Scrap365 and Quirky Kits Blog Hop

We have joined forces with the fabulous Scrap365 Magazine girls to show you just how economical, exciting and inspirational subscribing to a kit can be!!

Scrap365 Magazine is encouraging everyone to create layouts from beginners to those with years of experience. The beautiful bi-monthly magazine is packed full of inspiration, projects and tutorials to get your creativity flowing. You can read more about Scrap365 from their website here, http://gb.trapletshop.com/scrap-365

Scrap365 have a Quirky Kit main kit up for grabs for their readers so make sure you read the info on the first stop on the blog hop with Ali's layout on the Scrap365 blog, scrap365.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Hi too if you're a first time visitor to Quirky Kits blog, I'm Leonora and I make up all the Quirky Kits for you to play with! I've been busy this past week putting the finishing touches to the next kits coming up, the July/August kits and I've been pinning things to the new kit Pinterest board so you can have a nosy at what's being cooked up when you've finished hopping! The subscription places for the next kits go up for sale on the 1st July.

OK onto what I've made for this fun blog hop!

Each of us was provided with a sketch to use and it's a cool one too here's the sketch:

We're also all working with the current Quirky Kits which if you've not seen them before you can check out here in the shop. I mixed up bits of all three kits and made a double layout inspired by the sketch. For the first layout I used the sketch the right way around:

Then for the opposite page I flipped the sketch upside down to work from:

Thank you to everyone who's played along with us!

If you're following along the list your next destination will be to Sian's blog over here, fromhighinthesky.blogspot.co.uk/ - Sian and the full list of participants is bellow:

scrap365.blogspot.co.uk/ - Ali

quirkykits.blogspot.co.uk/ - Leonora 

fromhighinthesky.blogspot.co.uk/ - Sian

dollopsofscrap.blogspot.co.uk/ - Eila

rukristin.com/blog/ - Kristin

slightlysquiffy.blogspot.co.uk/ - Lythan

papierstau.at/ - Sanna

njmacs.blogspot.co.uk/ - Natalie

skalovingeek.blogspot.co.uk/ - Steph

 x Leo

Embellishing Ideas with the May/June Quirky Kits

Hi, Leo back again.

At this stage of making stuff with the kits I tend to have a bunch of leftovers so what I usually do is bundle them all together to see what I can make. With this layout I started out with some small patterned paper off cuts and just randomly layered them across the middle of the white cardstock background. I then added my photo and then gathered together a mix of embellishment from each of the May/June kits and built them up around the photo. All the different kit embellishments are easy to mix together as they're all a mix of black and white or bright colours so you can't go wrong!

This bit was fun to do I used the gold thread and wrapped it around four fingers on my hand to make a loose bundle then placing it down on the layout I carefully pulled the looped thread apart and then used Glossy Accents to glue it to the layout behind the large flower die cut. I then used some of the wood veneer embellishments and the enamel dots to glue the rest of the loose thread to the layout:

The card I made for Daring Cardmakers this week also used embellishments from the kits so I'll share it here too. The challenge was to not use scissors to make a card so raiding my kit ready made embellishments was essential! I used stamps to create the background and then the embellishments are more of the Maya Road butterflies from the embellishment kit this time with gold leaf glued to the back, (you could do this with any coloured foil or even maybe glitter if you use Glossy Accents or PVA glue) and one of the MME badges from the main kit with more of the loose gold thread glued underneath.

Stay tuned because this weekend it's the Scrap365 + Quirky Kits Blog Hop! The Scrap365 design team will be sharing ideas using the May/June kits. I'll be sharing my go here and sharing all the links to everyone taking part in the blog hop or you'll be able to check out the details on the Scrap365 Blog from Saturday.

x Leo

More May/June 2014 kit ideas

Hey there, it's Leo here with a few thing I've been making with the current May/June kits.
I've been saving up ideas on the Crafty Templates Pinterest Board when I've seen something on Pinterest that gives me an idea for making a project with the new kits or just something to try out. Like Lythan in the previous post I loved this layout I pinned. What caught my eye was the use of the black and white stripes with the white die cuts and I knew it was something I wanted to try out with the main kit and that lovely chunky back and white stripe Heidi Swapp paper.




 I started out by pulling out the plainer papers from the main kit and layering them up together. The vellum in the main kit I turned over so the silver side shows and layered it over the top of the coloured papers from the kit to knock them back a little bit so the overall impact comes from the black and white. The die cuts I made with my old Cuttlebug dies using a petal shaped one and a poppy flower one and just die cutting from white cardstock. I added in some of the Basic Grey diecuts from the Embellishment Kit just to add a little more floral embellishment and colour. The loose thread layer in the bottom right section of the layout I've made by wrapping the gold thread from the main kit loosely around my fingers then sticking it down to the layout with a little bit of doublesided tape then gently pulling out the thread to loosen them. The enamel dots from the Embellishment kit were then added on top with a little bit of Glossy Accents glue to gold them down.

The layered were built up by mixing paper pieces, embellishment and using foam square pads in between one of the layers just to give it a little more lift and help the die cuts stand out against all the layers.

The next layout was made with mostly the Lite kit. I used a little bit of the Basic Grey paper from the main kit running along the top and bottom of the layout just to use up a leftover strip on my desk.

To start with this one I used the plainer pattern sides of the Lite kit papers as I was going for a simple 'gold and white/cream' look taking inspiration from this layout. I added a little bit of embellishment mixing in the enamel dots from the Embellishment kit with the Lite kit stickers and a bit of pencil top eraser stamping in gold:

Last up a couple of cards made with the Lite kit and Embellishment kit.
With this one I die cut a circle of card then stamped on it with triangle pencil eraser top stamping and added the sticker from the Lite kit. For the sequins I sprinkled them on to the paper first then glued them on where they sat. The greeting circle bit I added over the top with 3D foam pads. The envelope was made with a WRMK envelope punch board and a paper from an older kit, they're brilliant for using up patterned paper pieces.

This next one was made just with the Lite kit using one of the cards cut from the Teresa Collins paper with a little bit of stamping added and a sticker from the sticker sheet and one of the buttons to make the main embellishment. The vellum paper layer was added to the card blank first then a piece of the Teresa Collins paper with the polka dots and then the card embellishment on top.

 I'll be back soon with more ideas! I've spent a couple of days working solidly with these kits and have all but used it all up so have lots more project to share but I'l l space them out a bit posting them here. I've also finished a layout that'll feature here as part of the Scrap365 blog hop we'll be joining in with at the end of the month.
x Leo

If I could turn back time

aka having a great idea when it is really too late to do anything about it. Oh well!

The idea for this layout was also in a way inspired by the layout by Yukiko from the Pinterest board, although not as overtly as the last one.
As a reminder here is her layout

and here is mine

When I was first looking at her layout I thought I would die cut some hearts to go with this photo. I was really looking for a branch with hearts on (I'm not advanced enough on the Cameo to do this myself) but gave up when I didn't find one, used the branches on the other layout but did find these dangling hearts which I rather liked.
I cut them out and coloured them with gold and red glimmer mists. The cardstock that makes the photo mat on this layout is part of the "guts" of the background cardstock on the last layout, also coloured with red mist. (I painted the  mist on rather than sprayed. One of the things I would do differently if I could would be to spray and not paint. I didn't need to be so subtle!)

I was also inspired by the stripes. But rather than just use stripy paper (and the black/white stripes of that fab Heidi Swapp paper just weren't right), I decded to make my own stripes. So I carefully cut 12x 1" strips from the Carta Bella ombre paper. I laid them onto the cardstock and drew lines where I wanted them to be, then removed them and cut the other papers just a bit wider than 1" so there wouldn't be any difficulty lining them up.
The other papers were trimmed and adhered, followed by the blue paper.
Only I had forgotten about the ombre effect and the strips are not in the right order. But I only noticed after everything else was stuck on top!

I knew that I wanted to use those three badges under the photo - they were perfect in colour and what they said for this layout about my wedding anniversary. Photo went down, title and date stickers, hearts dangling from the top (in fact they don't dangle they are stuck fast and so that is something else that needs a change). I added some of the gold enamel dots - lovely. Journalling and an arrow sticker. Done.

But it all looked a bit "meh". So I added some drops of gold mist everywhere.
Good but... not great.
Then I remembered the gold thread.
THEN
after everything was stuck down I looked at that thread and thought "Wouldn't it be great if all the strips had gold thread sewn across them".
I thought about pulling it all off.
I managed to talk myself out of that.
I compromised by adding hand stitching to the top and bottom row.
(I doubled two long skeins ie so I had four threads per stitch. I pricked the cardstock layer about every centimetre. You have to be quite patient  and gentle with the thread and paper as it is quite fiddly and time consuming. But that is what the TV is for!)

More gold machine stitching on those stripes? Would have looked awesome.
I'm glad I added the stitching I did - it makes it all more complete.
But everytime I look at this I will think "Why didn't that come to me sooner?"
Ah well, tomorrow is another layout!

Inspired by Pinterest 3

I've again taken something from the Crafty Templates Inspiration Pinterest board for this set of kits.
This layout by a scrapper called Yukiko is just fabulous

I was really struck by the die cut leaves so decided to go for that look on my layout. The structure of my page stays pretty faithful to hers. Isn't there a beautiful balance to pictures and the title there?
I added a few more papers and so mine isn't quite as delicate looking and certainly doesn't have as much white space.

The page actually has an even margin around the edge, but I managed to destroy that in the photo cropping and didn't notice!

I took the woodgrain paper from the main kit and trimmed it down to 11 1/2" x 11 1/2". I added drops of green and black mist over the paper and before I stuck that down to the cream cardstock, I gutted the middle of the cream piece so I could use that on another project. A different sheet of cream cardstock was run through my Silhouette Cameo to produce the branches. I cut more than needed so see if you can spot them on a future project!

I picked out some vibrant papers from both kits. I was a little hesitant at first - after all the deer are orange and not bright pink but it makes for quite a striking background. Everything has had a heavy layer of black distress ink added - apart from the branches. I decided to leave them be to give a bit of contrast. I spent ages fiddling around with the papers and photos but eventually felt happy to stick it all down, with one of the photos being raised on foam pads. I only added glue to the bottom of the branches so that they would "float" a little more on the page.

It was lovely to have wooden embellishments that exactly matched one of the papers so I made sure to use plenty here

(heavy hand with the glue. Sigh. At least you can only see it this close up)
I was coming to the point in the kit where letters were proving problematic. I went back to Thickers from an old kit and even then had to get creative with the scissors...

I added my journalling and a few of the Basic Grey Highline  embellishments to finish things off

Shiny happy scrapper

I had loads of fun combining elements from all of the kits for this layout, but the papers are predominantly from the Shiny Happy People lite kit

The day that I took this photo I also took loads of photos trying to get the perfect sea spray. It didn't happen. But I wanted to try and replicate it so I had fun splashing and sprinkling lots of different mist sprays. I made sure I included Heidi Swapp Gold Lame as there are gold accents in the papers and embellishments.

I then layered up a photo mat and cut a few strips of patterned paper and some of the gold ribbon from the main kit. . I added lots of black distress ink round the edge of everything ('cos I like it. It you don't, you can tone it down or leave that out!)

The "Good Times" see through embellishment was layered onto the heart paper

and the "Love this" has white cardstock underneath it. I could stick the former to the heart paper easily as the bottom is tucked under the photo mat but "Love this" is stapled using a Tiny Attacher, then adhered using foam pads on top of the photo.

I added a little bit of interest to the top right corner to give some balance

including trying out the tangled thread look with the gold thread from the main kit. I found it was best to put some double sided sticky tape down first and kind of wind the thread round it. It was very fiddly and I think perhaps this extra fine thread isn't the best to try this with but I like the effect. I tried the same under the badge at the bottom

All that was left to do was to put down some journalling, the title and a few enamel dots.
I had almost forgotten how much I loved being here as a teenager so this was a good memory to capture and a fabulous kit to showcase it.

Inspired by Pinterest 2

I do like having something to kickstart my creativity - be it a sketch or some Pinspiration (although I try not to go on there TOO much as I don't really understand it all and get a bit lost so I am very glad Leo puts together Pinterest boards for each kit like this one)
On the board was this fantastic light and airy looking layout by Cindy Lee

Just beautiful.
I took it and gave it my slightly more grungy look using the kit.

Not quite such a cute baby - but a memory worth recording!

I added some dots of Heidi Swapp mist in Amethyst but this came out way darker than I expected - almost black.
I mixed up papers from both the kits, fussy cutting some of the Heidi Swapp flowers and lining that fab turquoise dot vellum with white cardstock. I did the same for the clear "life is good" embellishment.
There is a lot of pen work on this layout - adding a border with a black sharpie pen and then on the inside of each paper with a fineliner.

(In case you haven't heard how to do the Sharpie thing and would like to - you need to lay a piece of patterned paper flat onto some scrap paper

and draw a line almost off the edge of the patterned paper, so that most of it ends up on the scrap but there is a lovely distinct line on the patterned piece.

It needs practice but then you can do it fairly quickly. HOWEVER , every now and then your hand will slip and you need to be prepared to cover up the skid with something creative. I managed to do all of this layout without problems but there is usually something to hide. However I love the look when I want definition but not as much as inking the edges gives so I persist with it.)

I wanted to add the black crepe ribbon but it was too wide. There are several options I could have gone for but I went for the easy one. I folded it in half and stapled it with my tiny attacher and then coloured in the staples with my black Sharpie pen and now they are invisible. It gives a kind of "bias binding" look. (And meant I needed to raise the photo mat and the flowers on foam pads, but I like that dimension)

I love the chalkboard effect envelopes so I added one in that I thought made a great subtitle to the layout.
The "hello" was super cute as it was - but didn't have any purple on it. I added some of the mist when I sprinkled the layout but again it was rather dark so I search my supplies and came up with a purple glitter pen that I added a few touches with. I also coloured in the back of three of the wooden chevrons with the same pen

you may have noticed that I might have run out of "u"s. I quite like the cut down "0" look....
All that was left to do was to add a spot of journalling, a sprinkle of sequins and a brace of beautiful butterflies.

its not at all like the original layout but you can see the inspiration there. I reckon I will use this as a jumping off point again as with different embellishments and papers you can change the look completely

The best feeling?

Well, one of the best feelings in the world is when a Quirky Kit package arrives and you open it up and spend ages oohing and aahing and trying to think about what to create.
I had to wait a few days to play so kept opening everything up and putting it back again and just itching to dive in.
And now I have!
I'm afriad there is a slight difficulty with the kit (gasp!)
the good news is that for someone like me for whom this is so true

 

the kit is perfect. Lots of every so lovely shiny, shiny things.

The difficulty is photographing something that is very shiny!

 

as the sparkle is just a little less subtle than it is in real life - as I hope you can tell from the close ups.

I took some inspiration from the Joy Cho pin on the Crafty Templates Pinterest board this month. I loved the paper flowers but decided to use other bits and pieces to create a feature for the page. I layered up papers from the Its My Party kit

(bit of a flashback for me as that song was played in school at lunchtime every day for about 6 months. Unless the boys rested control of the music in which case it was the Stranglers. Which I preferred. But probably "Shahshahagogo" or "Don't Bring Harry" would not make for such fun scrapbooking kits. But I digress....)

I had great fun sorting through the embellishment kit and using pieces from the Basic Grey Highline embellishments, the Maya Road butterflies and one of the badges from the main kit.

I was going to call the layout "Mum and Dad" - which is certainly not quirky and uses a lot of the same letters. I wanted to use the ampersand and so needed something similar. I went for the names my children call them - Nain and Tadcu (gran and gramps in Welsh) which helped me think about what I wanted to say. I dug out some very old small thicker style letters from my stash to write "not quite". The observant among you will note that "Nain" suffers the same problem as "Mum" but it is easier to doctor another letter to create an "N" than an "M"

 

then came the really fun bit! Firstly I took some of the MME enamel dots. I was supposed to use more of them but they are so lovely I had to save some of them for another project. I chose some of the little wooden Pink Fresh Studio hearts and scattered them about.  I turned the yellow ones over as they didn't match and I quite liked the neutral addition. I then added the sequins and glued everything into place with Tombow Mono Multi Glue (despite the long name you can get really tiny dots of glue!). Then came some of the really tiny confetti from May/June 2013 and finally various stickles and liquid pearls.

quite time consuming but I do like the effect.

Now I'm off to make some more shiny layouts. And listen to the Stranglers....

New Kits and Sewing Tips!

Hi!

Well it's that time again, new kits are arriving now with subscribers. I don't have many spare ones to go around but you can grab what's left over while it's in stock from here in the shop.
The new May June kits are, 'It's my Party':

The Lite kit is 'Shiny Happy People':

The Embellishment kit is 'You've Got the Love':

All the kits have been put together to both combine some current trends and to provide a fun palette for the summer. All the kits have little bright colour pops, lots of neutral bases, (black and white) and metallic gold touches. All of which reflect current trends in paper crafts and fashion.

As always I try to add in something to the kits to give you something to to play around with too and this time for the main kit I picked out some gold embroidery thread.

I have used this before and you can create some fun effects with it. If you have a sewing machine you can use it in your machine but there is a knack to using it with cardstock so I just wanted to pop down my tips for using it.




The main tip is to use a regular thread on your underneath bobbin as it helps to weigh down the lighter metallic thread. I keep a basic white on mine and more times than not it's going onto white cardstock and so using white means it's less visible against the gold. Use a middle tension setting on your machine,(mine was set to 5) you might need to experiment a bit first til it starts to stitch right. It does have a lovely effect though even just using a regular straight stitched line so it's worth that initial bit of work to get it going.

I've been filling up the May/June ideas Pinterest Board with lots of ideas for making pockets too so that was the first thing I've experimented with using the gold thread with the vellum to make a pocket filled with sequins from the embellishment kit:

Then I've used some of the  Lite kit stickers  and one of the cards cut from the Teresa Collins patterned paper to make it into a card:

Have fun with the new kits!
I'll be back over the coming weeks with lots more ideas using the kits.
x Leo

Kit Cards 1

Hello

It's been a while since I posted on the Quirky blog, but I'm back with my first round up of cards made using gorgeous stash from the current kit.

In the kit, is the usual  mix of card and paper and interesting embellishments - all the papers I've used are from the kit, and I've added a little note under each card to say which of the other kit goodies I've used

 

"hot air balloon" wooden embellishment, chipboard alpha

     

"Smile" mini place-mat ("painted" with black enamel accents), chipboard alpha

 

"bicycle" metal embellishment, chipboard alpha

I love how versatile and inspiring the Quirky Kits are - I absolutely NEVER throw anything from them away because I know that even if I can't think what do with all the gorgeous bits and bobs right at this moment (or more likely, I don't want to use those special things right now) one day a hunt through my "Quirky" file box will unearth the perfect thing I need for a project!

I've a few more cards using the current kit still to blog, so I'll be back soon with another post.

Happy Crafting