Explore : Prompt 5 ~ Friday Project

I chose to make a layout with the map circle embellishments I made. Although I do scrap myself, I tend to do it with other people in the shot, so I made sure that I used a photo of just myself - a self portrait, in fact! Unless you think I'm not alone because "Frankie the Bump" is also in the picture.

Explore : Prompt 1

I signed up on Thursday to Shimelle's Explore Class. I've not done one before, and quite frankly, I'm doing it to see what all the fuss is about! Oh, and to do something a bit different on the creative front. Not sure whether I'll be able to do it AND wrangle the Baby, but we'll see!


My 'Play Book' cover.


My first piece of journalling. I'm using old hotel stationery for the journalling sections. I always save bits like that and they hang around for ages unused. That was one of the suggestions, and a very good one!

I've taken the Self Portrait, but I send my pics to be developed, so I'll pop it in when it comes back.

Massive Weekly Challenge Catch-Up!

I did get all these done on time, but my lack of mojo and general enthusiasm has meant me not taking the pictures in time and getting them loaded onto UKS. So here are a bunch of layouts for weekly challenges taken yesterday in rather dodgy light!


Baby Blue / 3 of Something / Bunting / Celebration
Last Christmas with both sets of Parentals.


Ice cream colours / Change / Stripes / Journalling
Me as a child. I was able to use up a lot of bits of Crate Paper - Blue Hill that I've had lying around for ages.


Guilty Pleasure / Chocolate Brown / Circle
John and I indulging in morning tea at Little Bettys in York. I saved one of the doily things that go under tea cups to catch the drips - gotta love emphemera. Also managed to use one of the beautiful Lakeland doilies that I've been stroking for a while.

Different Fonts / Inspired by Nature /Make an Embellishment
Used some of the skeleton leaves that Daddy found for me at a boot sale. :)


Panorama / Stamping / Altered Lettering
This one is actually current! Grand Canyon from North Rim. Stamped journalling boxes and painted thickers.

Grinding and Sight-Seeing

I forgot to upload this one in time for the Weekly Challenge on UKS last week, still it was done in time. You had to use brights, ribbon and a page size that you don't often use. It's been a while since I did an 8x8, so I went with that. I've also been wanting to use up more of my scraps, so I made this from Christmas papers. Next challenge to Self will be a non Halloween layout using Halloween papers. I have a lot of them now and very few pictures from Halloweens.

Just a quickie of Edinburgh Castle. You can see me reflected in it...

Up Up and Away!

Haven't touched anything but the Kaisercraft for days! Here are the latest three - you need to click to enlarge:

The Breitling Wing Walkers do their wing walking at Duxford before the Flying Legends fly past. It all looked like great fun until you realise that they have to climb off the wings and back into the planes in mid-flight!

One of the balloons at Albuquerque. I took this one especially because of its patchwork look and thought it would be a fun one to scrap. It's taken me almost two years to get round to scrapping it! Used my Martha Stewart butterfly for the first time and adapted an idea from the Studio Calico blog. They suggested creating faux washi tape using the material tape you get from the pharmacy, I thought I'd give it a go by stamping onto masking tape. Seems to work!

Another balloon from Albuquerque. For more information on the Zia of New Mexico click here.

Very bizarrely all the photos on the layouts have brightened after I took their pictures! On the layouts the colours in the photos are much more muted as I used the desaturation technique on them. Running them through Picasa to sharpen them up seems to have brightened them up as well...

Albuquerque

One of the latest Kaisercraft lines is Up, Up & Away. Well, rather obvious that I'd have to have some of it, plenty of uses for balloony papers. I bought the clear stamps as well, they feature three balloons and a nice journalling ticket. Plenty of practical uses and hardly an indulgence!

Used Merly Impressions for the first time as they specialise in Kaisercraft and WOW! Awesome service. So quick, emails to let you know they've dispatched, such a simple thing and yet many companies don't do that. The package was parcelled perfectly as well, attention to detail! Not to mention her sending three of the Kaisercraft magazines as well. Such fun to browse through and get inspiration from.

This was my first time using Kaisercraft paper as well, but I can safely say that I'll be back to Kaisercraft AND Merly Impressions in the future.

One of the tips in the magazine was to desaturate photos so that they match the earthier tones of this collection. So I did. Here's a layout with an ex-bright photo that has been desaturated. It looks so much better like this.