CKC Oct. 2019 – Layout #3

Good morning,

A quick share of another layout using my CKC October kit. I used three papers from my kit, the navy and white polka dot, the yellow polka dot and the text dictionary print for the background.

I wanted to combine two challenges with this layout, my favourite online store, Annas Craft Cupboard, and FB scrappy group had a mood board challenge for this month which I loved. The colours were perfect for my photo. There was a slight hint of blue in the background of the photo and some lovely creams and golds from my daughters, hair, skin and jewellery. I used three different Tim Holtz oxide inks to grunge up the background using the plastic bag technique, a very simple technique using just ink and water to create amazing layers of colour.

Then I rummaged through my embellishment supplies in my kit and on my desk. I pulled out some very old chipboard frames and a heart, some new Vicki Boutin die cuts, a scrap scallop edge from a chipboard sheet, and some Tim Holtz chipboard quotes and rose die cuts. Also on my desk was some copper glitter and a bag of sequins waiting to be put away, so I decided to use these as well.

I distressed the edges of my matting papers which included a few scrap pieces and the polka dot papers from my kit. I roughly laid out where I would place the embellishments, paper matting and photo, at this stage, I take a photo and use it as a reference later when adhering things in place.

I needed to make some changes to the chipboard frames/shapes as they stood out too much being plain white and cream. I dunked them onto a mix of oxide ink and water (to activate the oxidisation) and create a little implied texture and colour. I added some little specks of glue to each, using my finger, and sprinkled each with glitter, then shook off the excess. Let me just say that I am not a glitter girl and it is rare for me to use it if I do use glitter it is usually on Christmas items. For me, a lot of glitter is gaudy, but a little can add some magic to a layout.

After I added the embellishments, some of that glitter made its way onto the background, once again a little smear of glue with my finger and a very light sprinkle of glitter. Then, I added some sequins and some Nuvo crystal drops ( a recent purchase). I am still trying to master adding Nuvo drops, some had little peaks which I squashed down when they were half dry. The blue Nuvo drops worked every time, the metallic did not!

I enjoyed putting this layout together, it is always fun to get messy playing with oxide inks. I think the layout came together well and I love how all the embellishments coordinated with the colours in the background.

Keep on scrapping everyone 🙂

*Note: if you are purchasing glitter, please only purchase the environmental type now available. We all now know how bad it is for the waterways and wildlife. When cleaning up your work surface, use a baby wipe, damp tissue/paper towel which will hold onto the glitter during the cleanup and try to dispose of it in a more eco-responsible way. As crafters, we all have a tonne of glitter in various forms, we need to try and do the right thing. Here are some links with advice on responsible use and disposal…

How to get rid of your plastic glitter

How to dispose of glitter

The eco-friendly guide to glitter

‘Go forth and sparkle responsibly’

Please leave a comment below or share with other creatives, remember you need to open the post by clicking on the title to access the comment box if you are on the home page.

Lemon Tree…Very Pretty!

Morning,

Does anyone remember that old song where it goes ‘Lemon tree very pretty…’? When I looked at my photos of my citrus garden this song popped into my head and became the inspiration to my layout. This layout is all about pretty with lots of mixed media, flowers and foliage.

The background was fun to create with a layer of stencilling using a Kaisercraft stencil and texture gesso paste, some painting and splatter with Tim Holtz oxide inks and then sponging on some more ink using a Vicki Boutin leaf stencil.

Next, to finish off the background, I stamped on some leaves using a Vicki Boutin stamp.

Time to make some embellishments with more layers of oxide ink, Vicki Boutin stamps and some fussy cutting. It’s amazing what you can do with a scrap of white cardstock.

With my leaves cut, it was time to punch out some hearts. I pulled out a range of patterned paper scraps with different textures and patterns to keep things interesting, and even used the Vicki Boutin packaging!

Next, I dribbled some Heidi Swapp mustard color shine onto the background where I wanted my photo to be placed. I adhered my photo in place with some fun foam and glue and got to work adhering and layering my hearts and foliage embellishments. I added a Prima die cut and some stamped Vicki Boutin flowers. Then, finished off with some mustard coloured puffy hearts, a gold title of chipboard alphas and some white and yellow watercolour paint splatter.

I love how this turned out, it is so fresh with the mix of greens and yellows. A fun layout to create, though it was time-consuming…6 hours! I don’t usually spend this amount of time on a layout but I was chilling out and creating on a Friday night. Overall, time well spent!

2019 May ACC Sketch Challenge!

Good afternoon,

A quick share of the layout I created for Anna’s Craft Cupboard community May sketch challenge. This month’s sketch has a focus on creating a circular design.

I have blown my self instigated ‘use your stash’ challenge this month, there has just been too many sales and bargains to be found with ‘inter’ National Scrapbook Day (weekend/week/month) and all the Mother’s Day deals. I spent up at Anna’s Craft Cupboards 13th Birthday sale this month, after all, it is my birthday this month as well, plus Mother’s Day, if anyone deserves a prezzy, I do!

Also, I don’t like to pay for shipping and so I always make sure I spend the minimum spend for FREE shipping. For example, I ran out of white cardstock this week! Yikes, no scrapper can live without white cardstock and so I went online to order more, but 60 sheets did not make the FREE shipping minimum, so what’s a girl to do? Yep, I really did need some masculine patterned papers and who doesn’t need wolf and bear motifs when they live in Australia? So, the Heidi Swapp ‘Wolf Pack’ collection may have also found its way into the cart. Geepers, how does that happen?

Anyway, for this month’s sketch challenge I used some of my new purchases from Anna’s Craft Cupboard. At least I was following my rule about new product, if it comes in the door you must use it straight away. I had bought myself some of the Jillibean Rainbow Roux collection and the Vicki Boutin stencils which I had been coveting for quite a while. I was looking forward to trying out the stencils and fussy cutting those Jillibean flowers.

Here’s what I used…

It was a messy process, as I mentioned I had no plain white cardstock left and so I had to use some glossy, mixed media cardstock. It’s a lot like glossy photographic paper, in fact, it probably is photographic paper. Because it was so glossy I got out my Tim Holtz Alcohol Inks and splashed some around and tried using the new stencils with the inks. It wasn’t that successful but gave me a background to work with.

Next, I stencilled over the background with distress inks to build up some texture.

Then, some fussy cutting with the Jillibean Dash of Daydream paper.

I didn’t want to use up all my paper and decided to stencil some flowers onto the background.

Surprisingly, the black archival ink I used turned purple on the glossy cardstock. I tried to stencil a ring border and lead it down to the bottom right corner, like in the original sketch.

I cut out a circle of yellow patterned love hearts (the B side of Pinch of Colour, JB2313) and played around with laying out the fussy cut flowers around my photo.

Happy with the result I fixed them down in layers using double-sided tape, glue and foam.

Then, I added three titles to the layout and a little 1/2 tag which I cut from the Pinch of Colour paper. The bottom title is one of the new Annabelle acrylic embellishments which are gorgeous, they are so fine and delicate. I have purchased a few sets of these and will definitely be buying more in the future. Just be careful when you remove them from the packaging, they are set on sticky dots and one of mine broke because of how I twisted it to get it off the packet. I can still use it, a little glue will fix it.

The finished layout is very vibrant and fun. I can’t wait to make some other layouts using both the stencils and the Jillibean collection, both are very versatile.

Who else indulged this month on new supplies? Share what you bought and do join up with Anna’s Craft Cupboard community on FB. Have a go at their monthly challenges and support the store by buying product.

Keep on scrapping 🙂

Anna’s Craft Cupboard Cyber Crop!

A quick share of layouts I made during Anna’s Craft Cupboard’s 13th Birthday Celebration Cyber Crop…phew, what a mouthful.

Anna’s Craft Cupboard store is one of my favourites for stocking up on all your essential supplies and the latest products. They also have a fabulous design team who regularly share their creations and knowledge on the ACC blog and FB group/community. The FB community is made up of scrappers and cardmakers from across Australia and overseas, we are a fun loving bunch who love to share our work and support each other in our crafting and life dilemmas. Once the words ‘ Cyber Crop’ is mentioned, it is all hands on deck, ready and waiting to meet the challenges and join in with the fun and games. The Birthday Celebration Cyber Crop proved to be another huge success and lots of fun.

Here are my creations from this event…

Challenge #1. was to create a layout based on this mood board, lots of pink and blue, flowers, cars and frames. My layout is of my youngest daughters recent car accident, she was hit side on by a 4WD vehicle. Her car was written off!

Challenge #2. was a blind crop, always lots of fun. You are given a list of ingredients prior to the crop and the instructions to create the layout are released step by step in a live feed during the cyber crop.

Challenge #3. was to create a layout with lots of negative space. I used an old picture of my eldest son wearing his denim overalls.

Challenge #4. was to use the sketch below as inspiration for a layout.

I had been noticing sunburst layouts making a comeback in the scrapbook World and decided to have a go creating a sunburst border for my layout.

Challenge #5. was another blind crop. This one was messy with gesso and ink!

Challenge #6 was to make a card and Challenge #7. was a Tic Tac Toe, where you choose a row. I went with row 3, horizontal: die cuts, stencil and patterned paper.

It was a great cyber crop, lots of fun and inspiration. I encourage everyone to check out Annas Craft Cupboard online store and blog and become part of the community (FB), you don’t want to miss their next cyber crop.

Keep on scrapping 🙂

April 2019 CKC Layout #5

Good Friday and Easter blessings to everyone.

The rain is pouring down here, there is a chill in the air and my fire had gone out! So, after battling the fire lighting with very little paper and kindling, I am trying to catch up on what’s happening in the scrapbooking community. What did I find? The new CKC challenge has been posted and what a beauty it is for this time of the year. It’s all about hiding things on your layout (or in your photos), perhaps I will manage to snap a few photos to use today in our (early) Easter egg hunt and family gathering. Why are we celebrating Easter today? Well, we, as grandparents, like many families I’m sure, have to divvy up the holiday time spent with our grandson and children. It is tough having to share with the inlaws, once your children are grown and settled with families of their own. We are very lucky that the inlaws are all gorgeous people and at times we blend all our families together to celebrate holidays together, such as Christmas.

Anyway, let’s talk about layout number five. This layout killed two goals in one, I had wanted to use up more of my CKC kit and I wanted to enter this month’s Annas Craft Cupboard inspiration challenge. The challenge features henna mandalas, lace and a positive quote about walking your own path. It also has hints of pink, silver, white and fawn. Luckily for me, I had made up a kit which worked beautifully with this challenge and the photo had the same sort of theme…working towards the goal you set for yourself.

I used the very light pink patterned cardstock as my background and stencilled on some doily and decorative designs in black and light grey. Then splattered and smooshed on some blue watercolour paint.

This layout was pretty quick, a lot of layering of patterned paper and die cut embellishments.

It is my first layout using an Instagram photo. The photo is of my son-in-law, making his dream come true, as gaining an apprenticeship (piercing) in a Tattoo store, one step closer to being a Tattoo apprentice. He has since bought out part of the piercing business, so is now part owner. He also draws/designs tattoos for the biz, he is very artistic. It is a really hard industry to get into, you work for nothing for over a year before they consider offering you an apprenticeship, from what I watched on Youtube this is common practice in the industry around the World. We are all very proud of him for making his dreams come true.

I really love how this layout turned out and feel I met the criteria for the ACC Inspiration Challenge. My daughter, however, wasn’t happy with all the pink on what she considered was a masculine layout/photo. She thought it should have been all black & white, I just pulled on the colours in the photo…pink, blue and black! What do you think, yea or nay?

Anna’s Craft Cupboard Challenge!

Hey,

I have been having fun this morning scrapping a layout for the February layout challenge at Anna’s Craft Cupboard. The challenge involves including a splash of colour in your layout and my order of LemonCraft papers from Anna’s had just arrived, providing some vibrant yellow, pink and green. I have been quite good at not buying new supplies (apart from my regular kit subscription from Uniqeley Creative) and using up what I have, but these papers have been on my want list for a while now. I succumbed to temptation and purchased a few LemonCraft papers, some Mintay papers and stocked up on some cardstock in blues and greens ( a need) which I always run out of.

Anyway, back to scrapping. I decided to go with the green telephone box image as my inspiration. The colour gave me an excuse to use my new papers and I liked the criss-cross lines of the windows on the telephone box. I used a neutral kraft coloured background and splashed around some watercolour paint in yellow and a green which I mixed. In my head, I was seeing a layout with lots of layers and texture, pulling on the colours and patterns in the photo I was using. The photo is a very old image of my eldest daughter after she had just woken from a nap. She has those dreamy eyes, tousled hair and red cheeks which all toddlers seem to have after some zzzzzzs.

Next, I used some Tim Holtz inks and a KaiserCraft stencil to add a bit more interest and texture to the background. I thought the criss-cross design of the stencil linked to the telephone box image, as did some of the geometric shapes with my photo.

I then, cut out some of the LemonCraft papers into 4′ inch strips and cut them down into 4 x 6 rectangles which I used for frames and pieces to mat the photo. The two 4 x 6 left were used to cut embellishments with my Sizzix Bigshot. I used a mix of dies, many were from the Uniquely Creative and the KaiserCraft range. I decided that I needed a few more greens and some white to balance the layout, so found some scrap papers and cardstock to cut a few more diecuts. You can see that I incorporated some traditional design styles and some contemporary designs. I used the geometric die because of the pattern on my daughters top. The top was handknitted by my mother, which I had completely forgotten about until I started working on the layout. She knitted many clothes for my children, a pastime which she has had to give up due to arthritis.

In my LemonCraft order, I purchased a matching cut apart sheet. I fussy cut out the doilies and the green butterflies.

Then, I went to town building up the layers of die cuts and papers using double-sided tape and foam tape. The title I created by painting some white cardstock with vivid green. I really love how it has turned out, it is very summery and speaks to the season when the photo was taken, the Christmas summer holidays.

Haha…can you see the little fly who snuck into my layout photo? Summertime here in Australia = flies 🙂

Mixing Challenges! CKC Layout #5 & #6.

Squeezing in another two layouts before the October Counterfeit Kit Club challenge ends. These two layouts were made during Anna’s Craft Cupboard ‘Old School’ Cyber Crop last weekend. The first one was an ‘English’ (school subject)challenge in which you needed to include a story/text. I used products from my CKC kit to make the layout. The photos in the layout are of me and hubby trying to take a nice selfie, you can tell we haven’t quite mastered the technique. Because, the photos were poor quality, taken in a dark corner with very little light and on my iPad, I tried to edit them and fix the colour/light. I managed to get a better image but they are grainy (you can see in the close-up, above). This is why I went with small photos and used a piece of textured vellum over the larger, main photo. Plain vellum can sometimes hide and enhance a poor quality photo, in this case, the textured vellum masked the graininess and anyone viewing it would think I was trying to be creative with my embellishment. Shhhhh, don’t tell them!

The next was for a blind layout challenge. If you haven’t tried one of these, they are a lot of fun! One of the design members from ACC, this time the very talented Rikki Graziani, releases each process step by step (line by line), you have no image to work from just text. It can be very challenging. Unfortunately, this time I had family visiting and wasn’t able to participate live online but managed to give it a go later in the weekend. I copied all Rikki’s instructions from the FB Community page and printed them out before I started. This made it a whole lot easier than having to wade through mountains of comments (live online). The papers and products were from my CKC and worked very well with my photos. I also made a pocket page, as I had a lot more photos of this event.

Mixing Challenges! ACC & CKC

Hello everyone. Today I am sharing a layout which I did in a Cyber Crop with Anna’s Craft Cupboard community group on FaceBook, last weekend. It was a lot of fun and had a challenging theme, Old School, which opened up a whole lot of creative thinking and making. Each challenge was based around a learning subject area or using an Old School style of scrapping, using up supplies which have gone out of style in the world of scrapbooking. This layout was my attempt at the Math challenge, your layout needed to include numbers!

Because I was participating in the October Counterfeit Challenge Kit I wanted to use the papers and embellishments from my kit. I also wanted to use some of my recent purchases, if I buy something new I make sure I use it and not stash it away. What arrived in the mail two weeks ago was the new Tim Holtz Entomology die which matches with the stamp set (released earlier in the year). I had been waiting for months for the release and then for it to arrive in Australia, it is amazing! The die is spot on, there is absolutely no white space around your stamped image, it cuts the thinnest and tiniest insect legs and antennae.

With this layout, I got messy using distress inks, Heidi Swapp shine and some DIY shine. I messed around smooshing and spraying the inks, creating backgrounds to use in the layout. Some I liked and some didn’t quite work.

Then, I used a floral stencil and some white gesso to create some texture on my main background. I used an old membership card to scrape the gesso across the stencil, very rough and messy.

The paper which I wasn’t keen on became the cardstock for my insect embellishments. Just a tip, if you do purchase this wee crawly critter die set, use some washi tape to hold the dies in place while cutting. They do need to be lined up precisely and being so little may move when you crank them through your Sizzix.

Next, I added some more distress ink to the stencilled flowers, the white gesso made them stand out a little too much. I stamped some insects onto the background using a soft grey and a brown distress ink. Then, I got busy stamping orange daisies onto some orange/apricot patterned paper scraps (from my kit), scraps of my mixed media cardstock and onto some white cardstock. Does this look familiar? Yep, it is the same stamp used on this layout here. A few stamped flowers where hit with some distress green, just to pull in some colours in my photo. Then I spent some time watching scrap blogs on Youtube while I fussy cut out all the flowers.

I then built up the layout, layering die cuts and flowers, and fixing everything into place using double sided tape and foam.

So, “Where are the numbers?”I hear you ask. Good question, after all, it was a Math challenge. Well, the numbers tied in with my title and photo and were cut using dies. I used this particular photo because my daughter’s face shone with happiness. We were having a lovely day just messing around on our property, enjoying the sunshine and the abundance of flowers spreading colour everywhere. In a burst of energy, she literally tiptoed into the flowers and sat amongst the colour. Her son did not want to miss out on this opportunity and joined her. Her face said it all…let me ‘Count the Ways’.

Time Flies – ACC Challenge

Anna’s Craft Cupboard has a mini challenge for the FB community members. Last month’s September challenge was to make a layout which included butterflies, one or more. I went with more…who can resist butterflies?

I decide to use a chevron patterned paper, Fairy Lights’ by 7 Dots Studio, it is divine. Though when I purchased it I expected it to be teal, clearly my monitor was tricking me, it arrived very green and gorgeous. Ás gorgeous as it is I couldn’t resist adding to it, stamping on some ink and splashing around some colour.

Then I went butterfly crazy and stamped them out on white cardstock using Archival ink and coloured the butterflies with Tim Holtz distress ink. Some fussy cutting and they were good to go.

The photo was mounted on several layers of scrap papers which were left over from a Zoo layout.

Once the photo and layers were fixed in place I added the butterflies and boy did that make my heart flutter. They worked beautifully with the background. The title came from me musing over this photo, it seemed to capture me looking old (or my age) which I rarely notice. I was playing tea party with my grandson. He had baked a real cake, orange cake and we (him, me, and my daughter) took it to my mother’s house for afternoon tea. Four generations together, building more memories. I suppose I do look like this often but just never realise it. I had just crawled out of bed and was not showered, having a slouchy Saturday. You never feel you are the age you are…maybe mirrors lie and camera lenses always tell the truth?