Birthday Buddies

Hello Everyone!!
How are we all doing? It's been a while since my last post, but I am back with my first layout using the July/August quirky kit.

Here are the items I used:

From the Main Kit

• Maggie Holmes Carousel Belle 12x12 patterned paper
• Maggie Holmes Carousel Rose Park 12x12 patterned paper
• Maggie Holmes Carousel Dazzle 12x12 patterned paper
• Pretty Little Studio Beautiful Day Hello Word navy sticker sheet
• Prima Island Lagoon ink pad

From the Extras Store

• Maggie Holmes Carousel Sticker Sheet

From my own stash

• Black Cardstock
• Watercolour Paints

And here's how I created this layout.

  I started by using the full sheet of Carousel Rose Park paper as my background (the black and white side) I love how the pattern pointed to a focal point in the centre of the paper, so I knew that's where I wanted my photo to go. I backed my photo onto some black cardstock, about a quarter of an inch bigger than the photograph all the way around. 

  I then grabbed the Carousel Belle Paper and fussy cut some of the roses out which, to me, was screaming to be painted in watercolours to give the flowers a beautiful delicate feel. I knew I wanted to cluster the roses around my photograph and frame it. To paint the leaves of the flowers I used the Prima Island Lagoon ink pad  and dabbed it onto some old packaging, spritzed some water onto it and used it as a watercolour. 

  Once I'd done all the painting, I arranged my layout and decided what further embellishments I wanted to use. I used a little piece of black cardstock and a white jelly roll pen to write my title Birthday buddies. I then mounted this on a couple of the arrow sections I fussy cut from the Carousel Dazzle paper, added another one of the small rose flowers I'd watercoloured and a banner from the Carousel sticker sheet, which I had purchased from the extras store.

  The last little bit of embellishing in the top right hand corner of the photo, is another of the Carousel stickers which I used to jot down the date of the event, and placed one of the navy stickers from the Pretty Little Studio Beautiful Day word stickers which reads good times, onto another of the fussy cut arrows from the Dazzle paper...

I added a few watercolour paint splashes by flicking my paintbrush bristles and...Voila! Layout complete :)

  I'm really pleased with how this layout turned out and the colours I used gives it a Mexican feel which is what I was going for because of the Sombreros we are wearing whilst at Chiquitos, for my friends birthday meal. 

Until my next layout... Happy Scrappin!

Layout Process Video Challenges

Hi Leo here!

I have two process videos for you today that were made for the subscribers group challenges set over the weekend. One uses goodies from the Lite kit and the other goodies from the main kit. You can follow along with the videos to create your own layout or pick out elements you like to work into your projects. Here's the first layout made using the July/August main kit along with it's corresponding process video:

 

To play along with this one you need a sheet of plain cardstock 12x12, two patterned papers, one with a background pattern and one with a cut out pattern, (Belle and Fairgrounds from the kit have been used here plus the yellow cardstock). You'll also need die cuts, tulle fabric, sequins and/or small die cuts, foam pads and some alphabet stickers. If you have the main kit you'll have everything you need. I did add some of the Carousel icon stickers at the end but the layout worked just as well without them, (pictured below) I just went a bit extra ott at the end!

 

 

Cyber Crop Layout Class from Crafty Templates on Vimeo.

 

And the July/August Lite kit completed layout and video:

 

To play along with this one you need. Two sheets of 12x12 patterned paper, some string or twine, die cuts, icon stickers, alphabet stickers a paper trimmer and a glue stick. Everything I've used is from the Lite kit apart from the puffy stickers which were in the Custom Card kit. I don't have the Lite kit chipboard to use so if you have your Lite kit you can use those stickers instead. I just had to use what I had to hand. I also used some of the enamel dot stickers from the May/June Lite kit I had left to use up.

 

Ticket To Ride Layout Quirky Kit Lite August 2017 from Crafty Templates on Vimeo.

 

Hope you can grab your kit box and play along!

xx Leo

Travel Album - Day 2 (Trevi Fountain)

Hello everyone,

I hope all of you had a fantastic bank holiday weekend, especially when lovely Leonora was running various Cyber Crop challenges for us on Facebook. And I was taking full advantage of the challenges, and it allowed me to get into the full productive mode, so this blog post will be a mini recap of some of the challenges I completed on Sunday and also to show you how far I'm in my travel album. 

The products I used to make these layouts:

• Crate Paper Maggie Holmes Carousel 'Marquee' 12"x12" doublesided patterned paper
• Crate Paper Maggie Holmes Carousel 'Dazzle' 12"x12" doublesided patterned paper
• Freckled Fawn Summertime Chipboard Stickers pack
• Kaisercraft Happy Snaps Sticker sheet
• Sweet Talk co-ordinating die cuts pack including journalling tabs, cards and labels
• Embellishment kit journalling cards coordinated to match the embellishments
• Pretty Little Studio Dream Big Die Cuts pack
• Some extra goodies from last month's kit and stamps from my stash as well

The beginning of the day 2 was started by checking out the area our Airbnb room is actual located and what kind of restaurants we have around. One of the things you might notice from the pictures we love the buildings in Rome, all of these pictures were taken on our way to Trevi Fountain, as it was our first stop on the list we created beforehand. You should note that throughout the pictures you might see that Martins and I love to take a lot of detours and flow with the adventure. Also as we always have Google Maps, it's a minimal chance you will get lost. :D

Regarding the creation of all of these layouts, I tried to keep them simple, by always adding labels where I can note some of our thoughts or word stickers and as a final step add embellishments - flowers, enamel dots or chipboard. Also, have been trying to use my stamps to bring more interest to the pages. Especially some of the filler cards were created using my stamps - an example the card with the sun (my favourite :))

After a walk, we finally arrived at our set destination and because of our detours, we arrrived a bit later than planned - during lunch time and this meant that it was so crowded. But still through all of this crowd we took some pictures and bought gelato, which we wouldn't buy again - wasn't delicious at all and pricey too. 

These two layouts below where created during the Cyber Crop and my take on the challenges, if you want to know more on the challenges and participate next time join the Quirky Kit Subscriber Group on Facebook.

Challenge 1 - Layout based on 1st sketch and I used the cut out provided - the scalloped circle.

Challenge 2 - Creating a banner

I hope you enjoyed this post and talk to you soon, Agnese.

Travel Album - Welcome to Rome

Hello everyone,

Continue with the previous post from me, and I'm back with my travel album, and today I will share with you layouts in regards on our flight there and trip through the airport.

The materials I used to create these layouts:

• Crate Paper Maggie Holmes Carousel 'Belle' 12"x12" doublesided patterned paper
• The Tourist coordinating die cuts pack including journalling tabs, cards and labels
• Kaisercraft Happy Snaps Sticker sheet
• Sweet Talk coordinating die cuts pack including journalling tabs, cards and labels
• Freckled Fawn Summertime Chipboard Stickers pack
• Kaisercraft Happy Snaps Sticker sheet
• Journalling cards coordinated to match the embellishments
• Pretty Little Studio Dream Big Die Cuts pack
• Some extra goodies from last month's kit as well

Creation of the layout:

As you might have noticed, overall I was trying to base my colour scheme on the Adventure card in the 2nd picture, I also did to try to add black colour to avoid layouts looking too pink. I don't mind pink personally, although as the album is for both Martins and me, my thought was that I should create something that we both can enjoy. Based on the colour scheme of that card I selected the patterned papers and cut them to size. As you might have noticed I also back my 4x6 pictures because the new printing place I tried doesn't print the exact size of 4x6, it's a bit smaller which means that the pictures are falling out of the sleeves. Throughout the pages, I have added chipboard, labels, stickers and die cuts to embellish. What I have noticed and the reason why I love this month's kit is that it goes so well with the previous month, meaning that I can use up every bit of both of them :)

The story behind the pictures:

The day we had our flight my hubby had his last exam, this meant that we had a mad rush to get to London Gatwick. Especially, considering that usually, we use the train to get there and if you are a frequent traveller through London or live in London, you might know how often trains to Gatwick are delayed or cancelled. Of course, we had to celebrate that my hubby has finished all of his six exams and we were really hungry as well, so we decided to go to Wagamama - Martins favourite ramen place. This was our first time flying with Easyjet, and I can say it wasn't a pleasant experience, as there was an hour delay which made us worry whether we will be on time to collect keys for our room.

While the other layout documents the first pictures we took once we landed and rushed to get to our place to collect the keys. We stayed in the centre of Rome, so we had to take the double-deck train from the airport to Termini (train station) and then finally underground to our place. In the end, we arrived 10 minutes before he went home, although he knew that we would be late a bit because I called before we took off to let him know of our situation

I hope you enjoyed reading this blog post from me and talk to you soon, Agnese.

Title page of 6x8 Travel Album

Hello everyone,

I hope you have been well, and I have missed sharing posts with you and even more all this time I haven't been able to scrapbook at all but now guess what I'm back with a lot of layouts ready for you. 

So first, many things have come at me at the same time and resulted that I was gone for some time. However, the biggest changed happened to me was that after 7 years of living in the same house, we decided to move to a bit bigger place and not shared house most importantly. But if you have ever moved you might know how time-consuming moving everything is and also as the previous home was furnished and this new house isn't. And logically this meant that we had been slowly buying furniture and moving out of boxes. As the move was quite sudden and happened quickly, I couldn't prepare a kit with all the scrapbooking essentials to allow me to scrapbook while we are living from the boxes and unpacking other things were more important than craft supplies. On top of this everyone came visiting to see the place, even when we barely moved in and bought any furniture at all and as we have been having such a lovely time in the UK, all of our friends decided to have BBQ. I have had grilled meat for the last 5 weeks with various friends and then also my father visited us for the first time, which also meant I didn't have a chance to focus on anything else. It just kept us busy that we realised that this was the first weekend we stayed in this house all weekend, just the two of us :D

So finally my first weekend that I have been able to scrapbook and my first thought was to start our travel album. While back we had a 3 night trip to Rome and first holiday finally after four years of being on a student budget. The main goal also was to start this project while it's fresh in our minds, so we can properly document what we saw and experienced. Today I'm bringing you the beginning of the trip and main page of the album.

The materials I used to make these pages:

• Smooth merlin blue 12"x12" cardstock sheet
• Fancy Pants Designs Dream Big 'Shine Bright' 12"x12" doublesided patterned paper
• Kaisercraft Happy Snaps Sticker sheet
• Crate Paper Maggie Holmes Carousel 'Belle' 12"x12" doublesided patterned paper
• Pink miniature paper doilies
• Sweet Talk co-ordinating die cuts pack including journalling tabs, cards and labels
• Crate Paper Maggie Holmes Carousel 'Happy Go Lucky' 12"x12" doublesided patterned paper
• Journalling cards co-ordinated to match the embellishments
• Pretty Little Studio Dream Big Die Cuts pack
• Some extra goodies from last month's kit as well

After so long, it was good and quite hard to get back comfortable to scrapbook, so I thought that it would be a great idea to start with the album title page. I cut the background papers both patterned paper and cardstock in 6x8 size and the cardstock a bit bigger because the page protectors are larger than 6x8. The first things I adhered were the pink doily and yellow journaling card, once that was complete I could work on my title. I recently saw a wonderful and inspirational layout from one scrapbooker on one of the Facebook groups I'm part of. Based on her idea, I wanted to try it out to mix various size and coloured letters to create an interesting title. Just one of the banners said Road trip, which I figured to cover one of the words with an embellishment instead as my husband and I don't have a car and have never taken a road trip before. And finally, touches were to add flowers to bring the page together. I know this is quite a simple layout, but believe me, there is a whole album ahead, as we went a bit overboard with the picture taking on this trip because as a graduation gift I bought my husband a new camera, so he was trying and enjoying in full force.

I hope you all enjoyed this post and talk to you soon, Agnese.

Coasting Along

Hi, Leo here!

I've made a start this past week digging into the new kit. I always put together a kit with ideas in mind for how it can be used picked out from what techniques are trending in papercrafting. One of the things in the main kit I picked out to play with this time is the chalk ink pad to create some messy/inky backgrounds.
I wanted to share a technique that anyone can have a go at and doesn't need anything fancy to do it, 'ink smooshing'. It's something I've done for literally years so it's not new but it might be new to you or else you can lord it over me if you have superior smooshing capabilities! If you've not got the main kit inkpad you'll need a similar water based chalk ink one, dye inkpads won't work it needs to be the pigment kind.
Here's my finished layout with the smooshing:

Everything I've used is from the main kit apart from the gold letters and the smaller label die cut, they're both from the custom card kit and the Colour Shine is from the extras shop. It's also loosely based on this sketch from the sketch booklet:

I've done a whole layout process video. I filmed it over 3 days so it's not continuous and I've edited it down to make it short. I get really travel sick with the speeded up ones I've tried to watch so I've gone for this kind of 'real speed' but edited down version. I also am aware that the first bit of the video is complete pants but while I'm filming I can't see what's in the frame as the camera is level with my head so I didn't know until I'd spent a good 10 minutes ink smooshing that it was all out of focus! Hence it's had to be chopped down.
I also never realised how much I talk with my hands and I kind of mumble a bit because, you know I'm essentially taking to myself here so it's difficult not to drift into la la talking to myself land.
Hope it inspires to have a play anyway! xx Leo

Ink Smooshing Layout from Crafty Templates on Vimeo.

"I want adventure in the great wide somewhere" - Natalie

Hi everyone,

 I hope you are all enjoying opening your new kits. I know I say this every time we get a new kit, but this kit is just so beautiful - the colours are so perfect!

This layout started off with the "Follow Your Dreams" paper (Fancy Pants "Dream Big" collection, Main Kit). I love using patterned paper as my background so I knew I wanted to make a layout on this gorgeous paper, the image of the open road looks like it's printed on a canvas, it is so pretty.

I luckily have 2 sheets of this paper as I used the reverse, which is a mustard yellow star print, to create a border on 2 sides.  

My first thought was my title "I want adventure in the great wide somewhere", a quote from Belle (Reprise) from Beauty and the Beast. This is a quote that I've wanted to use as a title for quite a while and I thought this paper was just perfect.

I used the lovely Freckled Fawn white puffy alphabet (Main Kit) for my title. As the font is small and white I think it works perfectly for the less important words in the title, as with such a long title I didn't want all the words to be the same size, or it would just be too overpowering. 

For the word "Adventure" I used some cork stickers from my stash, and for the words "Great Wide" I used a set of Thickers which have a faint notepaper print on them, which we got in a Quirky Kit last year. I placed the phrase "Great Wide" along the horizon, and left a gap for where the end of the road meets the horizon. 

I actually made most of this layout before deciding which photos to use! I was looking for some photos of me during an adventure, but then my cousin sent me some photos this morning of her and her Rangers group before they head off for Morocco today, ready to climb 3 mountains! So I thought they would be perfect. One photo is a group shot and thus I have blurred out the group, and the other photo is my cousin in the airport, and I positioned this photo so that it looks like she is walking along the road. Both photos were printed as 3x3s. 

I then added some floral and leaf die cuts from the Fancy Pants "Dream Big" ephemera pack (Embellishment Kit). And added a co-ordinating label. I absolutely love the labels that we get in the kits each month, and that the colours match so perfectly to the papers!

I added a few enamel dots from my stash and a heart puffy sticker (Fancy Pants "Dream Big" Collection, Custom Cards Kit). 

In the top right of the layout I then added another label, some more die cuts, using the foam pads (Main Kit) to add dimension, and a few more enamel dots and puffy hearts.

I hope you like my layout as much as I do, and I hope it has given you some inspiration to use this piece of paper as a background paper!

Wish Upon A Star | ScrappyNerdUK (Claire) | May/June 2017

So.....I've come to the end of my kit and I have NO patterned paper left. Doesn't matter as this layout will show you how you can create a layout without the need for patterned paper and still make it interesting.

I took inspiration from the wooden stars and silver star sequins from the Lite Kit.

I wanted to create a shooting star effect and so used the twine and wooden stars as detailed in this photo. I poked holes in the blue cardstock to thread the twine through. I used some silver twine from my stash for the middle stars to create some interest (and also I ran out of the white twine from the kit - oops!!)

Next I had to tackle the problem of patterned paper. Or should I say, lack of patterned paper. I went with a small photo which I cut down to 2.5 inch x 2.5 inch and backed this with some white cardstock. Next I used some vellum from my stash and did a double layer of this to create some texture.

Hey presto - who needs patterned paper?

I then set about working on my title. I used the silver Heidi Swapp alphas from the Main Kit and I was so lucky to have the correct letters to spell out most of my title. I then pulled some Thickers from my stash (Fitzgerald font - which is my absolute fave). This complemented the Heidi Swapp alphas amazingly well.









I also added the word "dream" to the top twine to create some more interest. I then added a whole load of the star sequins, iridescent sequins and I also used the white gel pen from the embellishment kit to add some hand drawn stars.

See you all for the next kit!!

Claire x