Hello

I'm sharing my latest page for Twilight Crafts today, using the Starburst Semicircle from Jenny Wren Cutfiles. 

I cut the design from white cardstock and backed it with five patterned papers which coordinated with a photo of my nephew. I matted the photo on white to match the cut-file and then blue, and used a series of horizontal paper strips to make 'shelves' for photo and cut-file to 'sit' on, rather than having them 'float' on the page.

I then repeated some of the papers on the top and bottom edges of the page, using punches and dies to create pieces to cluster with word stickers, puffy asterisks and enamel dots. My title is a die-cut that had been sitting on my desk for a while in an effort to use it up. The photo's an old one with no memory or story attached, so 'Hello' is as good a title as anything else I could have come up with.

Supplies

Paper - 49 & Market Vintage Artistry, Pink Paislee Atlas, My Mind's Eye, Pebbles

Die-Cut Title - OneCanoeTwo

Puffy Stickers - Studio Calico

Word Stickers - Tim Holtz

Enamel Dots - Simple Stories, Fancy Pants

Ink - Ranger

Paint - Golden

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Big Shot & Dovecraft Label Die

Woodware Postage Stamp Punch

Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Disclosure - I received the digital cut-file free of charge from Twilight Crafts. All other supplies are my own.

Mama Bear

Back to the 12 Days of Summer Scraplifts from Scrap Squad today. They were published in July but have taken me all summer to do, and it's feeling rather autumnal now. This is day 10, a horizontal design by Loredana Bucaria for Hip Kit Club from June last year.

The light airy colours sent me to my Pinkfresh Studio stash, and a flip through my photo albums for a small single photo threw up an old one of me and my son when he was a toddler. I've always thought I look quite protective of him here so I used that in my title and journalling.

Supplies
Paper - Pinkfresh Studio Indigo Hills, Pinkfresh Studio Escape the Ordinary

Letters - American Crafts

Die-Cuts - Pinkfresh Studio

Stickers - Jen Hadfield, Tim Holtz, Pinkfresh Studio

Paperclip - Doodlebug

Ink - Ranger

Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools

Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

Hobbycraft Star Punch

Big Shot & Dovecraft Star Die

Messy Eater

Another day, another scraplift. I'm up to Day 6 now in Scrap Squad's 30 Days of Summer Scraplifts, and this time the team selected an original from Jenessa Franco for Paper Issues.

The main elements were four tags, a stencilled background and a single photo. I started with the background but chose a sheet from a Vicki Boutin pad rather than creating my own. I then coloured some tags with inks to match and layered them behind my photo. I started with four of them as per the original page, but they covered too much of the page so I cut back to three.

Supplies

Paper - Vicki Boutin Let's Wander, Shimelle Never Grow Up

Tags - American Crafts

Letters - Maggie Holmes

Stickers - Paige Evans

Label - Unknown

Puffy Stars - Pinkfresh Studio

Ink - Ranger

In the Park

I've reached Day 5 now in Scrap Squad's 12 Days of Summer Scraplifts. The original page by Ginny Hughes has a full page photo with an overlapping stack of ephemera. 

I didn't have such a large picture to hand so I lined up three photos in a column instead and picked out an ephemera pack from Amy Tangerine to go with them. I actually had another smaller photo which was the perfect size for a frame in the pack which I stacked up with an assortment of other pieces, puffy stickers and nuvo drops.

My page is wider than Ginny's so I had some empty space on the right of my photos. I kept it mostly clear but did add a few embellishments, my title and a journalling card.

Supplies

Paper - Paige Evans Whimsical

Letters - Maggies Holmes

Ephemera - Amy Tangerine Picnic in the Park

Puffy Stickers - Jillibean Soup, Freckled Fawn, Elle's Studio

Dots - Nuvo Drops

In the Back Yard

Continuing with the 12 Days of Summer Scraplifts from Scrap Squad; this is the fourth in the series, lifting a page made by Lacey Robin for Paper Issues. 

I chose my photo first, an old one of my cousin's children, and then my papers, a mix of Shimelle and Amy Tangerine designs. In choosing my papers, I decided to make the back triangles all the same and overlaid them with white-based patterns, repeating one of the papers.

I double-matted my photo and moved it across to suit the direction that the children are facing, tucking a label and border strip in around the edges. There was already a lot of colour and pattern on the page so I used plain gold butterflies for embellishment and added puffy stickers and enamel dots. 

Supplies

Cardstock - DCWV

Paper - Shimelle Never Grow Up, Amy Tangerine Brave & Bold, Amy Tangerine Shine On

Letters - Maggie Holmes

Border - Bazzill

Butterfly Stickers - Jen Hadfield

Puffy Stickers - Amy Tangerine

Ladybird - Twilight Crafts

Enamel Dots - Pretty My Page

Ink - Ranger

Learning to Slide

I'm jumping forward now to Day 7 of Scrap Squad's 10 Days of Summer Scraplifts because Twilight Crafts have an excellent cut-file which works with that scraplift, and I used it for my latest DT page.

The original page by Julie Taylor for Hey Little Magpie has a fan of triangles behind a circular photo, and I used the Wonky Star cut-file for my triangles rather than trying to work out which sizes to cut for myself. I'd originally intended to layer them up in a similar manner to those on Julie's page but once I got going I stayed with the full circle of the cut-file but moved all the pieces closer together.

I used an assortment of Paige Evans papers, cutting the triangles from four patterns which suited the photo of my mum with my son in the park when he was small. That photo was originally 4"x6" but I cut it down to a 3.5" circle which I matted on pale blue cardstock.

With my triangles in place I ran my title around the edge of them following a circular template and went even further from Julie's original page, with just a few puffy stickers for embellishment rather than her much larger cluster.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill

Paper - Paige Evans Whimsical, Paige Evans Truly Grateful

Letters - Studio Calico?

Puffy Stickers - Paige Evans, Elle's Studio

Ink - Ranger

Paint - Golden

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circle Templates

Disclosure - I received the digital cut-file free of charge from Twilight Crafts. All other supplies are my own.

Bath Buddies

I'm sharing my latest page for Twilight Crafts and Jenny Wren Cut-Files today; it's one that turned out exactly how I imagined in my head (which doesn't always happen).

I cut the Bubbles Pattern 1 cut-file at about 6" across and used it as a mask with distress inks in each corner of the page to create a border around the layout. I then used structure paste through a stencil to create a smaller circle of bubbles.

I took a couple of old 4x6 photos of my son and nephew in the bath and cut each boy out in a circle, matting them in yellow for a little contrast and using alphabet dies with the same cardstock to cut my title letters. I layered the photos over a few strips of patterned paper and ran my title letters round them.

Supplies

Cardstock - UK Crafts, Bazzill

Paper - My Mind's Eye, Bo Bunny

Structure Paste - Flying Tiger

Enamel Dots - Hey Little Magpie

Ink - Ranger

Mist - Cosmic Shimmer

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Fiskars Shape Cutter & Circle Template

Big Shot & The Works Alphabet Dies

Heidi Swapp Stencil

Disclosure - I received the digital cut-file free of charge from Twilight Crafts. All other supplies are my own.

Push Me!

Last month I made a page for Twilights Crafts using the Hexagon Background cut-file from Jenny Wren Cut-Files. I shrank the file and welded several together to give me more, smaller hexagons and once I'd cut it I decided that I had to do something with my stack of cardstock hexagons. I chose a neutral background and used the cut-file outline to help with spacing them correctly but in a more haphazard pattern than the original grid.

I've come back to that background now, and picked an old single photo to go with it as I didn't want to cover up too many of the hexagons. I splodged distress oxide ink over the page, concentrating it in the middle, and matted the photo on several patterned papers. 

I would normally keep my embellishments much closer to the photo, but I felt the need to spread them out here for once. They are really very simple with just  strips of washi tape, cardstock hearts left over from another page and a few enamel dots.

Supplies

Paper - Crate Paper Random, Crate Paper DIY Shop

Letters - Pinkfresh Studio

Washi Tape - Crate Paper, Ebay

Enamel Dots - Simple Stories, Ebay

Ink - Ranger

Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools

Silhouette Portrait & Hexagon Background Cut-File

Disclosure - I received the digital cut-file free of charge and the distress oxide ink at a discounted price from Twilight Crafts. All other supplies are my own.

Bubbles

Hello and Happy New Year!

Today I'm sharing a page that I made for Twilight Crafts on a background from a Vicki Boutin mixed media pad. There are two pads in the shop and I chose the one from her Let's Wander collection, which contains 36 pages, three each of 12 different designs.

I started from a green and yellow background with gold circles printed on it, and paired it with an old photo of my son. I wanted to show off as much of the background as possible, and found a sketch from Scrap a Sketch which worked with that plan. I rotated both the photo and the layers behind it but positioned the printed mixed media pattern on the right of the page as in the sketch.

I gave my photo a very narrow cardstock mat and then placed it and my title on a piece from a 49 & Market collage stack. I added a couple of clusters above and below the photo that aren't on the sketch, positioned so that the look like one piece running behind the photo.

Supplies

Cardstock - Papermania

Paper - American Crafts/Vicki Boutin Let's Wander

Letters - Paper House

Ephemera - 49 & Market Vintage Artistry, Echo Park This & That

Border Sticker - atd

Washi Tape - Unknown

Rain Dots - Cloud 9 Designs

Puffy Stickers - Heidi Swapp Journal Studio, Studio Calico

Ink - Ranger

Disclosure - I received a discount on the Vicki Boutin Mixed Media pad which I bought from Twilight Crafts.

 

Watchet Harbour

Today I'm sharing my second November DT page for Twilight Crafts featuring a Jenny Wren Cut-File.

On my last page for them (In Grandma's Bath) I used the Overlapping Circles Background cut-file as a mask to ink a pattern on my page. Once I'd finished, I decided to re-use the inky mask as a layer on a new page. First I added extra yellow ink to the mask to extend the colour to the edges, then found a photo and rummaged through my scraps box for suitable papers.

My photo is an old one of the lighthouse at Watchet Harbour in Somerset; the anchor print paper was perfect for the theme and the right colour too, then I picked the multi-coloured stripe, chose blue for my background and included red as an accent.

I cut my title in two fonts using my Big Shot and created three embellishment clusters from various pieces which match the colour scheme.

Supplies
Paper - Pebbles New Addition, Glitz Design Uncharted Waters, American Crafts/Dear Lizzy

Label Stickers - Tim Holtz, My Mind's Eye

Cork Arrows - Studio Calico

Floral Puffy Stickers - OneCanoeTwo

Enamel Dots - Altenew, Echo Park, My Mind's Eye

Ink - Ranger

Mist - Mister Huey's

Tools

Silhouette Portrait & Overlapping Circles Cut-File

Big Shot

Sizzix Alphabet Dies

The Works Alphabet Dies

Disclosure: I received the digital cut-file free of charge from Twilight Crafts. All other supplies are my own.

Snack Attack

I made this page a few weeks back, and missed blogging it at the time. It was for a challenge from Peartree Cutfiles to use circles on a page. I picked a couple of photos of our son as a baby and the end of an old paper collection to kill. I had no full sheets left so went with a half-and-half background, using a free circles cut-file to cover the join and adding extra circles with candi dots and epoxy dots.

Supplies

Cardstock - Papermania

Paper - Fancy Pants Winterland

Letters & Stars - Rosie's Studio

Candi Dots - Craftwork

Epoxy Dots - Cloud 9 Design

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Silhouette Portrait & PTCF Falling Circles Cut-File

Big Shot & Dovecraft Label Die

Puddle Season

I recently joined the design team at Twilight Crafts for a three month term, and today I'm sharing my first creation for them, featuring the umbrella cut-file from Jenny Wren Cut-Files. 

My photo's an old one of my nephew which I've scrapped before but my old page makes me cringe whenever I see it, so it was time for a re-do.

I chose papers from Cocoa Vanilla Studio's Daydream collection for my  new page and paired them with puffy stickers from their newer These Days collection as the colours and patterns are very similar.

I don't have any ephemera from either collection but I was able to cut the rainbow and the flower clusters from two 12x12 papers.

Supplies

Cardstock - Bazzill

Paper - Cocoa Vanilla Studio Daydream

Letters - KaiserCraft

Puffy Stickers - Cocoa Vanilla Studio

Enamel Dots - Echo Park?

Mist - Cosmic Shimmer

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Disclosure: I received the cut-file free of charge from Twilight Crafts. All the supplies are my own.

Beep! Beep!

I'm combining three challenges in one page today as For the Love of Pretty Paper recently held a 'Journey of Change' cybercrop and Dotty About Flair are celebrating their first birthday with a whole month of challenges.

The first challenge was to be inspired by this rainbow page from Scrappy Kathy for DAF, which came with a video showing how she used bleeding tissue paper to create her coloured circles.

I'd never heard of bleeding tissue paper before, and had no intention of buying it, so I used India inks for my page, and switched to a full circle of coloured splodges to match the first July sketch from Lottie Loves Paper.

I used an ink dropper to dot my ink on the page and then spritzed each dot with water to make it spread. I'd never done anything like this before, generally preferring more control over any mixed media I use, so it qualifies for FTLOPP's 'Try Something New' challenge.

Once my ink had dried, I spattered the page with gold paint and then stamped circles over each colour and added puffy stars to each one. I also added nuvo drops; I'm not sure that was the right decision but they can't be undone.

My page is rather warped despite using Bazzill Marshmallow cardstock, so I'm hoping it flattens down in the album.

Supplies

Cardstock - Bazzill

Letters - American Crafts/Shimelle Box of Crayons

Inks - Dr Ph Martins

Puffy Stars - Paperchase

Dots - Nuvo Drops

Ink Pad - Ranger

Paint - Golden

Tools

Personal Impressions ' Circle Tags' Stamps

Ball Boys

I'm continuing to tick off the cake-themed birthday challenges from For the Love of Pretty Paper; the fifth one was 'Chocolate Fudge Cake', or 'More is More'. I've gone for an unconventional interpretation with five photos on a double page.

Those photos are old ones of my (now-adult) son and nephew in a ball pit when they were small, and I used an old page layout too, the May class from Shimelle Laine's 4x6 Photo Love class way back in 2011.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill Swiss Dot

Paper - Pink Paislee Atlas, PhotoPlay Boarding Pass

Tickets - Unknown

Word Stickers - Bazzill

Glitter Tape - The Works

Enamel Dots - Marianne Designs, Doodlebug, Eyelet Outlet, Echo Park

Ink - Ranger

Tools

Silhouette Portrait

Fiskars Postage Stamp Border Punch

X-Cut Circle Punch

Big Shot & M&C Fancy Circle Die

Kingswear from Dartmouth

Up to this point in my National Scrapbooking Day (Weekend? Week? Month??) crafting, I'd been making pages that I would have made anyway for my 2005 and 2020 albums, just tweaking them here and there to fit them to the easier challenges.

However, every year there comes a point when the challenges drive the pages instead, and I've reached that point for this year. This page came from a Lottie Loves Paper challenge to use a set of step-by-step instructions, which needed a single landscape photo. I don't have many single photos these days as digital makes multiples so easy, so I went back for a trawl through my old film photo albums for something suitable. 

This photo was taken in November 1998 so I followed the autumnal feel picked out an assortment of coordinating scraps for the page. I distressed all the edges of my papers for a challenge from For the Love of Pretty Paper and added the line of tags on the left for a challenge from Hey Little Magpie.

I missed Lottie Loves Paper's deadline for uploading this one so I had no qualms about moving, rotating or cropping a few of the papers when I wasn't entirely happy with their designated size or placement in the instructions.

Supplies
Cardstock - Bazzill, Papermania, DCWV
Paper - Carta Bella Fall Blessings, Jillibean Soup Apple Cheddar Soup, Little Yellow Bicycle Acorn Hollow, My Mind's Eye Chalk Studio II
Letters - Basic Grey, Jenni Bowlin
Wood Veneer - Creative Embellishments, Studio Calico
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Mister Huey's, Docrafts

Tools
Big Shot & Dovecraft Tag Die
Woodware Tag Punch

Play Date

My blog posts have been running behind my scrapbooking recently, and I made this page at the end of May from one of the sketch challenges in the Quirky Kit Subscribers Group on Facebook. 

I decided to kill off a 6x6 pad for this page, an old one from My Mind's Eye that I have been trying to finish for a while but there's always more there than I think. It was mostly odd shaped scraps, perfect for punching lots of circles which I arranged in a similar way to those on the sketch, though mine are smaller so I used more.

I thought that the jumble of patterns and colours would work well with a toddler photo, so picked an old one of my son and my friend's daughter and matted it on a neutral woodgrain with a few scraps from the pad layered at the edge. The page looked unfinished to my eye so I let it sit for a while before adding a doodled outline to each circle, a few epoxy stars and some word stickers.

Supplies
Cardstock - Colorset
Paper - My Mind's Eye 
Letters - American Crafts
Word Stickers - Authentique
Epoxy Stars - Funny Sticker World
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Mister Huey's, Cosmic Shimmer, Tattered Angels

Tools
X-Cut Circle Punch

Have Passport, Will Travel

This page comes from the last of the National Scrapbooking Day challenges in the For the Love of Pretty Paper group on Facebook, though I actually made the page long after NSD had passed. The challenge was a sketch from Laura featuring a trio of tags and I have a pack of tags that I want to stash-bust so it was a must-do for me.

I need to renew my passport this year and that had set me thinking about scrapbooking some of my older passport photos. I don't have originals but I took new pictures of the photo pages of my old passports and put one on each tag of the sketch. These are me aged 15, 20 and 27.

Supplies
Paper - Basic Grey Carte Postale, KaiserCraft Secret Bird Society
Tags - American Crafts
Globe - OneCanoeTwo
Epoxy Stickers - Ebay
Enamel Dots - My Mind's Eye
Washi Tape - Stampin' Up?
Mist - Mister Huey's

Friends

Another page for a Lottie Loves Paper stash-busting challenge; this one was to use only patterned paper and no cardstock for a page. I like a patchwork for showing off a variety of patterned papers, and turned to this month's sketch from Creative Scrappers, pairing it with an old photo of my son and a friend's daughter when they were toddlers.

I chose a 6x6 paper pad from Authentique as being the easiest way to use lots of co-ordinating patterns and then joined two pieces together for the large box at the bottom of the sketch. Two of the long strips at the top of my page are washi tape and the third is a paper from my scraps box. My background is almost plain, but it's a very subtle patterned paper from Echo Park, and not cardstock.

Next I hand-stitched the three circles and added circular embellishments in the same way as the sketch has them. One of my papers had critters on it so I punched some of those to use with epoxy circles rather than all being paper. My main changes were to use more circles instead of the star indicated on the sketch and to move my title as it fitted perfectly at the bottom of the page and looked lost and 'floaty' on the left.

Supplies
Paper - Echo Park Not to Self, Authentique Nestled, Heidi Swapp No Limits
Letters - SEI
Washi Tape - Dovecraft, Little B, Unknown
Word Sticker - Crate Paper/Maggie Holmes
Epoxy Circles - Ebay
Enamel Dots - Studio Calico, Stampin'Up
Embroidery Thread - DMC
Ink - Ranger
Mist - Docrafts

Tools
Fiskars Circles Template
X-Cut Circle Punches
Big Shot & Spellbinders Circle Dies

Snips & Snails

Time for one final throwback page, the last one that I made for National Scrapbooking Day back in May; I can't remember the challenge details, but it definitely included the use of circles. 

I chose a circle cut file for the background of my page, cutting it in a paper I liked and layering it over a plainer grid paper. Too late, I realised that I had the papers the wrong way round as I had too much of the background on show and very little of the patterned paper that had I wanted to see. I rescued the page by selecting some of the circles that had been cut away and placing them inside larger circles on the page.

I wanted the cut file to almost fill the 12x12 page, but I have Silhouette Portrait which has an 8" cutting width, so I designed my page with a full length column of photos so that I could remove the central part of the design and just cut the two sides of the file on the Portrait. 

My photos are old ones of my son and nephew, I picked an appropriate Project Life card to act as a title and added three clusters of embellishments to complete the page.

Supplies
Cardstick - Bazzill
Paper - Heidi Swapp, Cloud 9/Fiskars, My Mind's Eye
Puffy Stickers - American Crafts
Enamel Dots - Studio Calico, My Mind's Eye
Chipboard Stars - Studio Calico

Tools
Silhouette Portrait

In the Big Bath

This is my penultimate throwback to National Scrapbooking Day, when several challenge sites asked us to scraplift ourselves. Any regular reader here will now that I do this all the time, but For the Love of Pretty Paper added an extra condition - to scraplift either our first page or a very early page.

The first album that I made was back in 2008 for a Norwegian fjords cruise. I had a flick through and picked a four photo page to scraplift (which had the bonus of fitting in with a challenge from Hey Little Magpie to scrap four or more photos on a single page).

My 'new' four photos are actually older, a set from bathtime when my now twenty-year-old son was small. I split the page in the same way, but this time I matted all my photos on the 'opposite' paper. My title's bigger this time, and uses letter stickers rather than being printed on the computer. The journalling's now hand-written and has moved to the bottom, and the new page has some embellishment (though admittedly not much).

Supplies
Paper - Heidi Swapp September Skies, Studio Calico, Crate Paper
Letters - October Atternoon
Acetate & Stars - from Stash
Metal Charms - Making Memories