Jan. CKC #4 – Step by Step

Hello again,

I am sharing my fourth CKC Jan. kit layout, this one is a double page spread. It’s been a while since I’ve done a double page layout, with this one I wanted a vast page to mimic the outdoors. The photos I am using are from last year when I met up with my Dad and we got to spend some time together. This doesn’t happen very often, as he lives 400km away and he is often travelling/prospecting which can easily stretch the distance to 4000km or more! On this day we decided to do a little exploring together and went to check out one of the South West regions caves. Because we went underground I started the layout off by creating an earthy coloured background.

On top of my earthy background, I built up layers of stamped foliage using some colours which I pulled from the Felicity Jane kit. Some smokey blues and teals. You can see that my cardstock had become quite warped from the mixed media/water application. I just press it, between two pieces of white paper, with an iron to reduce the warping. It usually results in a smooth surface, though sometimes you may need to dampen the back of the cardstock with a spritzer.

Then, I mounted the main photo with several layers of paper. I tried to use up the last of that Christmas paper.

I added some papers to the background. This is where things got interesting, after looking at my photos I wanted to emphasise the sense of going down into the earth. I decided to cut around the stamped foliage with a scalpel and slip some of the photos behind the cuts. Dah, Dah… walking down into the cave.

I roughed up the edges of the cuts to add a bit of texture. Then, I got busy adding embellishments and sticking down my photos. I cut some foliage and text dies using my Big Shot Sizzix and added some enamel dots.

I felt some areas were lacking something and looked a little unfinished, so I stamped on some more leaves to fill the gaps. Then, I added the location and date using some foam alphas. I am pretty happy with the end result, though it is quite busy and somewhat over embellished in my usual style.

Jan. CKC #3 Layout

Hi again,

Here is a quick layout which I put together prior to going to summer school. Once again, I am working in poor lighting at night and splashing around some Oxide ink and using some dies.

I started off with selecting which papers I wanted to use to mount my photo. The photo is of three of my children, it is not often that they are together, so I wanted to capture this memory. I pulled papers from my CKC kit which worked with the colours of their clothes.

Next, I used the Uniquely Creative flower stamp which I had used previously on a layout and stamped a border along the side of my cardstock. I carefully covered the stamped flowers and splashed on/around some Tim Holtz Oxide Inks using the plastic bag technique.

I then used some leftover die cuts from earlier and glued them over the stamped images. I wanted them to have a little dimension, so I only applied glue to the centre of each flower. I purposely placed them off centre to create a shadowed effect and reveal part of the stamped imaged underneath. I layered two die cuts to create a corner embellishment and cut down a die cut and tucked it between my layered papers at the top of the photo.

Then, I added my title and used one of my little ribbon bows to finish off the layout. It was a fairly quick layout which has captured this moment in time.

Summer Holiday Upskilling

Good morning,

I hope everyone is well and finding some time to get creative. I have been super busy during my holidays and have not had a lot of time to paint or scrap. Every holiday I try and sneak in a little skill building in the Arts. This holiday I have spent a week at the Albany Summer School learning about coloured pencil technique with Marie Haass and contemporary ink practice with Leanne White.

It is such a joy to spend time with others who are passionate about art and getting creative. As a group, we all had such a great time and shared our knowledge. Within the coloured pencil class, there were some very talented artists with only a few beginners to the art of drawing but many students had not really used coloured pencils as an artistic medium. Most of us had only used coloured pencils as children or during the recent meditation colouring book craze which seemed to take over the World! So, we were all very keen to participate and upskill ourselves.

Marie Haass has had years of experience working as both an artist and teacher, she has lectured many students during their university studies. She was an excellent teacher. She is very welcoming and encouraging and reads and recognises the talents of her students. Marie adjusts her teaching style to suit the student’s needs, she works one on one with each student and doesn’t hold people back but lets them explore the medium through a series of activities and observation drawings. It was really a fun experience listening to Marie share her knowledge and life experiences, we laughed a lot and shared lots of our own stories during the five days.

We started off learning about blending colour pencils and applying a variety of pressures to create a vast range of colours and techniques. I and a few others occasionally (well…often) got reminded to start off with light pressure. I struggled somewhat with this, being a girl who loves strong bright colours, I found it challenging to hold back! Then, we moved on to observation drawing, our subject being onions! Yes, who knew that onions could be so interesting and prove quite challenging.

Next, we worked on a piece using shells from the Albany beaches. Shells up close are fascinating with the range of colours and patterns they have. We also had to include some shell chocolates within our image, I was the only student to score a prawn chocolate! Everyone enjoyed the challenge and it was a great way to put our blending skills and pressure skills into play.

In the contemporary ink class, Leanne White took us through a huge range of ways to use ink. Leanne is a very talented artist who illustrates children books using a range of mediums and has worked as a professional artist and teacher of the arts for many years. She is located where I live, right in the middle of town, it was funny that I travelled all the way to Albany to participate in one of her classes.

We explored a huge range of inks, bottled ink, ink crayons/pencils, ink pens and mediums and different papers. After three days of play and experimentation, we were encouraged to get creative and work on some final pieces which incorporated all our new knowledge and skills. It was a lot of fun, I used my mixed media obsession and splashed around a lot of ink and colour. Once again, many of us shared our knowledge and skills, and in the process taught each other different techniques, where to buy supplies at the best price, and we made some great friendships.

Now, to use these new skills in my scrapbooking. I am thinking that I could perhaps hand draw some coloured pencil embellishments and make some more amazing backgrounds incorporating various ink mediums. Oh, the possibilities!

Keep on crafting everyone 🙂

Jan. 2019 CKC – Forgery #1.

Hello again.

Here is my first layout featuring my forged paper. I had decided that I wanted to scrap a funny photo of my grandson playing with playdough. He had made a playdough man and his mum sent through the photo for us to view. As boys do, he was being silly when posing for the photo, so the quality is not great. It is a little blurry but does capture his cheekiness. Let me just say that the playdough man is magnificent, a work of art! Well, I may be biased, it does have all the important elements of a human which is the goal when you are four. It was the playdough figure which triggered my idea for the forged paper. The playdough feet are rough circles, much like the black and white circle paper featured in the Felicity Jane ‘Hannah’ kit.

I decided to create my own circle paper to use as a background for the layout. It was a simple process of loosely tracing circles onto to the white cardstock using an Artline permanent marker. I used a washi tape container to trace around. Then, I painted some of the circles with Tim Holtz Oxide inks in colours which matched the theme and photo. Unfortunately, the so-called permanent marker did bleed around the edges when it interacted with the watered down ink. After the first bleed, I was a little more careful when applying the ink.

Then, even though I liked the look of the painted circles I thought it needed something else. I pulled out a Fiskars geometric diamond stamp which was similar to one of the papers in the Felicity Jane kit and stamped the image across the page. Still not happy with the result, I decided it needed more colour and wanted to reduce the white space. I used the Tim Holtz micro glaze to protect my inked circles. I love this product, the tiniest amount makes the inked area waterproof, stopping any colour shifting and allowing you to add colour over the top. After rubbing on the micro glaze I applied the blue watercolour paint.

Next, I selected some patterned paper and coloured cardstock to mount the photos. I prefer to use several mounts on each photo, something which has gone out of fashion these days. In one of the photos, you see the wooden floor in their house, this inspired me to mount the photos on a background of woodgrain paper from my kit.

As I had mentioned in an earlier post, I didn’t have a scallop washi tape to include in my kit. I decided to substitute this with a strip of polka dot paper trimmed down to create a scalloped edge. I attached this to the edge of the woodgrain background.

Including embellishments that reflected the Felicity Jane kit had me troubled. Flowers, love hearts and a bike didn’t really go with my photo choices. I hummed and hawed over this, what to add? Then I decided to go with it and added a few flowers, a tag and the die cut word awesome. I’m not super happy with the result and would have liked to reach for some other embellishments but I was trying to only use things from my kit.

Anyway, it is another layout completed and I did meet the goal of forging some elements for the challenge. Happy scrapping everyone.

CKC Jan. Layout #1

Hello again 🙂

Here is my first layout using my January CKC kit. If you haven’t been following you can check out my kit here and get all the details on how to participate at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge blog.

So, first up, I went with a photo of my daughter and her friends having a night out. The photo has several of the pinks, blues and burgundies found in the Felicity Jane ‘Hannah’ collection.

I decided to have a play with some mixed media, using my watercolour paints and the plastic bag technique I smooshed some paint around my white cardstock. The blue paint I used came out a lot stronger than I expected and I nearly started over but decided to keep going and find some way to tone it down.

I tried stencilling on some ink to create some texture and distract from the intense blue. I used Tim Holtz’s Spun Sugar and Stormy Sky distress inks, both work beautifully with the Felicity Jane colour theme.

Then, I began making some embellishments. I stamped out some flowers using the Uniquely Creative Mini Bloom Advent Stamp and coloured them using Polychromos coloured pencils. Then I die cut them out, love this matching die, it makes it so much quicker than fussy cutting them. I also cut some flowers out of coloured cardstock using the matching die.

Next, I stamped some flowers and foliage onto my background. I decided to fussy cut flowers from some papers I had put aside for making embellishments. The colours coordinated well with my pencils and inks.

I then mounted my photo using some patterned paper and coloured cardstock. I rough up the edges using my fingernail and layered the pieces using foam and double-sided tape.

I spent a lot of time fixing the flowers into place, I keep changing my mind and fiddling with the layers. I added a Thickers alpha title and some die cut tags. Overall, I think it has turned out quite well, but my colours are too strong and perhaps a little overpowering compared with the original kit. Moving on to layout number two, I hope you are enjoying participating in the CKC challenge.

Jan. 2019 Counterfeit Kit Challenge

Good morning.

Well, I am off and racing with the new CKC. I put my kit together yesterday and surprisingly found it a little tricky. The papers in the Felicity Jane ‘Hannah’ kit are fairly simple in pattern and design, but I fell short when rummaging through my supplies. I struggled to find just the right subtle blues, greens and pinks. I didn’t quite make it with the patterns, mine were either too heavy and thick in line or not geometric. Even though I knew I had previously had some fish scale/scallop paper, I could not find a scrap of it. So, here is what I ended up with…

For this month, I decided to keep it small and achievable. Often I go overboard and select an abundance of papers and embellishments which makes a mega kit. I am sticking to my word for the year, “Complete”, having a smaller kit will help me achieve this. To start with I chose papers by colour and/or pattern, a lot of the papers I selected in my initial rummage came from Christmas collections. Weird hey?

I didn’t have a floral paper with the right colours, so decided to go with a black and white floral which I can colour to match the collection. No fish scales/scallops meant that I needed a substitute, I went with a polka dot design in both black and white and blue and white. My check is smaller than the original and as you can see has the Three Wise Men featured. The men will get the chop and will not be featuring in my layouts. My text paper has a lot less white space than the original and reads ‘Hooray’. Overall, I have more colour than the original Felicity Jane kit but I think I can make it work.

I had a pile of papers left over once I sorted through to get to this point and decided to keep them on hand for creating embellishments. In the pile are two florals which I had picked out because of the blue patterned backgrounds, then I realised that the flowers had the same colourways as the Felicity Jane flowers, a strong burgundy and a soft pink. I might fussy cut these for embellishments.

For my embellishments, I didn’t have a lot which matched with the original kit. Being a girl obsessed with colour, I don’t tend to buy scrapbook supplies with such a mild palette. I decided that I could forge many of them and make my own. So, I dug deep into my dies and stamps and found similarly themed ones which I could use with my papers/cardstock to make a range of embellishments.

I found that I owned a bicycle die, yes! I also have quite a few texts dies and tag dies. I do not have any heart stickers, so will use my heart die. As for the floral stamp, I just received a lovely floral stamp in my Uniquely Creative Advent Kit which I am looking forward to trying out. It came with two matching dies which means no fussy cutting, hurrah! My bows will be satin ribbon bows, as I’m not interested in purchasing any tulle, even though the tulle bows look very cute. I have included some inks and not being able to deny myself, may splash around some paints. You can see that I selected some cardstock to use for backgrounds, photo mounts and tags. The colours I selected to match the Felicity Jane colour theme, though they look darker in the photos. Hhmm…maybe they are too dark, I may have to swap some out. That’s what happens when you are selecting cardstock at night in poor lighting.

I still need to choose my alpha stickers, I may go with two different sizes in pink. I also need to sort through my 3×4 quote/journal cards and find ones with a suitable colour range. The kit also included a scallop washi tape, hmm, not sure what I use for this. I may just use strips of paper/cardstock or use a different patterned washi tape in the same colour.

If you would like more details and get a better idea about the Felicity Jane ‘Hannah’ kit there is a great unboxing video worth watching by the LindseyDecor channel.

Make sure that you keep up to date with the challenge by checking in often and following the CKC blog. I can’t wait to see what everyone creates. Here are the great CKC scrappers, design team and Master Forgers for you to enjoy

Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog: http://counterfeitkitchallenge.blogspot.com/
Meagan Johnson: http://www.thepracticalscrapper.com/
Cindy: http://cindyscreations-cinmfoster.blogspot.com/
Julene: http://julenebydesign.blogspot.com/
Leslie: http://lcsmithsaved-outofthemire.blogspot.com/
Lisa: http://lisahausmann.blogspot.com/
Lori: https://loriannie670.blogspot.com/
Laura: https://www.instagram.com/mrsp_scrapsandtea/

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all.

Well, down in Oz it is the second of January and our lovely guests are moving on today to visit other Western Australian family. When I say lovely I really mean it. They have been just gorgeous and we have had a lot of fun. You can not love guests who pitch in with the dishes and even cook us treats and meals. We explored parts of the South West region and made lots of memories (and took photos) doing a vast range of activities. We swam in different oceans, went caving, climbed a lighthouse (the tallest in Australia), swam in the Blackwood River, ate local chocolate, sampled and bought amazing olive oil, and enjoyed local wine and gourmet food. Sometimes we drank a little too much wine, New Year’s Eve being one of those occasions, and spent the next day relaxing in the pool, on the lounge reading or watching movies. At times we did old-fashioned things, we put

away our devices, and we played board games. I taught our new family how to play Canasta, something I later regretted when they started winning every game. We laughed a lot and loved the funny interactions between our grandson and our other young family members. We have truly had a happy holiday season spent with much-loved family and friends. I hope that the silly season also brought you moments of joy, love and surprise. Now, to get busy scrapping those moments…

First up, for me, it is to do a whole lot of catch up. I have not scrapped for 6 weeks!

Today I am kicking off with selecting my kit for the January Counterfeit Kit Challenge. Have you seen this beauty? It is a little bittersweet for me, I love this month’s selected kit, but I am

a little sad because I was invited to be the guest designer for this kit. I was so honoured to be asked and sadly had to turn down the offer due to my busy life commitments. I really hope I have a chance at a later date to participate as a guest designer, what a fun challenge that would be. How lovely is it that Meagan Johnson took up the challenge, and what a talented scrapper she is. I love her clean lines and contemporary style, Meagan is part of the Becky Higgins Creative Team, wow, impressive. Make sure you join in with the challenge to use up your stash and follow the CKC team members as they share what they create and set challenges.

Next, on the list is using my one and only subscription kits, from Uniquely Creative. I am way behind with using these up. I set myself a challenge that as each kit came in I would use it. Hhhmm, life got in the way. I have a few to use, the first being the September kit. This one is filled with yummy mixed media products but themed around winter snow/snowflakes which we don’t have here in Western Australia. I am going to have to be creative and come up with some snow-free layouts. I also have the November kit to complete, this one is very girly with flowers, butterflies, lace and heritage pastel papers. The other one to complete is the 2018 Advent Kit, which is also very girly with florals. I am thinking that I may finally finish off my baby daughters album with both these girly kits, my daughter is now 24! Last, the December kit which is sea themed and will be great for my recent holiday snaps. Oh no, the January kit ships in five days, I need to get busy.

So, that is what is on my agenda for the next few weeks. I will try and share what I create and use up. I am looking forward to playing with my new Tim Holtz Oxide inks which Santa gave me and incorporating some stamps and tools which have been sitting too long. Oh, and I have $100 to spend on craft/art supplies, my Christmas gift from my mother. What shall I buy? I also have a weeks holiday planned to join in with the Albany Summer School, I am looking forward to learning some new artistic skills and techniques and meeting like-minded people. My other catch up will be watching my favourite YouTube scrap blogger, Janet from RTS Scrapbooking, whilst I scrap and create. What will you be working on over the summer?