Downtown Tea Party Quirky Kit: A page with pastels

Hi again.

For my third project with the Downtown Tea Party kit I made a page which draws together some of the more muted colours in the kit:

I chose the Cosmo Cricket 'Re:peat' design as my backing paper, but used the more muted graph paper design on the reverse as it fitted with the soft shades in my photographs.

I love using graph paper and ledger / lined paper designs asbacking sheets as they're plain enough to build upon without being too fussy, but not as cold a starting point as a blank sheet of cardstock. Also, for this particular page, the lines on it helped reinforce my use of stitching through my layers.

On top of my base paper I began adding strips of text cut from the Cosmo Cricket 'Re:make' design to co-ordinate with the 'lettering' theme of the page drawn from the photos of me reading a hanging curtain of poetry at an exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

I created a triangle of embellishments across the page with each of the three clusters containing snippets of soft peachy shades. Here I cut a flower from the Pink Paislee House of Three Soiree ‘Floral’ paper as well asa sunburst design from the twine packaging!

The tiny section of the Shabby Chic journaling spot was just what remained after I used it on the micro-mini book I shared earlier. I'm so pleased it didn't end up in my recycling bin as it just adds an extra little point of interest on the page.

In the bottom two clusters I used tiny pieces of the fabric in the kit for a splash of colour inspired by the orange patterned dress and scarf I'm wearing in the photos! 

Once everything was fixed in place I ran it through the sewing maching to add some texture and to reflect the hanging strands of the poetry sculpture. The gently spattered a coral shad eof Shimmerz paint across the three embellishment clusters and smeared on some white acrylic paint direct from the tube.

Overall this page has a much more muted feel than the micro book I made with kit and it's different again to the second page I've made featuring photos from the sculpture park ... which I'll share with you in my next post here.

So how do you use your kits?

1. Do you like to use them to keep a general colour theme and similar style running across several projects?
2. Or do you break them up into smaller, co-ordinating mini-kits, with a new feel to each page?

As I say, I'll be back soon with a page with a completely different feel in colour and style ... so I guess that makes me No.2 on that list. How about you?

I'll see you soon.

Julie

Downtown Tea Party - minibook

by Julie Kirk
Hi again.
For my second project with 'Downtown Tea Party' - the latest Quirky Kit - I used the papers and embellishments from the kit to decorate a micro-book as a birthday gift for a friend:

My cover features a painted chipboard heart to which I added one of the kit's butterflies in turquoise and one of the gorgeous cerise pink resin rose beads.

The tie closures are made from twisting together a strand of each of the various colours of Pink Paislee baker's twine:

To decorate the tiny pages I simply tore and roughly cut, sections from the various papers down to size.

Here's a little snippet from the Pink Paislee Daily Junque ‘Tickets’ design which I glued onto the book's existing page:

Next I glued down half a Shabby Chic Crafts journaling card on top of which I added a yellow paper butterfly.
Once my glue dried I ran the page - as I did every page in the book - through my sewing machine with a contrasting black thread, trying here to give the impression of antennae:

I continued throughout the book, decoratively stitching-down the small strips of the paper as I went along:

To add another level of detail and texture to the book I splattered, smeared and scraped complimentary coloured paints along, around and across it.

I used white paint where I wanted a plain base on to which I could stamp my chosen words:

It was such a tiny gift, which you can judge by its size compared to my thumb here:

... so I decided to make it a protective bag from the candy pink tulle net fabric from the kit:

It was simply a piece cut to size, folded and stitched on the machine along the bottom and side.
To fasten - I just wrapped another length of  baker's twine around it and tied a bow:

Using your kit on something so small is a great way to:

• see a great combination of lots of the papers all at once, in a small space;
• make a big feature of those small butterfly and journaling block embellishments;
• experiment with a few messy techniques [like paint splattering and border stamping] on a tiny canvas - with less romm for error!
• use up scraps once you've already used your kit to make several layouts.

If you'd like a few more close-ups of the detail of the book check out this post on my blog  and I'll be back here soon with something more 12x12-sized I think!

See you soon.

Julie  :-)

'Downtown Tea Party' Quirky Kit: Curiouser + Curiouser

Hello. Again.

One year on since blogging my final project as a full-time Quirky Kit Design Team member, I'm thrilled to be back as a guest for the 'Downtown Tea Party' kit!

So, considering it's both a reunion and a tea party ... I thought I'd better make an effort to dress up for the occasion. How about if I wear this ...:

My friends and I go an a crafting 'retreat' twice a year and we usually pick a theme to base our gifts, food and projects on.

The latest theme was 'The Mad Hatter's Tea Party' and one of my friends surprised us all by bringing along 4 professionally made pantomine-style costumes for us to play with!

 Naturally ... being amongst scrapbookers ... there were lots of photos taken and I've been holding off scrapping them while waiting for this kit as I had my eye on the pink + white candy stripe ribbon. How perfectly does it match 'my' amazingly swooshy dress?

As for the pink + white striped paper edging ... that's the paper bag all of the embellishments come tucked inside within the kit!
I used a X-Cut edge punch along the bottom of it, pleated it and pressed it down into my double sided tape, then stamped a decorative doily-edge border along it.
Then I threaded various shades of the Pink Paislee 'Daily Junque' bakers twine through the punched out sections and finished with a tiny off-cut of the pink ribbon:

I also tied the Pink Paislee 'Daily Junque' bakers twine around the bodies of the paper butterfly embellishments, snipping the ends to form antennae:

The Pink Paislee ‘Tickets’ patterned paper was almost too nice to cut into, but once I braved it I used it as a strip across the centre:

Then punched a scalloped circle from it and used the alternative pattern on the reverse as a journaling block in the centre and finally cut around one of the roses to add a little focal point to the top corner:

And here's the final page again so you can see how it all hangs together:

I'll be dropping by throughout the month to share some more pages I've been making with this kit ... maybe there'll even be another costume ... or two ... we'll see!

Make sure you share your Quirky Kit projects by linking them up in a comment or via the Crafty Templates Twitter account or Facebook page.
So, I'll see you soon for more Downtown Tea Party-ing ... I'll bring the cakes if you put the kettle on.
Julie   / @notesonpaper x
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Supplies list for my 'Curiouser + Curiouser' page. Everything taken from the Downtown Tea Party kit:

• American Crafts Kraft cardstock
• Pink Paislee House of Three, Daily Junque ‘Tickets’ patterned paper
• Kesi’art Bout d'Ficelle, ‘Cotton’ patterned paper
• Cosmo Cricket ‘Heart in the Dark’ chipboard alphabet stickers 
• Kesi’art Script alphabet stickers, noir.
• Pink/white candy stripe ribbon
• Pink Paislee Daily Junque bakers twine
• Paper butterfly embellishments
• Paper bag - packaging! 

The structure of the layout was inspired by Sketch 240 from the Pencil Lines sketch challenge blog.

Downtown Tea Party - Coming to a scrapbook space near you!

Yay! The new kits are shipping out on Monday and there's loads of lovely to look forward to this month.
Like these yummy scrummy alphabets:

And how about some funky twine:

 More lush patterned fabric:

And these super fun papers:

And you've never seen cardstock like this:

And loads of sweet little embellies:

Super yum!
Look out for our guest designer Julie popping up around here. If you're a Scrapbook Magazine reader the guys over there have been having a play with this months kit too. You can check out what they've been up to in issue 56 and I've just been looking at an early peek so I'll share a smaller sneak peek with you, shhhh!

xx Leo

Creating with the new kits

I've been busy coming up with some page ideas mixing up the upcoming kits for May/June 'Glastonbury Fields' and Downtown Tea Party'. The kits will work great  individually as well as mixed up together. If you're getting both kits you'll get more paper to play with which I personally love because it gets you out of the umming and arring about what paper to cut into first! :)

For this page I grabbed.....
from the 'Glastonbury Fields kit:

• Kesi'art Tutti Frutti 'Betise' paper
• Pink Paislee Soiree 'Floral' paper
• Sassafras blue linen alphabet stickers

from the 'Downtown Tea Party kit:

• Shabby chic crafts fancy frame journal spot
• Cosmo Cricket Heart in the Dark Chipboard alphas
• Kesi'art Script mini alpha stickers
• Soiree mini cards x 2
• Butterfly embellishment
• Pink Paislee twine
• Pin stripe ribbon
• White cardstock

from my stash:

• black drawing ink
• Black fine liner pen
• date stamp
• Feather

Here's what I came up with:

Ideas to try:
Layer the Pink Paislee cards with other similar shaped pieces of paper and use them to highlight a title:

Mix up the different alphabet stickers from both kits on one layout:

Sketch on pencil lines to mark out where your journalling will go on your layout then stitch over the lines with sewing machine or hand stitching:

Cut some of the flowers from the Soriee 'Floral' patterned paper and add them to your page using 3D foam pads to add dimension:

I loved the hand drawn look to the flowers so I echoed this and added some hand drawn doodling around edges and on the alphabet stickers.

Keep a peek out for more ideas soon & let me know what you're looking forward to playing with from the new kit the most.
xx Leo

Photo Oppotunity

Hi!
This was the double layout I was going to post the other day. Remember before I was saying about a fun photo idea to do with the family, well here it is...
We all love cute kids photos but how about mixing them with photos from their viewpoint too? It makes for a fun different double layout! Take a few snapshots then let someone else have a go and maybe turn the camera on you too - especially if you're always the one behind the camera.
Have a go, take a few snaps then let the kids or other family members/friends have a go too and mix the results up on a layout. It's also fun trying to guess what the photos are when they're on your camera too, lol!

I took some snaps of the layouts before adding the photos and titles too so you can copy just the layouts if you prefer. I made use of off cuts I had left and matted some of them onto black cardstock and then inked the rest around the edge with a black inkpad. It helped to make all the individual papers stand out against one another.

Here's the basis of the second layout.

Almost everything I used was from the Spring in Your Step kit. I used some extra alphabet stickers from my stash because I'm trying to use more of my older stash, there's no reason why you can't mix in old stash with your kits it's a great push to get older stuff used. I used some very old Heidi Swapp patterned chipboard, a few Echo Park stickers and some American Crafts Thickers.
xx Leo

Scrappy Ideas

I was going to add a double layout today but it's just gone ominously dark, think it might finally be going to rain! Ekk just heard a big rumble of thunder too. So anyway not good for photo taking but I do have some other projects to share already pre-photoed.

When I'm working with I kit I tend to keep all the pieces together in one box and in that box after I've finished cutting and sticking is usually a big old pile of small squares and off cuts so I put together a couple of little books to make use of the small scrappy bits and pieces.

To make the pages of the book I used plain A5 paper and cut out a 6cm strip off the short side. You end up with a square size piece and a long thin size piece. I made a large pile of the paper pieces for my pages. You can stack a wedge of paper together and trim them at once to save time. Having the two piles of paper meant I could make two books, one square for a sketch book and one long and thin for a list book.

Square Book

For the covers I used some card from a pizza box and covered the front and back of each piece of card with plain cardstock. I found out some of the leftover pieces of patterned paper and some of the netting and fabric from the Spring in Your Step kit. To begin with I added a layer of drawing ink sprayed on with a Mini Mister.

Then added a layer of netting fixing it in place with a couple of staples.

Then I added a square of paper and a sticker. I had these stickers (Crate Paper ones) on my desk from making cards so I just grabbed them to use.

Then I added another slightly smaller square of paper.

Then something else that was hanging around my desk, a lovely feather just glued on. I love adding in bits of ephemera to projects so I'm always collecting bits and pieces.

Next I added another small square of paper and some of the ribbon from the kit. I love this ribbon, I've been hoarding it!

Then another little sticker, I'm trying to use these up!

Then finally a small square of fabric from the kit and one of the rose brads. The 'ideas' title I hand stitched onto a scrap of canvas. When the cover was finished I fixed the whole book together with my Bind-it-All.

List Book

I already had a scrap of paper with a butterfly punched out of it so I cut out a rectangle around it and use a boarder punch on one edge. I used a small scrap of card and a bit of netting fabric to fix the netting behind the punch out.

Like this!

To make the cover I use just scraps of patterned paper cut to the same size as the plain paper pieces. To the front cover piece I added a bit of fabric, love the frayed edge so I kept that on.

Then the butterfly piece just went over the top along with a some of the alphabet stickers.

Again the whole book was fixed together with my Bind-it-All.

So what are you doing with your kit bits and pieces?

xx Leo