Scrap Map Saturday ~ Lolly

The theme this week at Creative Craft World is "All Things Girlie", which I'm not, so I went with a cute picture of me as a child. Lolly is my childhood nickname.


I don't own an awful lot of pink or feminine scrapping stuff, but I do have some American Crafts Dear Lizzy. This is the kind that comes with the album kits that they sell in T K Maxx, the thinner variety that is single sided and tears as soon as you look at it. Have to say, I'm not a fan, but the albums are great and most of the American Crafts embellishments are perfectly fine. Besides, £7 for a 12x12 album, embellies and some paper? I'm not complaining about that! ;)

The circles on the sketch have been transformed into lots of large flowers and I've layered up some Primas and AC flowers on top of them. Jazzed up the flowers with Artemio stamps and, dare I say, the large blue brad is by Laurence Llewellyn Bowen?! In my defence, he was another cheapy from T K Maxx and the brads aren't bad, although the paper sucked!

I did manage to semi-distress some of the AC papers without it tearing and I stitched down one of the corners that refused to stay stuck. Punched some Martha Stewart butterflies out of Sassafrass Lass (woo! I mixed Companies again!!) and made my own journalling spot from some more S. Lass.

This week I used Distress Ink in Tattered Rose.

Well, that's it. March is all but over and my GDT spot at Creative Craft World has ended. I've had a great time this month and look forward to doing future sketches ~ depending on Baby, of course!

Melman at the London Eye

I have a new laptop, it doesn't have Paint Shop Pro on it yet and if I can't find the disk it never will! Anyway, I now have to edit my layouts using Paint (which is a lot funkier on Windows 7 than on my old laptop), Picasa and Picnik. I think that will probably do for now.


This week the challenge was to use white space, one photo and bling. Used my new Rusty Hinge distress ink as well, which works beautifully on giraffes.

Retreat Layouts 1

My plan for the Retreat this year was to only take offcuts of my old papers, do a bit of pre-Retreat planning, add some embellies and create my own mini kits. It worked to a certain extent. I did get bits used up, but between the planning and executing stages I changed my mind about how I wanted things to come together. Unfortunately, by that point, all my stuff was at home and I was in deepest, darkest Olney! Never mind!

Two wedding layouts using MME - Love Me Do.



I prepped the butterfly at home using Faded Jeans ink, Faded Jeans stickles and GA. I then buggered up the layout by using my new Chipped Sapphire ink on the title after I'd stuck it down. I managed to ink the alpha, the paper, the butterfly AND the photo.

Luckily, I've not played with the photos so it doesn't show up too badly! Actually, neither of these came together exactly as I'd hoped.

Scrap Map Saturday ~ Love

The theme this week was diagonals. I had what I thought was a good idea... and then I became a little side-tracked and forgot what I had planned to do.

I used my new Artemio stamps that I bought in Paris at the beginning of the month and then was going to stamp the hearts so that the text was diagonal inside the hearts... as you can see, that didn't happen. Still, once the hearts are stuck on at jaunty angles the text is diagonal to the page, so it sorta worked!


These were some of the wedding photos that I'd a hard time deciding how to scrap. They're either a bit fuzzy, or there was too much background or we're pulling funny faces. Trimmed down and grouped together like this I think they actually work. Perhaps there's something to be said for multiple photo layouts?!

Oh, and I seem to be the Guest Design Team member for March *blush* - thank you Creative Craft World!

Jan Week 5 - Belles

I promise I did this weekly challenge in time! I just put it somewhere safe for the GA to dry - and forgot all about it. Still, that's better than my usual trick of dumping something on top of wet GA and spreading it everywhere.


From the huge choice of options I went for a theme of friends, and the techniques of doodling, hand written journalling, distress ink and one stamp. Sketch used.

Pictures are Susi and Maria, fellow Bijoux Belles, on our visit to London and The Eye. Maria is tucking into a Screme Egg - the halloween version of the Easter treat.

The Bottom of the Venus

I wanted to do something non-Halloween with the gorgeous new Halloween papers from MME - strokable flocking! - and this is what I made.

Everyone was taking pictures of her front and the crowds were so large it was hard to get a decent front shot. So I decided to be different, go round the back and get this angle of her instead!

I was also able to use the stamp set that I bought simply because it featured the Venus de Milo...

In which I use Glimmer Mist for the First Time!

I bought myself a set of Glimmer Mists that were on sale and when they arrived I couldn't wait to use them all. As you can see, I've not quite grasped the concept of using them lightly and subtley. The mist came out rather more as a deluge, but I guess that's part of the learning process.


Also used the Blended Ink Tutorial that I found on Studio Calico. I think I had rather more success with that than I did with the misting!

I seem to have gone from someone who doesn't stamp to someone who stamps on everything...



And this is what happened when I tried to Mist through a Crafters Workshop template!


Very runny and blobby! Another thing that requires practice. Must go in search of a tutorial!

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.

Tatty 1 and Tatty 2

I'm trying to do more with layering, journalling and putting things together myself rather than following sketches all the time. I made this for the latest weekly challenge at UK Scrappers. I should have added a third colour to the background, it's missing some Shabby Shutters! It's just Mustard Seed and Scattered Straw



Tried to cluster some journalling boxes, first time of trying this.

Chopped up and coloured in one stamp to make a cluster. Never tried this either!

This Castle Hath a Pleasant Seat...

The UKS weekly challenge involved using a Shakespeare quote. Well, of course, it had to be Macbeth. What else is there?! So I went for this quote:


The picture is John writing his postcards in the cafe at Edinburgh Castle. This took ages (to me anyway!) over three hours. Just finished it in time to watch the England v Slovenia match in the World Cup.

Sketchy Thursdays 6.10

I've decided to try and combine some other challenges with the Weekly Challenge that is set on UKS and to not stress too much about getting the WC (as we call it) done fully each week. I usually try and cover all the bases to get the points for the Team, but I often end up with layouts that I'm not 100% happy with.

So this is the first of the combined efforts and I've combined with Sketchy Thursdays! I'm still not 100% happy with it as I decided to use my own handwriting on it (to make a difference, to not keep using up those darned pricey alphas...) and I've never liked my handwriting. Still, makes it unique!

I am happy with the background paper, however, which started off as an 8x8 piece of white that you get slipped into page protectors in new albums. I abused it with stamps, Distress Ink (and Reinker in a spray) and then some more Distress Ink. Then I covered it all up with the Crate Paper! Oh well, it was fun and very messy.

This is another photo from Duxford last month where Daddy and I were stood under the flight path with all of the other crazy fools who don't want to fork out the money to go to the display properly. This plane was so close its wingtips didn't fit in the shot...

Father's Day Challenge

Here's my entry for the lastest Creative Craft World Challenge!

Well, the biggest challenge was choosing which picture of my Father to use and trying to avoid doing yet another Road Trip layout as those albums are full to bursting! So I decided to pick one of the most recent. I took this last month on a trip to Duxford. Each year we go and stand in 'Farmer Bob's* Field' and take pictures of the planes.

This year the Parentals are going to be away during the Flying Legends display, so we went during the Spring Airshow instead. Different sorts of planes than the ones we usually see, no Corsair and more modern fast things.

Here is Daddy, taking pictures:


and here's a close up of the plane. I think it's Sally B, but I might be wrong:


As you can see, I've chosen to do this Challenge as an 8.5x11.

EDIT: I won!

*no idea if his name is really Bob, but it's somethig to call him!

Road Trip... again!

Last week's challenge at UKS. I did get it done on time, I just didn't upload it to my Blog on time.

Layouts for No Reason

I do keep making layouts for challenges and never seem to make them just for myself. The Paperclipping Roundtable seems to think that this can sometimes be bad for your personal creativity, so I've made up a few that aren't sketch based. I'm also loving 8.5 x 11 as a size at the moment, not that I have any albums of this size, I just like the rectangularliness of it.

This first one is Melman at Risby Barns in April. John took the shot of me standing by this giraffe print, Puppet on hand, looking silly. Not one person looked as us and the cafe was packed. Oh well, so much for being embarrassed.


I bought a piece of Three Bugs paper on purpose as it had giraffe and lion strips on it. I've already used the Lion strips. I took some elephant pictures earlier this month, so now I have to keep hold of the elephant strips! First use of my new giraffe stamp.

This next one is another of my old pictures from the hot air ballooning days. This was taken on a trip to France, we'd landed in Farmer Lambert's field and they invited us it for coffee and a drink (it was about 10am, time for a Mirabel).


I was penpals with the girl in green for a while. The farmer kept his guns in the downstairs toilet and the fly papers were so full of flies that they were fighting to get a leg on. Good fun had by all. :)

Sketchy Thursdays & The Mill Pond

The local cheapy shop is suddenly stocking a whole bunch of American Crafts products and on Saturday I bought myself one of their albums that came with some of the Travel range. This is one of the lines that I bought pre-Road Trip so I'd be ready to scrap it when I came home. I'd actually run out of it, although I'm not the biggest fan of AC papers, so I thought some more wouldn't hurt.

Of course, it's the cheapy end of their ranges and is single sided and thinner than the papers I originally bought. This makes me want to pop them away and ignore them! So I've attacked them straight away and done a couple of layouts from them using as -yet-unscrapped Road Trip photos.

This first one is for Sketchy Thursdays 5.6 - The Scenic Route.

Valley of Fire State Park, Daddy and the beautiful hire car!

I then went right outside the box with this one for The Mill Pond's latest Write It Challenge. The task was to incorporate your title within your journaling and try something different with your title and or journaling that you personally have not tried before. Well, I've certainly done that! I've never done such a large title and I've certainly not stamped and cut out such a lot for a title before either. My journalling is between the lines of the title:

I'm not happy with the large balloon, but I'd stuck it down before I realised that I should have folded a piece of paper and just done half a balloon (like paper dolls). I rectified that for the tiny balloons and you can see the lines up their middles! I do enjoy making that grass, although it is time consuming.

A close up so you can see the journalling / title / grass and balloon.

I'm not sure the journalling is visible in the picture, but the gist of the story... Mark is a friend of my Dad's and we knew he'd be at Albuquerque for the Balloon Fiesta. We hadn't arranged to meet up, but after the mass ascension on the second day we were there he just found us on the field! It's a BIG place and it was amazing how he managed it. A little bit of home in the middle of America.

Official 2008 Balloon Fiesta Gallery.

EDIT: I won!

Sketchy Thursdays 4.8

Might be a little late with this one! I'd forgotten that I'd not done the main sketch after doing the Second Chance and the Blog Hop!

The Bijoux Belles at our first retreat taken during our class.

Just for Fun

Not made a layout for fun in a while. They're usually all UKS entries or part of a sketch challenge. This one is just me finally deciding to use up the last bits of the gorgeous Stomp.

Summer School 2009, tired out geology students at Hartley Bay looking at rocks.

Although I was using Stomp I had to add on the Archaic dinosaur that was one of the first things I embossed.

Twisted Sketches #42

The Twist this week is Flight. I guess this is technically "landing", but we were just flying. I'm in the basket with my mother and I think this is the early 90s, but I'm not too sure about the date. We're at the Lorraine Balloon Fiesta in Metz, France which is held every two years.

As I've just discovered the joys of Distress Inking and embossing I'm doing it on every layout that crosses my desk. I just need some more inks now as distressing with one does look a little odd.

Twisted Sketches #40

{click to enlarge}

This week the Twist was "staples", so I have stapled netting to the screen print paper.

Castle Rising and Blaise Castle (balanced on my hand...)

Loads of new stuff for me on this layout. I've used my Quirky Kit - Resolutions for the first time. Never used net or strings of sequins before, so that was fun! The title I made using my shiny new Provence stamps by Technique Tuesday. I still totally blame Maria for making me buy them, but I think she was right. I've embossed them, which is a new technique for me. AND... the cardstock is Coredinations, something I've not used before. Much sanding fun.

After all that I still have to take wonky pictures on top of the living room radiator to get any daylight!