Chunky Bird Book and Some ATCs

Having to complete those Pick-A-Theme ATCs last week reminded me that it had been a while since I really created anything and that I feel a lot better when I'm spending the day creating rather than just wasting it. Plus, I again have waited until the last minute and need to crank out some work before the mailing deadline passed. :)

The project this time was a 'Funky Birds' chunky book. Chunky books are 4 inch by 4 inch works of art that have some form of dangly embellishment hanging from either the right or bottom edges. Once you get a collection of individal pages you put them together to form a book and the cumulative danglies result in the chunky effect. The very first one I took part in was a 15 page bird trade and I've been hooked ever since. They are quite pricey to mail, since I live in Australia and most of the hosts are in America, so I don't get to play quite as often as I'd like. I have still managed to accumulate books for birds, mermaids, monkeys, africa, and love.

So the page above was my first sample design. I like to try to incorporate my danglies into the page design, rather than just have the attached to a corner. I was pretty happy with how it turned out, so didn't change too much for the final design, which you can see below. For this swap we only had to trade 5 pages. I'll send an extra one for the host and be left with 2 for personal trades in the future.

I also managed to create some ATCs. These were done using the Bernie Berlin technique of painting gesso over magazine images and then re-painting the image. I've also used coloured pencil to add some texture and shading.

In other news, I left a scrapbook challenge for Bridge who had lost her mojo. The challenge was to use the colour blue, clouds and lace. You can see the beautiful LO she created here.

Uni Graduation and Circle Journal Page

I had my university graduation ceremony on Saturday. Dad quite nicely offered to fly my brother and sister up so I could have some moral support, which I very much appreciated. It was great to get to catch up with them both, even if it was just for a weekend. I didn't trip at any stage of the day so that counts as a success. :) We had some professional photos taken too which I'm hoping will turn out nicely though the guy rushed us through a bit. We all went out to celebrate for dinner and came home to play Guitar Hero and Rockband until 2am. Ben was in heaven having new people to show off to. :) Kirby developed some mad drumming skills and got almost-blisters to prove it.

Me in my robes before heading to the ceremony. Yes, I know I need to buy a new dress now that this one has served in the last three special occasions. My sister, Kirstin, and brother, Michael.

My darling Benny! That's the "Fountain of Knowledge" in the background, can't get much cornier that that.

In a more artistic vein, the only thing I've managed to create recently was the back page of the circle themed friendship journal. This was finished a while ago, but I forgot to post it. Used a modified version of the credit card technique on the background because I think I'm in love with the results it gives. Tried to add more depth to the backgorund with a few more layers. Happy with the end result.

Snow Layout, ATCs and a Circle Journal Page

I've been working on a few different projects recently. First one is a set of Autumn themed ATCs for the Addicted To Scrap monthly trade. Yes, this is as well as the Vintage/ Roaring 20's theme, so I've had to make 24 cards in a month. Again I've tried to go with more of an old-collage style which I feel suits the group better. It's a simple design, but I'm quite fond of it.

I have also been working on a 6" x 6" circle journal page for a group I'm part of over at ATCsforAll. The group is mixed media, though most of my pieces have been acrylics. This month I'm trading with Ria who requested a theme of friends or friendship. The picture is losely based on a photo on my friends and I. Not sure what I'm going to do for the back page yet.

Lastly, I decided to treat myself to a scrapbooking class yesterday as a birthday present. The class was for a snow themed page and luckly I had brought up my ski camp photos when I was last in Melbourne. The class was a lot of fun and at the end my page looked like this:

Since I had taken a LOT of photos while on ski camp I wanted to display some more. Now the logical step is to turn the page into a double, except for the fact that the store had sold out of almost all the supplies used in the class. There was no more matching cardstock, patterned paper or ribbons. Nonetheless, for some reason I refused to let this defeat me. I purchased some similar papers and some more snowflakes and went home to see what I could come up with. It took me a whole day, and I tore off probably half the original embellishments from the single layout, I now have a double layout of ski camp photos which I feel is still pretty cohesive. Just to point out the effort I went to: I had to hand-cut the second sheet of brown scalloped paper!