Zoo Garden

I was reviewing my recent LO's and noticed they were getting simpler and simpler in design so decided it was time to try to layer things up again. I found a great sketch over at Kaisercraft for their Saturday Sketches competition and sat down to get started this evening. Both the photo and the papers are ones I've had for a while. I was planning on doing some basic journalling about seeing the animals at the Zoo, blah blah blah but once I started writing I was reminded of how much I was missing my family prior to this visit. I wouldn't have remembered those emotions and some of the other events of that trip without this journalling prompting me so hurray for meaningful journalling!

 

Here is Saturday Sketch #2 for April from Kaisercraft:

I used the three pages of Hey Birdie paper I had. It's an adorable range from 2010, I think. I didn't have any of the other embellishments or products from that range, so all the details are hand-cut from one of the sheets. Ribbons, twine and dress-pattern paper from my stash.

End result is still a simple and crispt LO but with a lot more layers than normal. My husband, Ben, said he likes it and thinks its more 'my style' than recent previous work.

 

This LO was published in the November edition of Scrap Street Magazine. See it here.

Bowls on a Table ATC

I've decided that with my extra free time whilst I'm on leave I might try to get back into painting some ATCs. I was really enjoying doing this about a year ago but I only have a limited amount of time to craft each week and when faced with spending a few hours to create a 2.5x3.5 ATC that I trade away or a 12x12 LO that I can keep and look back on I chose the selfish option.

This is my first one for the 13 days, a series of bowls on a table. Again, I really enjoyed doing it. I can clearly see that I'm out of practice but that will only go away by doing more.

I have based the card on the below colour inspiration from Design Seeds. I have only just found this site and it's filled with inspiration. I've also just noticed that my printer seems to alter the colour compared to what I see on screen, will have to try to remember that in future.

Feed The Birds

Talk about working your visual triangles on this one! :) I have commenced 13 days leave from work today so thought I'd kick it off with a LO. There's no journalling to this one yet, because I am the little one in the yellow raincoat and can't remember much. I have emailed my parents to see if they have further details to share. Feeding the lorikeets is a daily scheduled activity at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary on the Gold Coast. I think my sister was petrified by the birds as they are very loud and can be quite demanding. It's a bit weird scrapbooking about taking a family holiday to a location that is now a 30 minute drive from where I live.

Papers, ribbon and chipboard for this LO came from a kit I had purchased 2-3 years ago and never got around to completing. I was originally going to use the black alphas included in the kit but at the last minute decided to go for the bright title, really happy with the end effect.

Drat, I just noticed I spelt 'Sanctuary' wrong!

This LO was inspired by the current challenge at Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge. The theme was "April showers bring May flowers" – scrap about a rainfall, or storm.  I think it's pretty obvious from the raincoats that the photo was taken during a rainfall. I also used the background paper upside-down to simulate rainfall. I also had to use the sketch below, which I stuck pretty close to.

I also found that Use It Tuesday and StuckOnU Sketches are both running April Showers Bring May Flowers themed competitions, so I'll enter this LO in both those comps too.

Manorhouse Creations Blog Hop

I just wanted wanted to quickly share with you that Manor House Creations is having its first ever blog hop. It begins Sunday 6th of May at 8am (Australian Eastern Standard time) at the Manor House Creations blog, through until midnight on Tuesday 8th of May. There are 4 fabulous prize packs, chock full of beautiful Manor house creations flowers to be won.

They want to get the word out to as many people as possible, so, as well as these prizes, they are also offering one bonus ‘mystery’ prize for anyone who advertises our blog hop on their blog. (Prize drawn randomly). They can’t tell you what the prize is, but they can tell you it contains some gorgeous Manor House Creations flowers .

And remember to put the 6th to the 8th of May in your diary, cos you won’t want to miss this one.

Love LO

So after my last post about the importance of including journalling and capturing memories I was struck by inspiration to create a 'just-pretty' LO. Yep, no journalling, not even a date, because I don't know when or where this photo was taken. :) Ben says he clearly took the photo as I always get a look of intense concentration of my face when I try to take selfies. Anyway, it was fun to play with glitter and try the confetti technique which seems to be taking off at the moment.

As always, I was inspired by a couple of different challenges for this LO. Firstly was the Scrapmatts April challenge which was to use scrapmatts products as a stencil or a mask. I was lucky enough to win the March challenge and ordered this great heart frame as part of my prize. I have also used the Scrapmatts topiary tree which is one of my favourite designs and some hearts which came from the class kit extras. 

Punky Scraps challenge #47 was a sketch challenge. Initially I wasn't too excited by it as it was a bit too minamalist for my taste but I think it's turned out quick nicely with the extra background details.

Lastly, Show Us Your Stuff had this adorable inspiration picture. I've clearly gone with the colour scheme as my inspiration. I'm using the journalling tags as my hand-made embellishments.

Reflections on scrapbooking

It was my 'blogoversay' on April 15 and my little blog turned 3.

Originally started more as a way of keeping track of all the fantastic blogs I had found online rather than a showcase of my own craft pursuits, my blog has slowly evolved over the years. Initially I posted a mix of layouts (LO's) and Artist Trading Cards (ATCs). In 2010 I commenced Project 365 with my ATC group so there were a lot more posts and lots more ATCs. I was travelling along quite strongly until around 100 cards in when my mum was diagnosed with breast cancer in May. I averaged around 4 posts a month for the rest of the year. By 2011 it was safe to say I had caught the scrapbooking bug and ATCs started to become few and far between. 2011 also saw my first appointment to a scrapbooking DT. In 2012 my first LO was published in Australian Scrapbooking Memories. At that time I posted about my scrapbooking goals for the future.

As much as I enjoy creating ATCs, I think I definately prefer scrapbooking now. Rather than creating something beautiful and then sending it away, I now get to keep it and treasure the memory it depicts. Scrapbooking for me will always be about the photos and the story first with the pretty LO coming second. I guess that comes through in my scrapping style too. I simply can't understand why someone would want to scrap photos they found on the internet or consistently create pages with no journalling. On the other hand, one of the things I love most about scrapbooking is the variety possible in each page, so as long as the creation of the page is bringing joy to the artist then it serves a purpose. :)

Today my blog stats show 5736 pageviews, 264 posts and 50 followers. Thank you to everyone who has taken a few minutes to look at my work and an even bigger thank you to everyone who has stopped to leave a comment.

Anyway, that's enough rambling from me. It's the weekend so it's time to relax, kick back with my hubby and hopefully find time to create a new LO or two. Hope you have a good one!

Thailand Honeymoon

I have so many wonderful photos and memories of our honeymoon to Thailand but I've only really scrapped one page so far because I'm planning on creating a minialbum instead. There has been very little progress on the album recently so I figured it was time to do up a LO instead. The photos show our treking group at the end of out three-day mountain trek which included the elephant riding, bamboo and white-water rafting and staying with village tribes. On the way up the mountain to start the trek we stopped off at the tiger park. The other photo is from our villa in Koh Samui, a wonderful little relaxing island.

This LO fulfills LOTS of different challenge requirements. Firstly, it is based on Sketch #68 over at Sketchabilities. I've rotated the sketch counterclockwise to better suit my photos and paper. When I first saw this sketch I thought it wasn't for me as it's fairly complicated and details but I've simplified it down for this LO.

The Weekend Warm-up activity # 26 over at ScrapFIT was to use a minimum of four photos on your LO, so I've achieved that.

Bird is the Word has released their new work for the month which is 'future'. I've used that in my journalling below the photos.

And lastly, the Use It Tuesday challenge #29 is 'anything goes'. I have used so very old Kaisercraft patterned paper to create this LO, I think I've had it sitting in my stash for years.

Our Grandparents

It's been a while since my last wedding LO so here is another one. I'm really happy with the quality of the photos and we received around 800 of them so you'll be seeing many more LO's to come. This one focuses on our Grandparents. Unfortunately, Ben lost two grandparents during our engagement and he is fairly estranged from his other grandfather so this page is pretty special to me. I've also got some lovely photos of his grandmother with the extended family which I hope to scrap later.

I'm really enjoying making my own flowers at the moment using the water spritz technique. These have a lovely golden glimmer to them. The butterfly chipboard is half of a Scrapmatts piece, I wanted it to match the butterfly in the Kaisercraft paper.

This LO was inspired by two challenges again. The first is Workout #65 for ScrapFIT: Good Ole Boys. We were given the below inspiration picture. The formal outfit made me think of our wedding immediately. I was originally going to go the groomsmen but I didn't have the photos I wanted pre-printed. Instead, I figured the more vintage theme would suit focusing on our grandparents.

I also decided to try out a new challenge blog, Sketches With a Twist. I thought it was a wonderfully composed sketch with lots of room for interpretation. The twist was to use mesh on your project, it could be Magic Mesh from a fruitbag or any kind of mesh you can find in your household. I tried mesh from my passionfruits but it was red and didn't react well when I tried to paint over it so I went with tulle instead which is similar to mesh.

The tulle is very hard to see, even after I coloured it green with ink, but here are a few cdetail shots which hopefully show it a bit better. I've used it as a second matt around the photos.

Egg Hunt!

Happy Easter to everyone who celebrates it! I couldn't miss the opportunity to whip up a quick Easter page given it's Good Friday. The photo was taken last year and I've been meaning to print it for quite a while. I know the quality of the photo isn't that good, but I like the emotion it captures which for me is more important than a 'perfect' but posed photo. Ribbons are from the fantastic Craft Queen, part of the stash I won as a prize on a challenge blog.

The LO was also inspired by two current challenges. Firstly, The Lollipop Ladies have Froot Loops as their inspiration source this fortnight with the added challenge of glitter. I have used glitter alphas for 'egg' and also sprinkled glitted on the paint circles while they were wet. I've drawn inspiration from the green, purple and pink froot loops and also the circle shapes.

I couldn't past the fantastic sketch offered for April over at Scrap with V. I only had the one photo so I moved my title to the top left. I otherwise stayed pretty true to the sketch.

April Giveaways

So like most scrappers, my budget for buying supplies to quite tight. I've doing a fair bit of blog surfing today and have come across a number of giveaways which I thought I would share with you all. Can't really go past getting something for free now, can you? :)

Sydney's Sentiments is giving away this fabulous pack. 

A Mermaid's Crafts is celebrating their one year blogaversary.



Designs by Simone has this great stash to give away.

I couldn't go past sharing the April Eye Candy Magic giveaway too.