Birthday Card

The final challenge from Scrap Whispers for this month follows a tutorial from Rosey and an idea for using up those annoying leftover letters - the Qs, Xs and Zs that you won't use but can't throw away.

Her idea involves surrounding your title with random letters and spraying them with ink while making your title stand out from the background letters by using a strongly contrasting colour. She did this for a scrapbook page title but I thought it was best to start with a birthday card and see how I got on.

I don't have any spray inks so I decided to see what I could do with just ink pads. I started  by stamping my card with three colours of blue ink, straight from the ink pad. I then added an assortment of white foam letters and stamped over them; I just used white letters as I wasn't sure how well the ink would cover other colours. Finally I added my sentiment in red (and hacked an F to turn it into an I!).

I am quite pleased with the way that it turned out and may well repeat this with other colours in the future. Thank you Rosey.

Alex

It's been a while since I did a layout from a Pencil Lines sketch. They had a run of sketches that didn't inspire me, but the last two sketches have been much better. Firstly Sketch 260 from 20 November:

I stuck closely to the sketch and used a selection of papers from Pebbles with this photo of my baby nephew. The Pebbles papers are a mixture of old and new - some from the New Additions range and some older ones that I picked up in the January sales, plus I used the piece with bibs and bootees from Papermania. The journalling spot is one that I downloaded from Scrapbooks Etc and cropped to use just the top part.

EDIT (November 2013): Something about this page had always bugged me, and I couldn't work out what it was. Two years on, I've finally realised that the angles of the photo and the bib and bootee paper were the issue; I've now straightened them out and handwritten the journalling directly on the background.

Supplies

Paper - Pebbles, Papermania

Letter Stickers - Crate Paper

Ribbon - from Stash

Bird Embellishment - Pebbles

Journalling Spot - from Scrapbooks Etc

Rachel & Mark

Another challenge from Scrap Whispers - this one is a sketch:

As often happens, my layout evolved as I worked and I finished with this:

I started from two photos of my cousin's children which have a strong blue background. The spotty paper matched them well but was rather insipid for the whole page so I decided to use a panel of it with a bolder background, although that meant dropping the banner. I used that blue colour for a border between the two papers and then added more borders to the photos themselves. This all meant that the title looked better moved over to the right and I just added the date on the far right hand side.

Supplies
Paper - Scenic Route North Shore Wipe Out, Sandylion Dots
Card - Core'dinations Royal
Letter Stickers - Stickopotamus
Letter Rub-ons - Doodlebug

Adventure Island

A second layout today, this time for Sketchy Thursdays.

I stuck pretty close to the original sketch, with a row of photos, a title and subtitle, various border stickers and paper strips for my journalling.

Supplies
Paper - Sandylion Boy Oh Boy, HOTP Barnwood
Border Stickers - Doodlebug Fancy Frills
Letter Stickers - Sandylion Urban Vocab, Basic Grey Curio

Waiting for Dad

My Friday crafting day got cancelled so I have three part-prepared layouts to finish this weekend, all for challenges that end on Wednesday. The first is a scraplift challenge from Scrap Whispers. We had to scraplift this layout from Nilsa:

and this is my version:

I drew round a template for my bracket shape, and used a Fiskars border punch for the punched edging. Some tricky back-to-back border punching gave me the row of circles down the middle.

Supplies
Card - Papermania Kraft basics, DCWV Neutral Cardstock Stack
Paper - Paper Adventures Forest Floor, plus some from Stash
Letters - Pebbles
Flowers & Ribbon- from Stash
Dew Drops - Papermania
Ink - Papermania

A Quiet Wednesday

Wednesday is normally a crafty day for me - I posted no less than three projects last Wednesday in a frenzy of Christmas crafting.

However today was quiet craft-wise - I am planning to spend Friday this week crafting with friends so, instead of completing layouts, I spent some time this morning putting together packs for three pages that I want to make. I've printed the photos and the sketches and pulled out the papers and letters that I think I want to use.

I used to take all my supplies (and the car) with me on days like this, but a bit of forward planning means that I should be able to walk to my friend's house, although I will be limited to the supplies that I have packed (or that I can scrounge). I wonder whether I will work faster because I have already chosen my papers so will just have to make them work, or whether I will be hankering after things I left behind and will leave my pages to finish off when I get home.

How do you plan for crafting away from home? What are your 'must take' items? 

Preparing a Journal

Part of the reason for Shimelle's Christmas Crafting Weekend was to prepare your journal for her 'Journal Your Christmas' class. I am not doing this one, but I have recently decided to do her 'Scrap Your Day' class, recording my life on the 25th of each month next year. This originally ran in 2008-09 but the materials are permanently archived and accessible via the Free Projects button on her blog. I realised that by preparing the journal now, I have a much better chance of starting on time and keeping going through the year.

Shimelle has set two specific challenges for the journal:
1. Prepare your album and cut at least some of your background papers
2. Prepare a pocket for a page

After a shopping trip yesterday for cardstock and book rings, I have made a simple 6" x 12" album, and prepared some of the pages. I have stuck down birthday papers for May (as my birthday falls on the 25th) and Christmas papers for December. 

I have also cut some winter, spring and autumn papers to size but not stuck them down yet; I will wait and see which months they suit - e.g matching the snowflake paper to the coldest/snowiest month of January or February.

I am trying to use up free papers from magazines as they also often come with embellishment sheets which should make finishing the pages quicker and easier. 

I have also made the basic front cover with a pocket and left space to add photos or more embellishments later on. 

The pocket has several pieces of card ready for decorating and journalling. I want to explain why I am doing the album, and will probably add other thoughts as I go through the year plus pictures of things like my home which do not belong on a specific page. I have looped them together with string and tied them to one of the book rings so that they will not get lost even if they fall out of the pocket.

Supplies - Album
Cardstock - Bazzill (plus dark brown from stash)
Paper - Offcut from Stash, possibly MME?
Book Rings - Imagine That
Numbers - Pebbles
Letters - Basic Grey
Camera - atd
Border Sticker - Crate Paper

Supplies - Pages
May - DCWV, Pebbles
December - Bo Bunny Believe (free papers)
Winter - Unknown
Spring - Kay Miller Designs (free papers)
Autumn - The Autumn Wishes Collection (free papers)

Christmas Layout

The final challenge from Shimelle's Christmas crafting weekend was her Sketch of the Week, with a Christmas twist. Her version uses a border page cut up and used with the border in the centre, but the sketch looks a lot like a patchwork of papers:

I don't have any border papers so I went with the patchwork idea and used some Christmas papers left over from this layout, adding a circle of red crystals:

I will use this for a layout this Christmas, so there are no photos yet. I have a few smaller pieces of these papers and a co-ordinating striped piece, plus red or green letters, red ribbon and a journalling tag all picked out for completing this:

Check back in the new year for the finished page!

ETA: The finished page is now here.

Flowers Card

Another card for the Christmas Crafting Weekend - but this one is a birthday card. The challenge was to create a project with a design cut from patterned paper, inspired by a poinsettia card made by Pam Brown. I've been through all my Christmas paper and really don't have anything suitable for this, so I've gone for a flowery birthday card instead.

I cut three flowers from a paper pack that I got free with a card making magazine. The strip of paper comes from the same pack and I edged it with gold peel-off lines and added a gold peel-off sentiment.

Baubles Christmas Card

Another Christmas card for Shimelle's Christmas Crafting Weekend - this time the challenge was to make a card with either a circle design or using supplies in an unusual way, following a tutorial from Leah Farquarson. I chose to go with the circle design and returned to the Peppermint Twist papers that I used for my woven cards on Friday.

I started from a cream card and layered up a square of red paper, a scalloped circle of green paper and a circle of cream card. I cut the baubles from the embellishment sheet and added them and the sentiment on foam squares.

Christmas Tags

When I made my Christmas tag garland, I pulled out all of my Christmas stash, including die-cut shapes, peel-offs and ribbons that I didn't actually use. However they came in useful for the next challenge, to create a holiday gift tag that is easy to replicate.

I started from brown tags, leftover from that garland, adding strips of red ribbon, green die-cut trees and peel-off presents backed with red card. I finished them with peel-off sentiments and stars.

Christmas Tradition

As part of her Christmas Crafting weekend, Shimelle shared a post from Lain Ehmann about telling the stories behind the pictures - the stuff that no-one would know unless we wrote it down - and challenged us to document a holiday memory in our scrapbooks.

I deliberately took photos of my children decorating the Christmas tree last year for exactly that reason - to record my memories of tree decorating when I was a child and a tradition which I have passed on.

The photos and layout are fairly predictable:

 But the journalling was the important part (click for a larger picture if you cannot read this):

Supplies

Paper - Craft Creations Christmas Scrolls/Holly/Stripes
Stickers- docrafts
Ribbon - Lindt

Peel-Offs - from Stash

Christmas Tag Garland

After a flurry of posts on Saturday morning, I was away for the rest of the weekend and at work Monday and yesterday. This leaves me with a whole load of projects to catch up with from Shimelle's Christmas Crafting Weekend. The first one up is a Christmas tag garland which will hang from my mantle-piece.

I mostly used some of the Welcome Christmas collection of papers and stickers from Pebbles, plus red, green and brown card. I've had the wooden pegs for ages as I find them too bulky for cards or scrapbook pages, but they work well here.

Some close-ups:

I've just realised that I hung the two Rs in 'merry' the wrong way round for the photos. I shouldn't have the same colour letters next to each other. Never mind, I'll get it right at Christmas.

Cross-Stitched Christmas Cards

I woke up this morning to discover that Shimelle has published three more Christmas Crafting challenges overnight. The first is to show your preparation for her 'Journal Your Christmas' class (which I am not doing); the second is a Christmas tag garland, which I may do before next Sunday's deadline; the third is to share a favourite project from Christmas past.

I don't do a lot of Christmas crafting, but we do still have these cards that I made for my children about seven years ago.

I cross-stitched the angel and penguin and mounted them on navy blue cards covered in snow mesh and white velvety fabric.

Woven Christmas Cards

Shimelle Laine is holding a Christmas Crafting weekend on her blog. The first challenge last night was to make a woven Christmas card following a tutorial from Melissa Mann. They are really easy, so I made two while watching TV.

I used two card blanks left over from a previous Christmas, rounded the corners and inked the edges of all of my paper strips. Melissa had sewed her strips of paper together but my sewing machine has died so I just used double sided tape. The papers are all from the Peppermint Twist collection from We R Memory Keepers, freebies from the current issue of Scrapbook Magazine.

Pencil Museum

Another layout using photos from 2007; this one is for Shimelle's Sketch of the Week last week. Luckily for me she didn't post one this week which gave me a chance to catch up.





















We were at the Pencil Museum in Keswick so I chose to use up this piece of paper with coloured circles that I have had for about three years and regretted buying as it has never been suitable for any photos. The envelope embellishments were cut with my sister-in-law's Big Shot and I added coloured brads and black paint spatters to make the line of decorations on the sketch. It's not a favourite layout, but at least I've used that paper. I have another piece with squares on it. I wonder if it will take me another three years to use that?

Supplies
Paper - Doodlebug School Dot Talk, Cosmo Cricket Homework, Black/White from Stash
Brads - HOTP
Letters - Papermania
Paint - Wilko

A Day in the Life

The October colour challenge from Scrap Whispers is to use blue white and purple together. This is indeed a challenge - I rarely use purple and looking through my albums I can only find one previous layout where I have used these three colours. 

So where to start? Paper or photos? I decided to choose photos first, and found a series of pictures from 2007 that we took for my daughter's homework - she had to make a photo diary of her day when they were learning about time. There were about 20 pictures so I picked the best 12 and decided to use them in a grid with patterned paper squares. I remembered that I had seen a sketch in a magazine article about grids; amazingly I even remembered which magazine - Scrapbook Inspirations Ideas Book 2. If anyone has it, the sketch is by Shimelle Laine and appears on page 108. In particular, I was inspired by Andrea Gourley's version.

Now on to the paper... I only actually have one sheet of purple patterned paper and its design of buddleia and butterflies wasn't going to work here. I rummaged through various magazine freebies and found a collection of papers in suitable colours, strangely also from 2007! These were winter papers, with lots of snowflakes, but I only needed a few pieces; I chose the same starry paper in four different blue/purple colours.

I made my grid on white card, added my title and a journalling tag, backed it onto blue and backed it again onto lilac to give the effect of a blue frame around the photos. 

Supplies
Card - Papermania, Core'dinations
Paper - from Scrapbook Magazine Issue 33
Letters - Disney/Sandylion
Ribbon - from Stash

Snow in April

This is the final page for my 2008 album - I was in two minds about scrapping these pictures, but I had an odd number of pages so I needed one more. This was pre-digital for me so I only have a couple of shots - a view through the open window and a close-up of a snowy tulip. This sketch from Sketchy Thursdays has the right combination of large and small photos, though I changed the orientation of the main photo and extended its mat below the paper strips.

Green may be an unusual colour choice for a snowy page, but the only real colour in the photos is the green of the tulip stalk. Also this was supposed to be Spring, so most of the pages at this point in the album have some green in them.

I used a circular mask with green chalks for the background. I was originally going to stick a silver snowflake to the page, but then I decided to use it as another mask and chalked three snowflakes around the layout. I inked the edges of my title and journalling circles to define them against the cream background.

Supplies
Card - Bazzill, Papermania
Paper - Daisy & Dandelion Christmas Collection, Kodomo Inc Winter Trees
Letters - Making Memories, JoAnn Craft Essentials
Chalk - Readicut Crafts
Ink - Papermania

Happy Birthday

I started this layout of my daughter's birthday back before the school summer holidays, but I didn't finish it. I had picked the papers and printed the large photo, then the summer holidays intervened and gave me a whole load of new photos to scrap. Shimelle's Starting Point on Saturday was very similar, and gave me the push to get it out and finish it.

Obviously, my layout is at 90º to Shimelle's and has photos rather than paper circles. I painted borders around my small photos to separate them from the patterned paper, then decided to outline the main photo too. I also spattered paint across the layout using an old toothbrush. Finally I added the girls' names to pennants on the right of the main photo; they are hard to see here as they are standing up from the page; they will lie flatter in the page protector. I used letter stickers for their initials - they are  from an old pack that is a mixture of squares and circles, pink and red, upper and lower case and I have never had all the right letters for a title. Speaking of titles, I haven't put one on the page; the paper and the main photo both have the words 'Happy Birthday' on them.

Supplies
Paper - DCWV Happy Birthday, plus some from stash
Letters - Crystal
Cake Embellishment - Craft for Occasions
Paint - Wilko

Orienteering

A couple of weeks ago I got the Sketchy Thursdays sketch done on a Saturday and I wondered then if was just a flash in the pan. Well, last week (half term) I didn't manage it at all, and today I am back to the Wednesday scramble. Never mind. This is the current sketch:

and this is my version, about the last orienteering season, with a photo of my daughter being presented with her medal:

I photocopied an actual orienteering map and cut it up to make my pennants; it was only afterwards that I realised I had made the cuts the 'wrong' way according to the sketch, though I quite like my version. I was going to use the scan of her medal in place of the title shape in the sketch, but once my own title was in place it seemed better to move the medal to the bottom corner.

Supplies
Paper - First Edition Paper Spring Feast Pad
Rub-On Letters - Making Memories
Raffia - from stash

Copenhagen

As I said last month, we did a Baltic Cruise this summer and I want a page in my general 2011 scrapbook for each destination (as well as making a specific cruise scrapbook!). I have already made a page for St Petersburg, and this is the one for Copenhagen. It's not done from any particular sketch; I just chose  the best photos from the day, sketched and scribbled until I had a rough layout, then let it evolve as I worked.

I borrowed my sister-in-law's Big Shot recently and put it to good use cutting my title letters.

Supplies

Paper - Pebbles, Craft Creations, K & Co 

Cardstock - DCWV Far East Stack, Bazzill