons. The rub-ons are rather old and don't rub so I used a hole punch and some micro glue-dots to create letter stickers. As for the name of the book...I looked through it and found that it mostly contained lists - a list of subjects to scrap, a shopping list from when we went camping last summer, a list of girls invited to my daughter's birthday party etc. So...random lists.

Supplies
Card - from Stash
Sticker - Sandylion
Letters - Papermania

Snug as a Bug

I've had a busy weekend - a trip to the Big Stamp and Scrapbook Show on Saturday followed by a day at Adventure Island with my son and his friends yesterday. I did manage to fit in a bit of scrapping, starting a layout on Saturday evening and finishing it yesterday evening. The photos I took last night looked too yellow so I've had to wait for this morning to try again. The layout is for Shimelle's Sketch of the Week which used two 4x6 portrait photos: 

I rotated the sketch to use landscape photos, but I found that I had to crop them so that I didn't obscure the word CAMPING on my background paper.

Another part of Shimelle's post was to see how much of the layout we could create from scraps and I am proud to say that all of the paper and card (except that background) were from off-cuts. I cut the brown card for the title panel from a Fiskars template and added a journalling tag - the only new thing on the page.

Supplies

Paper - Karen Foster Camping Collage, Basic Grey Archaic

Card - DCWV Natural Stack

Letters - Cosmo Cricket

Journalling Tag - Kaisercraft

Leavers Party

This layout is for Shimelle's Scrapbook Starting Point from last weekend. She posts a part-finished page on Saturday and the finished layout on Sunday. This is where she started last week:

She suggested a bold stripy paper as the background balanced by a large square of something more subtle. I meant to take a photo of my layout at the same point, but I forgot, so we'll have to jump to the finished article:

This was actually my second attempt - the first set of papers I gathered contained some very bright papers from Paper Adventures, but they were a bit too bright and overwhelmed the photo which although very colourful is actually quite dark so I switched to a Hot Off the Press collection instead. I used more pieces of paper than my normal style but I am quite happy with the end result.

Supplies

Paper & Tags - HOTP My Boy Kit

Letters - Scenic Route

Circle Peel-Off and Star - from Stash

Zig-Zag Peel-Off - Anita's

All Change

It's been quite some time since I last did a sketch from Get Picky - I'm not sure why as they have a good variety of sketches, and they are designed for multiple photos, which I mostly do. 

I adapted this sketch to use four photos rather than three, with before and after photos to document the fact that my son's school became an academy this term - not because it was a failing school but because the head wanted to opt out of local authority control (or local authority interference as he saw it).

I used the same stripy paper on the two halves, but rotated it to make a change between the two sides. The papers come from the same collection as I used on the last page as they will be consecutive pages in the album and they are both about the same school. The card is an old piece from Cosmo Cricket (2009) that I have been hoarding. I moved the journalling to the bottom of the layout and I hand-wrote it for once as I wanted it to be directly on the lines of the page and I do not have either an A3 printer or the patience to line up the print with the lines if I had cropped it to A4.

Supplies
Card - Cosmo Cricket Homework
Paper - Making Memories Fresh Anthology Collection
Letters - Papermania
Zig-Zag Peel-Offs - Anita's
Arrow Peel-Offs - from Stash

New School

I used a row of photos of my daughter for this sketch from Pencil Lines; it seems quite strange to scrap her in blue, but I went with her uniform as the obvious colour scheme. 

I painted an oval frame around the big photo with white acrylic paint, then outlined it in silver and added silver grey dew drops. I added yellow to the strips of paper to break up all the blue. 

Supplies

Paper - Paper Adventures Blue Alphabet, Making Memories Fresh Anthology

Dew Drops - Papermania

Letters - DCWV Christmas Alphabet Sticker Stack

Ribbon - from Stash 

Birthday Bouncing

Sketchy Thursdays are holding a Blog Hop with ScrapFIT; this week's challenge is to use their sketch in conjunction with ScrapFIT's workout #52 titled "F is for Friendship."

I chose to create a layout about my daughter's birthday party as the photos were near the top of my 'to scrap' pile, but I rotated the sketch and added another larger picture. 

I created the sun-ray patterned background with coloured chalks on a white scrapbobok insert. I was originally going to stitch along the colour joins, but I changed my mind as the layout progressed.

I moved the title to the bottom of the page, placing it between various pre-cut border pieces. The bottle-tops and giant brads are both digital elements that I downloaded from Two Peas in a Bucket and I added a few flowers to make groups of three embellishments in opposite corners.

Supplies
Card - Papermania
Chalk - Readicut Craft
Giant Brads - Shimelle Laine for Two Peas in a Bucket
Bottle-Caps - Betsy Tuma for Two Peas in a Bucket
Letters, Borders, Ribbon and Jewels - from Stash

Cascades & Coasters

Disaster struck on Sunday evening when I ran out of yellow printer ink after the shops had shut. Having bought some on the way home from work yesterday, I was able to print my pictures for this layout, for Shimelle's sketch from last Wednesday.

I stretched the sketch to make it a double page spread about our trip to Alton Towers in May, adding a second narrower vertical panel of stripey paper on the right, to balance the one on the left. 

The papers are a recent purchase - the Sugar & Spice collection from Dovecraft. They are actually 8"x8" papers so the stripey pieces have been pieced together. However, being stripes, the joins don't show. The picture is a bit fuzzy (don't know why as the one on my PC is clear), but I have used my bracket border punch to make the blue borders above and below the central spotty pieces. The photos are matted on kraft card which happily matched some new letters. Sadly I have used all the Cs and Ss in one go.

Supplies
Card - DCWV Neutral Stack, Papermania Kraft Basics
Paper - Dovecraft Sugar & Spice
Letters - Crate Paper 

Simply the Best

I bought myself a new toy yesterday - the Fiskars Bracket Border Punch - and I put it to good use on this layout, loosely based on Shimelle Laine's 4x6 Photo Love class from March. Shimelle is teaching a series of twelve classes, one per month, with increasing numbers of 4x6 photos - see the link on the right.





















I rotated the sketch to accommodate three landscape photos of my daughter's dance show rehearsals. This made it hard to do the row of title, journalling and embellishment that is on the sketch, so I ended up with a more spread out random look.

The pink strips are cut from a DCWV paper which has lots of rows of words about girls on it. A friend gave it to me as it was one from a pad she bought and she only has boys, so I am not sure of the exact name. I am not keen on the paper as a whole, but these strips that say 'girls just wanna have fun' are great for a dancing page. I layered them on white paper cut with that bracket punch. The journalling spot is one I downloaded from 2 Peas in a Bucket. I added a tiny strip of pink paper and a piece of stitching rub-on that was leftover from yesterday.

Supplies
Card - Bo Bunny Licorice Dot
Paper - DCWV, pink scraps from stash
Letters - Anita's Glitterations
Journalling Spot - Courtship Circle Stamp from Stacy Marks for 2 Peas in a Bucket
Rub-On - Papermania
Jewels - from stash

Ben

Real life got in the way yesterday, but it's back to scrapping today. This layout is for the current Pencil Lines sketch, number 251.





















I made things difficult for myself by choosing a portrait photo, and then mounting it on even taller portrait paper, but I love these ducks and boats, and I don't have many babies in my life. No babies really - as this photo is from 2007 and Ben starts school this term (gulp).

I was originally going to stitch across the top and bottom of the stripy paper but I wasn't sure which colour to use. However, once I had outlined the title letters, I realised that I needed a touch more black in the layout and so decided to use rub-on stitching instead. To my shame, I've had the rub-ons for about 18 months without using them and I wasn't sure how well they would rub. Although not perfect, they rubbed on reasonably well, especially considering they cost me 20p in a sale. All-in-all this was a very cost effective layout as the stripy paper was 10p in the same sale and the background is another white insert that I again coloured with chalks. 

Supplies
Paper - Me & My Big Ideas, Papermania, Mulberry from Stash
Letters - Basic Grey
Rub-Ons - Papermania
Brads - HOTP
Chalk - Readicut Crafts

Photogenic

I was beginning to think I wouldn't finish a second layout today, but I did. This one is for another sketch from last week, from Sketchy Thursdays.

The strips of paper all come from the same collection and were mostly double-sided off-cuts from previous layouts. The background piece was a white scrapbook insert which I coloured with chalks. I've done this a few times recently - it gives a soft cloudy colour which I can match to the papers I'm using. I love Basic Grey's Archaic papers and a tiny piece has made its way onto this layout - a railway track between the photos.

I've deviated from the sketch a bit as I wanted to use two larger photos and  I found that they looked better with the strips filling the page rather than being confined to the left. There was no obvious space for journalling, so I used the title box and moved the title up the page instead.

Supplies 
Paper - s.e.i Dill Blossom, Basic Grey Archaic
Letters - Making Memories
Chalk - Studio G

Seal Watching

I have a day of catching up with various challenges today. This is the first layout - for Shimelle's sketch of the week from last week.

I knew from the start that I wanted to use a second photo and have space for some journalling on this layout. It evolved as I went along, with the small photo and journalling being combined on a tag and with the vertical panel of paper first moving behind the square and then moving left. I rarely add much in the way of embellishments and this layout is no exception.

Supplies
Paper: 7 Gypsies Sunnyside, HOTP Barnwood, Bo Bunny Ocean Dot, MME Bloom & Grow, K & Co Hannah Scrap Pad
Letters: American Crafts Thickers, Making Memories
Fibres: Papermania

Seeing the Sights

I didn't do Shimelle's last Starting Point challenge; it started with a bundle of offcuts arranged in a rectangle at the bottom of the page which didn't immediately inspire me. Having seen some of the completed layouts that were submitted, I may go back to it. 

However this week's challenge was very different with four separate blocks of patterned paper to build from. This suggested four separate but linked photos to me so I used some from a trip to Paris last year. After a rummage, I decided to use only two patterns and repeat them, partly as I couldn't find four co-ordinating papers that didn't overwhelm the pictures. 

I only had one of the name-tags and it was too large so I scanned it, resized it and printed five with the place names and my journalling. I used a piece of 35mm film instead of the paper strip across the middle; this tied in with my title sticker which has a camera on it. Finally I tucked my ticket from the Louvre behind its photo.

Supplies
Paper - Colorbok Travel Page Kit, NitWit Collections Winter Wishes
Name-Tags - NitWit Collections Winter Wishes
Title - atd

Stepping Stones

I've got a bit behind with the challenges; this sketch is from Sketchy Thursdays from three weeks ago. I chose the background paper easily as soon as I had picked the photos to use, but I did the paper shuffle over the large piece on the right. This piece has small pink paint splats on it and I had some punched butterflies lying on my desk that I didn't use on this layout so I went with pink as an accent colour. I added the title in two fonts but I do wonder if I should have stuck to just one?

Supplies
Card - Basic Grey Marjolaine
Paper - Fancy Pants Designs Little Sprout, Dovecraft
Butterflies - Punched from Making Memories Glitter Butterfly Just Chillin' Girl
Brown Letters - Doodlebug Design
Pebble Letters -  from Stash