Wednesday 20 January 2016

Card Catch Up

I have been making a couple of cards here and there but haven't gotten around to actually posting them on the blog. I thought I'd do a quick catch up post to share them.

 
This first one was just made up quickly to say thank you to some of my mum's friends so sending a very generous gift to my son from Indonesia. I had a sheet of this floral paper lying around and decided to fussy cut the images out. There is actually a fair bit of layering on the card which you can't really see from the front on photo. Chipboard sentiment is by Scrapmatts.

 
This one was a very quick birthday card I whipped up in about an hour. It used a Kaisercraft 6x6 paper pad and a Heidi Swapp die-cut for the 'happy'. I'm not 100% sold on it, but the recipient liked it and that's the important thing.

Sunday 17 January 2016

Gingerbread Memories - Scrapmatts DT

Scrapmatts came out with a couple of great new Christmas designs in late 2015 and I couldn't wait to have an excuse to use them. It just happened that my mother-in-law decided to have a gingerbread decorating contest after Christmas lunch this year so I got the perfect photos to use with the CB5145 Christmas Shapes 01. I teamed it up with CB5144 Layered Poinsettias 01.
 
 
I have used the Cocoa Vanilla Studios 'Tis the Season' range and for this layout. I got so much use out of the couple of sheets of 'Flying High' I had previously purchased from them and have great expectations for the versatility of this new range too.

 
I kept a lot of my paper off-cuts from designing the background and added them as extra detail layers under the photos right at the end. I found this to be a great technique both to use up scraps and add extra depth.

 
 This layout shows how many different techniques you can use to colour chipboard. Some parts have been inked with a stamp pad, some have been painted with acrylic paints and some parts have been coloured with pens.

 
I used the current sketch over at Stuck?! Sketches as the basis for this layout. Who says you can't create a double page layout from a single page sketch? :)
 

Saturday 16 January 2016

By The Sea - Scrapmatts DT

I live on the Gold Coast, which is a major tourist destination in Australia known for it's beaches. I actually worked in an office located 5 minutes walk from the beach for a number of years. Despite this, I rarely go to the beach. I decided this was unfair on Harrison so after visiting friends at my old workplace one day I decided to pop down to the beach with him for the very first time. He didn't like walking on the loose sand, so I had to carry him down to the water and he wasn't too keen on the waves initially. After some time spent trying to chase seagulls though we gave the water another try and he loved it!
 
 
I'm loving all the Scrapmatts goodies on this page! We have three different chipboard designs, being CB1209 Scrap Words 12, CB4059 Nautical Design 03 and CB4067 Marine Life 02. I also picked up the hessian ribbon and adorable anchor paperclip (in a pack of four designs) when I visited the Scrapmatts stand at an expo last year. It is always worth visiting them at an expo, as meeting Andrew and Sofie in person is a real treat and they run the best classes. Plus, they normally have specials on extra bits and pieces like these which you can't order online. :)
 
 
This layout was inspired by the January challenge over at Show Us Your Stuff, which is a great mood board. I took inspiration from the beach theme, the red highlights for a pop of contrast and the kraft background to mimic the sand of the bottom right picture. My handmade embellishments include the chipboard which I painted myself, a DLish Scraps button with cute crab and Evalicious flair.