Off you go

This is the first of three layouts featuring my eldest son. It was just coincidence really - or maybe not as he has just left University, is about to celebrate his 21st birthday and is applying for jobs all over the place which means even more letting go and gentle encouragement from his ma!

Which is where this first layout comes in - the last one using just the Urbaine main kit

I have to be honest. The cardstock is not the same as the one in the kit. Because when I was cutting the triangle pattern on the bottom left  out of the 12 x 12 cardstock with my Cameo, I failed to make enough room on my desk for it to cut and the page was ruined. So I started again with something similar that I had. The arrows and title was cut from what was left of the original cardstock so you can see the tonal difference.

The cut file I used was a free one that was originally for an 8 x 11 1/2 page that I managed to adapt (the most advanced thing I have tried with the Cameo so far. Go me) I also cut it out of the October Afternoon Travel Girl and 7 Dots papers. The OA I cut twice so that I could use both sides of the papers. It turned out once would have been enough! I inked the triangles with Vintage Photo distress ink. In order to make the sticking down straightforward I added a scrap piece of card stock behind the holes left in the 12 x12. It did make it a lot easier!

It was going to be a fairly clean layout and then I thought - ooh I could use one of the pieces of patterned paper that I had cut the triangles out of as a mask. So I did - using Peeled Paint distress ink. And then I decided to use a few stamps and then some spots of green Studio Calico Mr Huey and lo - it wasn't clean anymore! But I decided to leave the title unadorned as a contrast. The title was cut twice to give some dimension.

 Behind the photo I layered some of the papers as well as two strips of the Elle Studio journalling tags. I sprinkled some of the spare triangles around the page and added journalling and then it was done.

Skin tone colour match

Well would you believe it?
That lovely red/pink/orange Glitz paper is a perfect match for my slightly overwarm face in this photo? So I just had to use it as part of this scrap page!

The layout came together quite quickly really. The gorgeous 7 Dots paper reminded me of the wall behind Carys and me. I carved out the middle to use another time. I added some of the triangle paper (nearest I had in the kit to stripes to echo Carys' dress) I cut out thre other triangles but used them on the reverse side and stuck them to the right hand side of the photo using pop dots.

A little dot paper was added to the bottom of the page. I then used two of the frames to go on the top and bottom of the photo mat. If you hadn't already guessed/noted - everything was again outlined with a Sharpie pen. I do like to have a sharp outline when I am using lots of patterned papers together.

I die cut some stars using Spellbinders and Dienamics dies and added them all using pop dots (v. fiddly!)

and then used two of the word stickers as a kind of subtitle

The title "Hello Pasty" and the types of the pasty we ate are underlined using Ranger Enamel Accents.
The photo does make me laugh as we look kind of glamorous but are eating traditional Cornish pasties in a very British way! The kit has been a great way of capturing this memory.

And who doesn't love chocolate?

This summer I met my great-nephew Max for the first time. He lives in Canada and family circumstances meant that he was already nearly 4 before he could come and visit. He is such a poppet - and very photogenic (when cleaned up!) He was only here for a few days but we took oodles of photos of him so expect to see a few layouts featuring the cutest Canuck ever.

On this day we went to the fab I Scream parlour in Brixham where I had a delicious lemon and chilli icecream  - my two favourite flavours! Max went for, well what he normally does. And why not?

 

When I saw this Glitz design paper I immediately thought of Max with the icecream dripping down his chin (and on his nose!).

I mounted the Finnley Drips paper on some Dapper Dan Chevron (which I had excavated the middle of first, don't want to waste a bit!)

Then layered it up with some Wild and Free Arrows which was border punched, along with a strip made of both sides of the October Afternoon Travel Girl, Plane Ticket.

When I started to arrange things on the page it was all a little too clean and if there is one thing that photo is not... so I grabbed an Imagine That arrow stamp and some Peeled Paint distress ink and created a border by pressing down really hard to start with, then normally and then didn't apply any more ink to the stamp.

I wanted to use some of those lovely chipboard cameras and decided that I would paint them. I thought I would experiment with using Gesso followed by Distress Stains. Not totally successful. The colours were a little too washed out but improved by brushing the same colour inks on top. It did leave a nice grainy feel however. As I utilised the two circles from the lenses as - well circles, I decided to make new lenses using vellum which also went behind the Freckled Fawn frame. 

Now that frame gave me a dilemma. It says "favorite". I wondered about leaving it there as Max is Canadian and you can spell it either way there (apparently). But I couldn't do it! So I covered it with one of the Elle Studio tags and used some of the letters that are included to go on the top of a Maya Road frame to spell "fave".

I put some spare white card stock from my stash behind the big and little frames. In the big one I wrote my journalling and in the small one I used an American Crafts Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm stamp roller, again trying to do the ombre thing with my stamping

For my finishing touches I used the alphabet with the kit along with a small Kesi'art alpha from a previous kit. I trimmed down some of the Dapper Dan Triangles which I combined with the middle of the "o"s on the sticker sheet. A little bit of Crate Paper washi (the green stripe) and a few little stick on gems from my enormous collection and I was done.
And in the mood for chocolate icecream...

English Country Garden

Isn't it exciting when a new Quirky kit arrives?
Perhaps like me you have been nose to screen at the previews but there is nothing like opening that paper bag to see the goodies in the flesh. And isn't this kit a treasure?
Ever since I first saw those Jillibean Soup photo frames I've been hoping to source them to try them out - and Leo has done the hard work for me. So I had to get down to using them right away.

I used the whole of the Glitz Design green paper as the background because I loved the colour and texture. In fact all of the papers used here are Glitz Design ones.

In my Picasa photo editing programme (it's free!) I cropped my photos to a square. After a while I noticed that it offered several options for cropping including some of these off centre shots which I loved. (I've only been using Picasa for about 7 years and never spotted this function before. In fairness I have often cropped using the manual setting but am now going to play around with their sizings a bit more to see what it suggests for other photos)

I printed the photos 2 per 4x6 print which was the perfect size for the frames once I had trimmed some of the spare white photo paper from top and bottom. Then it was a case of choosing placement and adhering them to the frame.
NB I only stuck them down top and bottom initially, which was fine before I adhered the whole set of six to the page but once I did that each of the thin side pieces began to buckle and it was awkward trying to add adhesive then.

I also stuck small pieces of the other two Glitz papers behind all the little cut outs - apart from "life".
I had done my outlining with a Sharpie thing and decided to do this to highlight the divisions between each of the white frames as well. This was a mistake as the Sharpie was too thick. So I covered it up (kind of) with some faux stitching using a thinner felt pen and echoed it with the outline around the whole page.

I added the lovely journalling spot, three strips of the washi tape and two of those fab cameras - I just added glue at their most opaque points. My love of things in threes was sorely tested but a third camera was just too heavy so I left it off in the end.

The title was cut on a Cameo machine and stuck down in an almost haphazard way reflecting the way the flowers grew in the cottage beds at the house we visited. (Or because I can't add such a long title and be sure of getting the thing straight. You decide)

The finishing touch was my Wink of Stella glitter pen which was used to highlight the bird (can't really see but it does sparkle in real life)

and all the little cut outs in the Jillibean Soup frames

Hope you are having fun with your kits - I'd love to see how you are using those frames!

New kits are out!

The brand new Quirky Kits are out now. Subscribers if you've not already got yours it should be landing with you any time now.
The brand new main kit is 'Urbaine'

I wanted to combine a few different ideas with this kit. Overall I wanted it to work for everyday scrapbooking so there's no fixed theme but I also wanted it to reflect the time of year. Last summer we had a lovely beachy feeling kit with the 'Milk Bar' if you can remember that one? So for this years kit I wanted to do something different so thought about summer in an urban environment. It also allowed me to mix in a few current trends like the little hints of neon colour. I know neon can be a little intimidating so I tried to include it but in a subtle way. I've combined natural greens and woodgrains with the brighter colours but there's also lots of white to make the hints of brighter colours pop more. Overall my hope was to create the look of neon but not in an intimidating way anyway ;)
With the whites in the kit you can also experiment with another trend using white on white. I've seen this popping up a lot across blogs and I think it looks great so there are papers, embellishments and stickers to allow you to experiment with the look on your pages. I also included a sheet of black card with your kit so you can go the total opposite way and use the white embellishments against the black to create a more dynamic look.
As usual I'll be looking for inspiration around the web and pinning it to the Pinterest page for this kit which you can find here, http://pinterest.com/craftytemplates/urbaine-and-skyline-julyaugust-quirky-kits/
They'll be lots of ideas and inspiration here over the coming weeks up to the release of the next kit at the end of September. Can't wait to see what you start to create with the new kits!
x Leo

Adventures in Project Life style scrapping

I got so carried away with new kit goodies I completely forgot to upload these last week!

Did you purchase one of the limited edition Quirky Life kits? Or are you thinking of experimenting with the Project Life scrapping style and using your Quirky Kit to decorate your Project Life album pages?
You can now purchase your Project Life basics to go along with your Quirky Kit so it's a great time to experiment and see if the style suits your kind of scrapbooking.

Here's my first play at scrapping with the Project Life pocket pages. I used items from the Summer Life kit and both of the last Quirky Kits, Candy Floss Cart and Ice Cream Stall and the pocket pages I used were from the 'mixed selection set' you can order from the Project Life extras page.

I started off by trying to do the photo diary style of Project Life. I picked out a random week and tried to remember to take a few photos along the way. This was so not my idea of fun! I'm the kind of photographer who sees the photo op first then reaches for the camera not one who goes around with the camera and snaps away at everything going on. I think the most useful tool for this kind of documenting would be a mobile phone with a good camera or if you're big into Instagram and take photos of everything (you know who you are!) it would be a great way to use some of those photos like a picture diary I recon. Anyway here are some of the pages I finished up making.

Here's one using one of the pages with the 6x6 pocket, (Design E).

 

For this one I used the Design C pocket page. It's split up into six 4x6 inch pockets but I used two 3x4 cards or photos to one pocket on one side of the spread.

 

The first challenge for me was, do I include a title and how would I add that to a page like I would a regular scrapbooking style page? What I ended up deciding was to use one of the pockets as the title or intro for the rest of the photos. Here I used the fabric postcard from the Quirky Life kit and fixed it to a piece of patterned paper, (to cover the back) then stuck it with doublesided tape inside the centre of the pocket, filled the pocket with sequins and then stitched across the top of the pocket to seal them in. The sun doodle and the stickers are stuck on top of the pocket to stop them being obscured by the sequins. I did find the stickers stick really well to the surface of the page protectors so I wouldn't need to worry about them coming off. All the bulky embellishments like the cork arrows I also stuck on top of the page protectors to stop them bunching up when the cards went into the pockets.

 

I enjoyed scrapping the pages but I don't think this diary style of scrapping is something I'd keep up with. It would be a great way to document something that's on going in your life I think, maybe the story of a weight loss or a childs first year or the first year of marriage. Something that maybe you could update every month with new photos then get to see the whole progression at the end of the year? There's lots of scope I think but it's deciding on a project to begin with and then seeing it through. I'm also thinking of using this style of scrapping to make another recipe journal, that would defo suite me better :)

 

OK so after that experiment I decided to have a go at another approach to scrapping with the pocket page protectors - using them to scrapbook lots of photos from an occasion. In this instance lots of wedding day photos. I started out with a regular scrapbook page then picked out some of the other photos from the same batch and used the pocket pages as a kind of 'follow on' from the main page.

 

 

I was trying to think up different ways to use the sequins and made these heart embellishments by gluing the sequins to cardstock with glossy accents and then cutting them out into the heart shapes.

 

 

I had lots of portrait photos to use so that started me off with which of the pocket pages to use, I started with design D for the first page using both sides. The pockets only opened on one side so I made the pocket fillers first then glued them together back to back before sliding them in the pockets.

 

For the photos I used Photobox to process them and picked the 6x4 size and the photos fit the pockets perfectly. For the 3x4 inch ones I printed them off on my printer but afterwards I did think you could edit the photos to stick two side by side and then have them processed as a 6x4 and cut them out from that.

One of the main things that really annoyed me about scrapping with the pocket pages was having to fit the pockets around the photos I had. As you can see from this page I wanted to use a portrait photo in the top right and didn't have a pocket page to fit this layout so I had to chop up the photo. It makes the spread a little more interesting but I did miss the freedom of a whole blank 12x12 page and the freedom of sticking down everything where I want it. It is a great way to scrapbook lots of photos though and would be great for scrapbooking holidays or days out or occasions like this where you take lots of photos but don't end up wanting to scrapbook most of them, it's a good way of getting those kinds of photos off the memory card/out of the photo wallets and into a more interesting scrapbook album. :)

Have you experimented with the Project Life pocket pages and your Quirky Kits? Are you a regular Project Life scrapbooker or just starting out and experimenting? I'd love to see your pages or hear your stories of how you got on to feature here on the Quirky Kits blog. Email me your projects to enquiries@craftyprincess.co.uk

x Leo