Wednesday 28 March 2018

A Prickly Present

My daughter loves cactus plants. She received several as a gift one Christmas and has added to her collection since then. For her birthday last year her oldest brother gave her another cactus and I decided to create a layout of this.


I started with a red 12x12 Bazzill cardstock base and on this I matted a sheet of newsprint patterned paper from the Simple Stories: I Heart Summer collection, which I trimmed to approx 11.5" square. 


I layered various smaller pieces of patterned paper from Simple Stories and Echo Park beneath my photograph and also a piece of Cactus Print paper which I downloaded free form Stephanie Fizer Coleman's blog. It was perfect for my layout. All the layers were outlined in black pen.

I used foam Thickers for my title and scattered Studio Calico wood veneer stars.



In my stash I found a very old die cut from MME which said 'Too cute for words' which I added as a sub-title with a heart punched from the same green spot paper that I had layered my photo on.

*** Ignore that little bit of blue fluff by the star - no idea what it is 😊

My journalling strips were printed on the computer and the date was added with tiny alpha stickers. A round sticker with the word 'smile' (again very old and from my stash) finished the layout.

Monday 26 March 2018

Patience and Perseverance


The second layout I created whilst away at my crafty weekend earlier this month featured a photograph of Lara taken whilst we were on holiday last October. We visited Sea Palling one day when the sea was quiet rough. Lara was determined to take a photograph of the wave as they crashed onto the rocks and stood for quite some time trying to get the perfect shot.

I started with a sheet of 12x12 white Bazill cardstock and on the right side of this I stuck a stack of strips of patterned paper which were all 6" wide and varying heights. The strips were cut from scraps of paper in shades of brown and blue left over from other projects.


The white strip with the camera images and word 'click' printed on it was a band of paper which came wrapped around some photos I had printed online. I thought it perfect for this layout and have another similar strip which will doubt be used on another layout.

My 6x4 photo was positioned among the paper strips.


I die cut the words 'patience' and 'perseverance' for my title from black cardstock using the Silhouette Studio and used some blue alphabet stickers from Simple Stories for the word 'the'. These were all stuck in the lower left comer of the layout overlapping the paper strips.

A camera die cut from a pack of Kaisercraft Collectables was also added to the bottom left corner.


My journalling strips were printed on the computer and stuck in the bottom right hand corner overlapping the paper strips.


Wood veneer stars from Studio Calico and enamel dots were scattered on the layout and a black circle with the words 'love this' was added to the top right corner. I finished the layout by outlining the layout in black pen and added splatters of of black Heidi Swapp Colour Shine Mist

Thursday 22 March 2018

Be a Pineapple

Last weekend I spent a lovely weekend in Berkshire in the company of a group of crafty friends. The weekend was spent simply enjoying being with each other and catching up on all that had been happening since we last got together whilst also creating beautiful quilts, cards, scrapbook pages, crocheted items and lots more. 

I choose to scrapbook during the weekend and created quite a few layouts.

In December Lara had a pineapple themed birthday party and I decided to create a layout using one of the photos I took on that day. I was inspired by a layout by Crafty Jen Schow which used mists and a quote.

I used a sheet of 12x12 white Bazzill cardstock as my base which I trimmed slightly before matting onto a sheet of black Bazzill cardstock.


I sprayed the left side of the white cardstock with two different shades of Cosmic Shimmer Mist - Mango Blaze and Golden Fish.

Once the mist had dried I used a Silhouette Studio cut file to cut out my quote from more white cardstock which I glued on top of the misted area. To make the lettering pop I outlined each latter with a black pen.


On the right side of the page I stuck a vertical strip of paper from the Simple Stories: A Charmed Life Collection and on top of this I stuck my 5x7 photo which had been matted on black and white cardstock.


I created an embelishment by stamping a Pineapple onto a circle of white card which was then matted onto a slightly larger circle of gold mirror card. This was stuck onto the layout with 3D foam pads to give it some lift. Hearts were also punched form the mirror card and dotted around the page on 3D foam tabs.


The page was completed with a scattering of yellow enamel dots and yellow flat back gems and some splatters of black Heidi Swapp Colour Shine Mist. Tiny stickers from Fundamentals were used to add the date in the bottom right corner.

I loved how the layout turned out. Very different from my usual style.

Monday 19 March 2018

Papermaze Design Team - Simple Stories I Am ...

I am very lucky to have been invited by Vanessa to join the Design Team for Papermaze one of the UK's largest retailers of scrapbooking, project life and card making supplies, and have my work published on their Scrap Paper Scissors Blog.


For my very first project, which was published on the blog recently, I was thrilled to be able to work with the new Simple Stories I Am collection. 

I decided to create a 12x12 layout using a photo of Lara and I taken on my birthday several years ago whilst on holiday in Norfolk




For the base I trimmed roughly 5mm off of the edges of a sheet of white Bazzill cardstock and matted this onto a black sheet. I then layered various pieces of the patterned papers which were all matted on more black cardstock and outlined in black pen. My 5x7 photo was double matted on white and black cardstock. 



I used one of the cards from a sheet cut apart sheet and a bingo card (from my stash) to create my title. Co-ordinating yellow Bazzill cardstock was used to create a couple of rosette flowers with enamel dots used as centres. I fussy cut butterflies from one of the sheets of paper which were added to the layout as well as some lace and paper blossoms to soften the look. A tiny camera sticker was added. 


Some of the papers in this collection have beautiful copper coloured foiling so I added some copper coloured stickles to some of the butterflies and some copper coloured sequins were scattered around the edges of my layout. 



Finally I printed my jounalling strips on the computer using a typewriter font and added the date and place with stickers.