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

Technique Overload Layout

I went a bit crazy on this layout. My kits are into the last bits now so I've got a mix up of paper scraps and embellishments and wanted to think of ways to use up the paper scraps. Then I also had a few ideas I wanted to have a play with I'd thought of earlier on and then not got around to so this whole layout became a bit of an experiment/mish mash.

It's fun to have a proper play with supplies every now and then without worrying if you're going to 'ruin' anything and kit left overs and bits and pieces you have just before new kit time are perfect for playing around with. I've got one more project to come with the current kits. It's almost time for new kits so subscribers look out for your notification emails. You can look up the new kits in the shop but also look out next Wednesday for the full kits details and photos popping up here on the blog.

x Leo

Paper Layering - With the March/April Lite and Embellishment Kits

I've been having a tidy out just recently and it dug up a few photo treasures from old scrapbooks and folders one of the ones I found was this little cut out picture. It being a bunny picture too I thought rather appropriate for Easter. It was Easter when I started this layout but it did get shelved for a bit then yesterday I went back to finish it off. I started out with the Napa Valley paper from the March/April Lite kit. The pattern already has sections on it that are like distressed wood panels so I went with those and cut out the panel pieces. I picked out the burlap stickers from the embellishment kit to work with the paper and it started to get a whole 'shabby chic' feel so that's what I carried on trying to use as a design theme. I layered the patterned paper cut out pieces on top of scraps of cardstock and some of them on some of the other Lite kit patterned papers and then cut them out to leave little borders around the edges and create little layered paper pieces. 

The paper pieces I then arranged as the background of the layout making one of them a matt for the little photo. The title layer bit is made up from one of the library cards from the embellishment kit cut into two pieces then layered up with more patterned paper pieces and little bits of washi tape from the embellishment kit.I also used the washi tape straight onto the cardstock background around the edges of the paper layers just to help to frame all the floating bits.

You could use the same idea, (cutting out the paper pieces and making mini layers) on any paper craft project sizing them up or down depending on what you're working on, cards, pocket page spreads, tags, journals etc.
x Leo

Happy Scrapbooking Day! Homemade Scrapbook Album Project.

Today is National Scrapbooking Day and we're joining in the scrapping fun all over the world today!
I've got a project sheet for you to download. It's to make something that every scrapper needs and it uses up any supplies you have. It's also kind of essential. Got it yet? Yep your very own homemade scrapbook album!

They are deceptively simple to make and I've made the fastening so you can adjust the pages inside to add and take away as you use it. These are tried and tested albums too as I've used the design for my December Daily albums a couple of times and they're now a few years old and still going strong!
I decided to make a 6x8 inch size pocket page scrapbook in the worksheet sample, although you can use the same instructions and make an album to any size you want. I've got lots of left over photos from processing or past scrapping pages and so I thought rather than leaving them in the wallets I'd add them to a simple little pocket page album so they've got a nice place to live. It's also the kind of scrapping you can do in a weekend too, filling up a whole album as you go! Plus it makes use of your left over bits and pieces which I've also done collecting together left over bits from Quirky Kits!

The link to download the album project is bellow. It's in PDF format so you can download it to your tablet devices too to read through and keep for future reference.
Click here to download the Scrapbook Album Project Worksheet
Have fun whatever you're doing on Scrapbooking Day!
x Leo