Finishing up

As we all sit waiting patiently (ish) for the new Quirky Kits to hit the doorstep I thought I would share two layouts that have helped me finish up the last one. Although to be honest it was so jam packed I still have oodles of embellishments left to play with!

If you think "hey it kind of looks like she emptied out the rest of her Basic Grey Highline die cut cardstock and transparencies embellishments and spread them over the layout" then you are just about right! I thought it would be a fun thing to do with lots of die cuts and I did enjoy playing about with placement. It was one of those times I had fancy phone envy as I am sure I had a version of this I preferred but when I took everything away to outline, it didn't fall back in quite the same way.

I think my fave bit is the "birds" made of parentheses. I coloured some of the wooden hearts from the kit with a red Sharpie to make them work with the colours of the page. I did add some letters from stash (American Crafts and Adornit - both I suspect are about 8 years old!)

The two layouts with leftovers I have made are going into a Faith scrapbooking album - which is why there are Bible quotes

I do so love it when papers seem to be the exact right colour to match the photos chosen for a layout, don't you? I changed some of the papers up a little by adding some lines with a fine black pen. (NB I carefully noted where the covering paper would be so I wouldn't have to do all the triangles behind it!)
Apart from the envelope, chalkboard arrows and butterflies, the lettering and embellishments are not from the kit. The stash obsessed among you may recognise the puffy arrows from a previous kit. The letters are Basic Grey, the flower in the bottom corner is Websters Pages, the chipboard bubble is Studio Calico and the asterisk in the top right corner is from Love, Elsie. The resin flower is from Fancy Pants and I think the sticker is too.

Next time I post it will be with some brand new goodies - yippee!!!!!

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.