A little something to keep you going

While we are eagerly anticipating the next set of kits arriving soon, just waiting for a few more items to wing their way over from the States (anyone else imagine plucky birds carrying essential goodies in their beaks? Just me then). I thought I would share my last hurrah for this set of kits. I still have oodles of embellishments left, thanks to the generous helpings we get in each kit. But the papers? Barely a scrap left over.

There is a lot of shine in this that made it quite hard to photograph.

I started off with a sheet of white card stock and added some translucent texture paste and a tree bark stencil.
Well the embossing paste should have been translucent but someone (that would be me then) had managed to put a not clean palette knife in so it was a kind of dirty yellow.
Ah well. When that was dry I used the gelato smoosh technique where you scribble gelato onto plastic, add a teeny bit of water and smoosh it on your layout.

While that was drying I took the Crate Paper Craft Market ‘Stitching’ patterned paper and coloured in the flowers to match the colours I wanted to highlight from my photo. I did this with watercolour paints

It was so enjoyable!

And while that was drying I dug out some of my old punches, created butterflies and doilies and gave some interesting edges to the papers. I also layered blue paper under the rest of the woodgrain pieces to let them show more.

Everything got the black soot distress ink treatment and then I started putting layers together. Oooh I added some vellum behind the photo (another Missy Whidden copy) as it softens the layers but also let the lovely watercolour show through. 

It was all a bit fiddly but worth it in the end.

I added the title using the thickers from the kit and the alpha that you could buy in the shop, wrote in my journalling (happily I had added gelatos to a spot that didn't have the embossing paste on and it made for a pretty anchor for the text)

Then I dumped out all my embellishments and used as many as I felt I could without overpowering everything. Do you think I got the balance right?

A brace of pages

Its funny how using the same kits for several layouts can still mean that you end up with very different looks. Here is a case in point - a (fairly) clean and simple and a (more) distressed kind of look. Both use (almost) only the Lite and the Embellishment kits for this month.

I loved the strips paper that came in the lite kit. But I am not so keen on "flat" paper. So I cut up a load of those strips and also added a few bits and bobs from other papers as well. I drew a square on the paper with pencil where I wanted the photo to be and then added the strips all around, incorporating some of the letter and word stickers from the embellishment kit as well.

I knew that I wanted to use that wonderful gold die die cut from the lite kit and so once the papers were adhered I added a copious sprinkling of Gold Lame mist. I don't always manage it but my tapping skills worked well and I had lots of lovely big spots. I also decided to add some gold to the vellum leaves. I forgot that vellum and wet stuff don't really go well together. However mini glue dots were my friend and you can't tell now, but it did all furl up totally.

I inked the photo (but not the papers just for a change) and stuck it on the top with foam pads. The die cut word was attached with a tiny attacher. I coloured some of the staples gold with a krylon pen. I was able to attach it by opening up the attacher in the rather clever way you can. I am not that clever with my aim though :)

I wrote my journalling reflecting more on the die cut phrase than the actual photo. I liked the idea of using a photo of travelling upwards but without the whole family in it.
Then I added more of that lovely confetti from the Lite kit and a wooden Prima leaf from the embellishment kit.

For the second page I started off with a sheet of plain white cardstock. It doesn't look like it now though - apart from the warpiness (which you can't see once it is rammed into a scrapbook)...

I used a Donna Downey damask stencil with some white texture paste. When it was dry I painted over the whole page with water colour, making sure that I dabbed it off the white parts as soon as possible.

Then I went a bit mad with a square stencil and some brown distress ink. The idea was to echo the texture of the table.

I chose some elements from the Kaisercraft Take Note Collection ‘Journal’ patterned paper and I also punched some circles from the Bo Bunny Sweet Life ‘Spring’ paper, trying to make sure I had some of the yellow in the paper showing. I also used a scalloped border punch on the same paper.
I layered up my photos onto the Crate Paper Craft Market ‘Textures’ paper making sure everything got an inking with brown Distress Ink. I added in two of the pins from the embellishment kit, folding them over so that you can see the gem better. I also used some of the adorable wooden frames. I did sneak in the "yum" from the main kit as what better word could there be to describe the food we ate :)

The finishing touches came with the title and the cute wooden bird. Added just because it was a cute wooden bird to be honest.
I've got very little paper left from any of the kits now, but I did squeeze out one more layout which I will share very soon.

Channelling Missy

Missy Whidden that is.
She is the most awesome scrapper who is the queen of gesso and paint and messy details whilst managing to keep her layouts full of colour with a great airy feel.
So when I had myself a bit of a challenge I decided to think - what would Missy do?
The challenge is that I adore this paper

the My Minds Eye Hello World ‘World Map’ from the Nifty Lite kit. It gave me the idea to make a holiday bucket list - places I would love to go.
But how to turn it into a useable background as it is a little busy. What with it being the world and everything.
WWMD? Gesso and gelatos!
So that is what I did...

I spread on a fairly thin coat of gesso to the middle of the paper and while that was drying created a "bucket" out of some of the other papers and a couple of paper strips were cut as well. I cut a long strip of Bo Bunny Sweet Life - Spring and gave that the gesso treatment too. I had in mind using the first sketch from the Simple Sketches (see right hand side of the blog post for the PDF) but it ended up quite differently.

Anyhoo, when the gesso was dry I tried a Missy technique which is to rub some gelato onto clear packaging, add a little water, smoosh it onto your chosen surface and then dab it off with a paper towel to lighten it a little. I did this on the patterned papers too, using green, yellow and blue gelatos.

I had been unsure what photo to use but remembered that I had some of Carys waiting to go to London on the train with lots of bags and it meant I could tie it all into the story of us not going to Amsterdam. (And I have just realised that I have put the wrong year on the photo. Absolute bobbins)

I gave everything the black pen treatment and then layered up the papers and bucket on the right hand side (don't you love the compass in the middle of the paper?), added the photo on pop dots and then wrote my journalling on the gessoed part. The beauty of gesso and gelatos is that you can still see glimpses of what is underneath.

 I put some of the little stars from the Pretty Little Studio Peppermint Confetti Mix as bullet points.
The title was made from a Lil Inkers alphabet die (mixed and stitched) , the stickers from the kit and some fab chipboard alphas that are available in the Quirky Kit Subscribers Extras. Aren't they just the perfect thing for this layout?

Finally the hearts and sequins from the Confetti mix came into play. I can't decide if I like the word or faux wood side of the hearts best! They were popped up on foam pads.

 Trouble is .... now I can't wait to travel again :)

The noticeboard

As soon as I saw the cork board style paper in the Quirky Kit I knew I wanted to do a noticeboard style page.
It didn't quite come off as planned but I still think it was a good jumping off point :)

In my mind's eye everything was going to be smaller and more seperate. But I'm not very good at doing that. I need everything to link and flow. But I do like what I ended up with  and it still has that haphazard feel that my noticeboard does (only with less takeaway menus and hospital appointments on it!)

I decided that it was time to break open the embellishment kit for this time round. I like to try and do some pages with just the main or the lite kit so it has been killing me not to have fun with this as well. I was only going to use a flower and a peg and suddenly embellishments joined in all over the place!

To start with I gathered the remnants of papers I had already chopped up from the main kit. I even used a branding strip or two (the green polka dots on white is one of them). I added a thin black line around everything to help the patterns both stand out and harmonize.

 backed the woodgrain transparency with vellum to make it more opaque and backed the hello tag and the camera the same way. I thought I would try the lazy person's ribbon ruffling (gather pleats using a tiny attacher and add even more dimension by sticking it down using extra sticky red line tape). The staples are less visible to the naked eye than the camera lens. The ribbon seemed to stick out a bit in terms of design which is why I added a corner set of embellishments on the right hand side. I didn't have much ribbon left to play with by then!

The green dress photo was mounted on foam pads and the peg added by the side. I outlined the flowers, cut one in half and tucked them in various places around the layout.

The title is made from the tag, one of the die cut words and some of the Thickers. The journalling went on another tag and then I added some of the yellow polka Dotties, puffy stickers galore from the main kit and that adorable butterfly for no other reason than it is adorable.

 Why don't you try a noticeboard style layout with little clusters of papers/photos/notes together (takeaway menus optional)

Scrapbooking Day Full Circle

Hi Leo here!

In the last post I mentioned I was making another homemade album in 9"x12". I've finished the album now and started to fill it too. The base of the album I've used my tried and tested method I've shared funnily enough a year ago today when I added the album making worksheet for scrapbooking day last year and it's scrapbooking day again today! You can still download the PDF worksheet here, http://www.craftytemplates.co.uk/NSD/NSDHomemadeAlbumProject.pdf

The one change I did make is to have a narrower spine on this one and I left very little gap in between the spine and the cover pieces, (when you read the instructions this makes sense a bit more). It depends on the type of fabric you're using - this one I have has a bit of stretch to it so I made the spaces that form the 'hinges' of the album smaller to allow for the stretch in the fabric.

I also made another covered piece of card, (covered with more of the fabric) to decorate the inside spine of the album:

As before I've picked out some twine to fix in the pages. There's not reason you can't use something else you wanted, like a ring binder fitting inside or bookrings, (you'd need to make holes in the sides for bookrings instead of the spine). The beauty of a homemade album is the complete flexibility you have with both the size and the design.

Inside the album I'm using a variety of mixed sized page protectors. The 9"x12" size is almost impossible to get, (although I have discovered that you can get sheet music covers this size so that's something to look into) so to solve this I've used some 12"x12" size ones cut down. This one is a Project Life Design F page protector with three of the pockets down the right side cut off to make it 9"x12". This is so easy to do and you also get three extra pockets you can recycle into shaker or memorabilia pouches.

I made a shaker pouch for this layout. I trimmed out one of the pockets from the cut off bit of page protector:

Then filled it with some of the sequins and confetti pieces from the March/April kits and sealed the edges with sewing machine stitching. You could use washi tape to seal around the edges too instead of sewing.

As an extra I glued the pouch to one of the vellum tags from the main kit:

This is the page built up ready for the shaker embellishment. I've used two layers of patterned paper from the lite kit this time and some embellishments from the main kit with a stamp image on top:

Here's the finished page with the finished shaker embellishment. I added one of the Kaisercraft stickers from the embellishment kit on top, you could use any of the alphas too to make the same effect. 

The only thing I think I'll add to this is some journalling in the bottom right corner?

This whole page is a 8.5"x11" which is one of the sizes I'm adding to my 9"x12" album.

I wanted to do the next page on the back of this one so I started the next bit by building up more layers of patterned paper keeping within the 8.5"x11" size so when it was done I could glue it to the back of the previous page and use both sides of the MME paper. The MME paper, (the map one from the Lite kit) is a nice heavy weight so it's good enough to stand up to both sides being used at once.

Once I'd put it inside a page protector I decided to decorate the margin edge as this page protector I was using has a chunkier margin on it that the Project Life ones and it's a way of extending the page a bit too I suppose.

I just cut a piece of patterned paper to 3" wide, (twice the size of the page protector margin) scored and folded it down the middle:

Then fixed it over the top of the margin with double sided tape and trimmed off the excess at the bottom.

That's one page done. I'm finishing up the pocket page side today so will report back tomorrow with the results. 

If you're not scrapping this scrapbooking day and bank holiday weekend I hope you're out having fun and taking lots of photos! Or maybe you're doing a bit of DIY, why not do some before and after photos that could be fun. It's defo the time of year for DIY or fixing up the garden. We've got BBQ coals ready, is that a bit too presumptuous of good weather for a bank holiday???

xx Leo