LOL and Memories

 

This page is a quick introduction to me as part of my Design Team commitments with Scrapmatts for 2013. I went with an older photo of me that I felt showcased my personality well. I think one of my favourite things to do is laugh and make others laugh. I've also listed a few of my other favourite things on the journalling tag.

 

Close up details of the great Scrapmatts chipboard on this LO. The card border has been painted with liquid pearls. The butterflies has been sprayed with GlimmerMist and the bodies covered in liquid pearls The wings have been lifted from the page for extra dimension.

This LO was created for the ScrapFriends sketch challenge #9. It also fits the criteria for Punky Scraps challenge #59 which is to scrap all about you.

 

Our second DT challenge for this month was to create a page with the theme of 'new'. I have chosen to scrap a photo of my husband and I celebrating the New Year in Central Park, New York.

 

Close up of the chipboard used in this LO. I have cut the nested shape into smaller pieces to use it as a frame for the photo. The Christmas stars mirrored the stars on our hats so I've chosen to use them here rather than a Christmas LO.

 

This LO was inspired by Sketch #51 for Keeping The Best. It also fits the criteria for ScrapFit this month which is to use stars. 

Natural Bridge

Wow, I really am scrapping a lot of photos of my mum and dad recently! Don't worry, I have different subjects in mind for the next two LOs. :) This is another page from our day exploring the national parks at Mt Tambourine. Natural Bridge is a beautiful waterfall and you can actually walk down into the cavern where the waterfalls pools. You used to be able to swim in the resulting lake but not any more. I'm thinking about going back again at night as apparently the cavern has an amazing glow worm colony living there.

 

 

This LO was inspired by the current competition over at Scrapz.biz which is Super Sleuth #1. It's quite an interesting idea for a competition: 3 DT samples are displayed at the start of the week. You have to guess which five elements are common to all three LO's and then create your own page with those elements. I'm not sure if I'm right, but I went with:
1/ 'Discover' sticker
2/ Feather
3/ White cardstock background
4/ Journal tag with journalling
5/ Banner/ pennant shape

 

ScrapFIT's Step Class #10 is to create a layered banner. The sample LO looked so great I just had to try my hand at this. I started with some calico fabric pennants, then added some washi tape, then paper pennants, then some feathers on each end and finally some bling for a finishing touch. I think that should definately cover me for a least two textures. :) I was thinking about doubling this up with their washi tape challenge too but I'm not sure if that is allowed.

Live Laugh Love

This is the first LO I completed at the retreat and I had already fussy-cut most of the blossoms prior to leaving. The young girl is my mother with the photo taken in the mid 1960's by her aunt for a photography course. Something about these photos just lent themselves to creating very girlie layouts.

 

 

This LO was primarily inspired by the Kaisercraft Saturday Sketch #1 for October. The sample LO was just so lovely and I immediately thought of using the blossoms from the English Rose collection which even though it's now an older range I still love. Plus, it matched so perfecting with the background paper and title strips from the brand new Periwinkle collection.

 

 

The weekend warm-up at ScrapFIT requires you to use either bows or buttons (or both) on your LO. I have a small pink bow on top of the white fabric bow. The white bow is actually a Kaisercraft rossette which I have unpicked and tied up to ensure it matched the rosette on the LO perfectly. 

 

Finally, the Southern Girls challenge this week is to 'Tie a ribbon around it'. Looks like I'll be using those flower ribbons again. :)

One Fine Day

 

This is such an odds-and-ends layout. The papers are old ones, the die cut is an old one, the chipboard is old, I've got an old clothing tag and old buttons on there too. Even the photo has been sitting on my desk for a few years. It's amazing what you can find when you go through your stash sometimes. :)

 

 

So this LO was created for the latest Scrapz.biz competition, Do or Die. Challenge #1 was to make a LO inspired by the below movie poster. Your layout must have some kind of contrast clearly visible (contrast between the B&W half and colourful side). You must include a key or lock or both (blue key in my embellishment cluster). Your layout must feature the word 'day' somewhere on your layout (in my title). The poster inspired me like this: I went with the idea of splitting the page into two halves, my photo has a man's face in profile, I have my title in the bottom left and it's three words.

 

 

Once I decided the spit my LO into two halves I quickly thought of the current sketch over at ScrapFriends so I worked from that sketch too. I mirrored the design to better suit the poster layout. I originally went with paint splatters where all the black dots in the sketch is, but then when I was trying to find a button to go inside the chipboard circle I out all the leftovers on top of my layout and decided they looked good like that so kept them. :)

 

 

Finally, ScrapFIT's current warm up challenge is to not use cardstock for a background. I've used two different kinds of patterned paper here.

How Times Change

I found this photo of my siblings and I a few years ago and just knew I had to scrapbook it! It's taken a while because I don't have any school themed products. It's funny to see how cute we were almost 20 years ago. This was the only year we all attended the same school together.  

Has anyone else had one of those LOs where they think it's finished but they're not quite happy with it? This was one of them for me. I thought I'd finished on Wednesday but it just didn't seem enough. You can see the original version below. I picked it up again this morning and decided to work it over a bit more. I think it pops a bit better now.

This LO was inpsired by the sketch over at ScrapFIT.

 

Bird is the Word has 'Change' as one of their current words.

June 123 has the following criteria - word: change; colour: blue; technique: washi tape. I've had to create my own washi tape again since I don't actually own any, but I think the masking tape with the blue number stamp looks really cute. :)

Wedding Selfie

Are you ready for something pretty different from me? I've been a regular subscriber to Australia Scrapbooking Memories from about the time I started scrapbooking however the last couple of issues haven't captivated me like normal so when I saw Australian Scrapbook Creations in the newsagent I picked up a copy. The copy I picked up happened to be their technique edition and it's taken over me a week to pour through it. They have such a great variety of styles in the magazine and show larger photos to allow you to really examine the details. Looking through the magazine inspired me to try a new style and when I saw this great tutorial by Helen Tilbury I just had to give it a go.

I was really happy with how the background ended up looking and was actually a bit disappointed that I ended up covering so much of it up. I even took a photo to show you what it originally looked like. If you like these kind of backgrounds then Helen's work is definately worth checking out, she is creating some amazing LO's at the moment.

This LO is also based on the sketch below from Scrap Friends. I fell in love with the sketch as soon as I saw it and their design team has created some wonderful inspiration.

The ScrapFIT workout #67 is to show a fun and unique way to use a doily. It's not really unique, but I used a doily as a mask for my black paint on the background. The paint killed the doily but I love the bold effect that resulted.

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.

It's All About The Shoes

It's been a while since I've done a wedding page so here is another one. These wedding shoes were such a source of stress for me. I knew I wanted purple shoes to match the colour theme of the wedding but while purple shoes were in fashion the seaon before and the season after my wedding, I couldn't find them anywhere when I needed to buy them. I needed to have closed toe shoes as I had damaged my toenails playing basketball and all I could find were strappy or peep toe shoes. Finally, to make it extra hard I wear a size 11 shoe. I ended up custom ordering them from Shoes of Prey, and they are now the most expensive pair of shoes I have ever bought. The first pair were actually too big, but the company let me send them back and they rushed me through a replacement pair which arrived two days before the wedding.

This was inspired by the shoe challenge at Punky Scraps. How cool is the inspiration picture below?

I have also entered it into the Scrapz.biz Scrap Write Now challenge SWN077 which needed brads to be used as bullet points in the journalling.

Finally, the Weekend Warm-Up at ScrapFit is is to get messy and make a LO involving splattering or dripping something. 

Holiday

I got an early start on my crafting this weekend and created this LO on Friday night. Used the Kaisercraft Merry Melodies range again because it was still out on my desk.  I think the Kaisercraft florish worked into the design perfectly. I also used a Lil' Red Rocket button, which means I only have one of those cuties left. :(

I swing between wanting to create LO's which are simply pretty and LO's which capture memories and recently I had been thinking that I should be scrapping more of the older photos I have which are currently just sitting in a shoebox.  When I came across the March challenge over at Another Freaking Scrappy Challenge I thought it would be perfect to achieve this goal. The challenge is to Scrap some memories of a spring break (or another school break) that you experienced. In Australia we have a 5-6 week break over the summer/Christmas period and in 1999 my family travelled to Merimbula in NSW. There is hidden journalling behind the top photo which has some of my memories of this tip.

I also combined this LO with the ScrapFIT March Sketch Workout. The sketch just instantly inspired me. I enjoy working with simple designs like this.

You & Me

This LO is mainly done with papers, stickers and transparencies from the Heidi Grace Sweetest Bug range. I've had all of these materials for so long because I thought they were adorable but struggled to actually scrap with them. The chipboard title is from Imaginarium Designs, as is the butterfly I used as a mask. I received my winners pack in the mail about a week ago and there is SO much chipboard included. I was expecting maybe three pieces but I've received 12!

This LO was created for three challenges. Punky Scraps released a recipe challenge on Friday, you had to use a minimum of three suggestions from: hexagons, white paint, make a grid, use small photos, no pink, use three circles, use three squares, and use something transparent. The white paint, small photos and something transparent should all be obvious. I used rectangles rather than squares for the photos and patterned paper and laid them out in a grid pattern. I've used more than three circles in the turquoise paint background. No hexagons though ad I did use pink, can't win them all I guess. :)

Bird is the Word's challenge word for Feb 12 is 'heart' which I've used in my journalling this time. Finally, ScrapFIT is another new challenge blog I've found. Workout #62 requires some 'xoxo's in your LO, so that's how I've signed off my journalling.

Don't forget I'm giving away some free rubber stamps, details in this post.