Heritage Photo - Familjen

Hello, hello!

Welcome back to the final installment of my friend's heritage photo project series.  If you've missed the first two layouts in the series, you can find them here and here.  Today we're checking out the last layout, which features a fabulous photo of Bertil with a handmade toy bow and arrow, a portrait of him and the family together.  I have to say, I absolutely adore that bow and arrow photo!

Background is again from Webster's Pages.  This teal woodgrain paper has long been a favourite of mine so it's pretty special that I'm giving the last I have of it away but it was just too perfect with these photos to not use.  This LO also used up the last of that cute ruler washi tape but I managed to eek it out across the bottom.

That little gap in the title between the l and j was the perfect opportunity to add a little embellishment.  I unfortunately hadn't brought my heart punch with me and after many failed attempts at drawing a symmetrical heart the right size with which I was happy, I decided to go for a funkier heart style instead.

Embellishment cluster above that awesome bow and arrow photo - just look at the expression on that adorable face!  The cork star on the right had been an embossing attempt that I wasn't thrilled with on another project but I liked the look of for this one - you have to love when that happens.

And a bit of embellishment at the bottom of the photo to tie it all together.

And that's it!  My friend will be giving these to her brother as a belated birthday gift and I'm eager to hear what his reaction to them is.  Birgitta is thrilled with them at any rate.  Next year we'll work on the lock of hair and photos for her sister.

Heritage Photos - Bertil

Welcome back!

Earlier this year a friend asked me if I could help her with a special heritage project for her brother and sister.  Having saved for decades some childhood locks of hair from her siblings, my friend Birgitta wanted to preserve them with some photos into a special scrapbooked layout as gifts, but not being a scrapbooker herself, she enlisted my help.

We got the original photos (some of which were a bit damaged) professionally re-printed and the company did a fantastic job resorting them.  Then, not really knowing what supplies I should bring with me, I packed up a hodge podge collection of papers and embellishments and spent a day at hers busily playing with paper.

Luckily, the remaining collection of Webster's Pages papers by Allison Looman I'd brought with me were a perfect choice for the project and breathed new life into the beautiful black and white photography.  They also matched well with one of the papers Birgitta already had and which I decided upon for the background of the first layout.

This first LO features Bertil, aged 1, along with the lock of his hair and a handwritten note from their mother.  All three LOs feature elements of the same papers and gold lame mist spatters for a sense of cohesion, along with brown accents and lettering, twine, wood veneer or cork embellishments for that masculine feel and a narrow ruler washi tape for that hint of vintage.  I had hoped to also use some old fashioned black or cream photo corners but sadly, couldn't find any so opted for a very narrow mounting on dark black/brown patterned paper instead.  It was decided that the embellishing could be a bit more simplistic, as this would likely appeal more to Bertil.

 

Handwritten note from their mother.  Yes, it is the original.  It was a bit nerve-wrecking adding adhesive to such a precious piece of memorabilia but it was important to Birgitta that we use the original and we did take copies.

Small letter stickers for the years, by Glitz Designs.  The twirly twine is always a bit tricky to get right and glue down well but looks fab once it's done and it helps to reinforce the curliness of that lock of hair...

The original tie around the lock of hair wasn't very attractive or sturdy so I wrapped twine over top to help secure the hair further.  I also didn't want to risk applying adhesive to the hair directly so the wrapped twine gave me a good place to attach the lock without damaging the hair itself.

For the frame, we bought open-fronted art canvas frames that are 12" square and they work perfectly for scrapbooking layouts and the black wood make the B&W photograph pop nicely.

Stay tuned for the next two LOs in the series shortly (LO #2 - Syskon).

Christmas Cards 2014

Okay, try not to panic at the mentioning of 'Christmas' already.  The truth is, I'm a wee bit backlogged in posting so despite the fact that it's nearly March, I still wanted to share my 2014 Christmas cards with you, for inspiration purposes if nothing else.  And let's be honest, I know there are a few of you out there already working on this year's Christmas cards and presents (you know who you are).

Now, having started a job at a new school this academic year, I was feeling slightly more swamped than usual coming up to the holiday season and I was having a hard time coming up with card ideas.  Luckily there's always Pinterest for just such occasions!  I've always loved this card since first seeing it and so used it for my inspiration:

So I set about planning how I could recreate it.  For the circles, I invested in a Martha Steward circle cutter, which (personal feelings concerning Martha Steward aside) is pretty darn awesome and much better than my old and crude circle cutter tool.  I have plenty of ribbon so the scarf wouldn't present a problem but the die cut arms would, as I don't have a die cutter to hand...  And finally, while I could certainly use paint and the circular tip of a paintbrush to stamp out the charcoal bits, I really wanted to ideally use some sort of black rhinestones for dimension but that would require a lot of rhinestones and where would I find those in quantity for a good price?

Happily, it all worked out:

My version

I would have liked to have made them square like in the inspiration card but I make 40-50 cards each year and so I need to buy envelopes in bulk and unfortunately, the dollar store equivalent over here doesn't stock square envelopes in bulk so I went with the traditional A6 sized format instead, which admittedly isn't as nicely balanced but there you go.  Sometimes you just have to think practically.

You can see how nicely the circles turned out using the new circle cutter.  I also decided to ink my circles in a light blue tinge instead of the grey of the inspiration card (which I felt looked a bit dirty and I like my snow pristine looking).  For the background, I stamped a variety of snowflakes and then heat embossed them with a 'snowflake' powder, which is essentially a white with silver flecks mixed in.  I also popped a few clear rhinestones on for a bit of sparkle.

Detail view

A nice bright red ribbon made this little fellow's scarf but I had about five different ribbons that I used so there was a little variety to the set.  For the arms, I decided some dark brown twine would look suitably like branches and add another textural element, which I liked.  And I totally lucked out at the dollar store when I stumbled over massive sheets of colour self-adhering rhinestones, including black!  They were like perfect little chunks of charcoal just waiting for a snowman to adorn!  Serendipity, I tell you.

Little One...Hello

Earlier this month friends of mine had a baby boy.  Naturally this meant that a baby card was in order.  I got to work straight away and in very little time came up with this (if I do say so myself - and I do) adorable card.

Now, would you believe that this card was entirely made from supplies from the Project Life baby girl kit?  Yes, indeed.  Everyone I know recently has been having baby girls and so my stash of baby related papercrafting is overloaded with pink, frilly cuteness.  And then suddenly a baby boy.  Well, I was up to the challenge.

I started shifting through the Project Life cards, looking for any non-pink possibilities.  Now, don't get me wrong, I see no problem in little boys having pink things and dolls and I certainly see nothing wrong with little girls having blue things and playing with Tonka Trunks but it's probably safest to play the gender neutral card in these situations.  So...I went with the fab retro orange and brown combination.

The elephants, stars and moon are from the Simple Stories baby girl collection kit and aren't they just the cutest?  I piled the elephants up on the bottom in a little family train.

Having added the elephants, there was suddenly this yellow from the baby elephant that was out of sync with the rest of the design and colour palette so I searched the Simple Stories sticker sheet for a way to bring more yellow into the card.  I found the moon and added some stars to make a visual triangle.  The cork cloud was a nice way of anchoring the stars and adding another texture and dimension of brown at the same time.

Finally - and I didn't take a photo of this part - I added the sentiment inside.  And to my horror, as I was writing out my note to my friends, I misspelt one of the words!  No!  What to do, what to do?  I grabbed for a package of word stickers and found a selection that not only fit with the message but even worked with the colour scheme and completely covered up my faux pas - whew!

Celebration Tea Bag Pinwheel

Welcome back!

Recently I decided to try a new technique.  I was reading through a back-logged issue of Papercraft Inspirations and came across a Masterclass article for tea bag folding and thought I'd give it a whirl - if you like origami (and I do), then tea bag folding is just the thing for you, too.

Celebrate Pinwheel

As with origami, using a thin paper is helpful with the folding and obtaining crisp edges so I dug out some of the free 6x6" paper gifts from Papercraft Inspirations (as these are always thin quality paper) and got started making my pinwheel.  It was super quick and easy, although it turned out larger than I had anticipated.  I decided to mount it on a regular A6 card blank anyway, rather than a square, to give it some interest and really make it the focus of the card.  Similarly, I used a layer of vellum to diffuse the background pattern so it wasn't so overwhelming.

I dressed up the center of the pinwheel with a swirl of twine and two layered buttons, then sprinkled some pink/purple sequins around like a sparkling fireworks display, ran another length of twine along the fold and stamped a very simple sentiment onto the pinwheel itself.

This little message of cheer will be going to a colleague who is celebrating her 25th birthday and I hope it will put a sparkle in her eye.

An Elf's Work is NEVER Easy

I have a second LO I worked on the other day during my crop with Anya.  I decided to knuckle down and tackle my Christmas photos again.  Before we get to the LO goodies, I do have a little review of my thoughts on this year's collection choice.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was struggling with using the Reflections Christmas collection I bought for my 2013 Christmas series.  A large part of this difficulty I realised, was due to the majority of the papers either being very bold text prints or dark/busy patterns that don't work well with journaling directly onto the background papers.  As a result, I've had to mix in a lot more patterned paper from other collections, which is fine but I really enjoyed just sticking to the one collection last year.

I've also noticed that the Reflections Christmas has two different values of red, which don't really go well together - especially the red letter stickers with the crimson patterned paper.  That's been a bit disappointing so I've been resorting to other letter stickers and Thickers, which again is fine but shouldn't have to be the case and using just those that typically come with the collection helps retain unity across different pages in a series.

My final critique of Reflections Christmas is that the sticker sheet isn't as versatile as last year's.  There are a lot of repetitive tags/banners that say 'Christmas'; more than necessary, IMO - and yet not enough shaped element stickers.  There also seem to be significantly more large stickers (again, large tags or banners), so that overall there are fewer stickers on the sheet.  I find myself looking over the options feeling like I'm missing something when I get to embellishing.

Now, don't get me wrong - I love Echo Park collections and Lori Whitlock's in particular!  But I don't feel that this specific collection was thought through thoroughly enough in these regards.  It's still a beautiful collection, but it needs a little tweeking.

An Elf's Work is NEVER Easy

Okay, on to the LO!  This is a little story about the balancing act that is being the Christmas Elf who hands out the gifts on Christmas Day.  I added in a 6x6 paper from Dear Lizzy's Lucky Charm for the journaling block.

Most of the embellishments are from the sticker sheet, although I also worked in an OA label sticker, Crate Paper border sticker (The Pier browns work really nicely with Reflections Christmas) and some Fancy Pants cork embellishments.  I also used some pretty red rhinestones I picked up from the local craft shop - I had been thinking of using enamel dots but Christmas requires some special sparkle.

For the title, I opted for Crate Paper's Funkydori Thickers.  Even though the word 'never' is all in captials, I wanted it to stand out a little more and have some extra special treatment so I used my brown distress ink and applicator to give it an ombre effect.

And here you can see those luscious red rhinestones and some of the fun twine twisted around the corner.  I also wanted to add in some wax seals.  I used to seal all of my handmade Christmas card envelopes with wax seals a number of years ago, but it takes a long time when you're doing 50 or so cards so I sort of slowly stopped doing it but I love the look and thought it would be a nice addition to my LOs.

Christmas 2013 Portrait

Hello, hello and welcome back!

Okay, so I finally got started on scrapbooking my Christmas 2013 photos.  I don't know about you but I seem to need a little breathing time between returning from Christmas and scrapping Christmas photos and memories.  And if I'm being entirely honest with you, I've also felt a bit intimidated about starting on my Christmas LOs because last year's turned out such a wild success, I think there's been a part of me that wonders how I'll ever recreate just how pleased I was with their results.  Does that sound completely ridiculous?  Well, either way, I finally broke the ice.

Christmas 2013 Family Portrait

There were a number of elements about last year's Christmas LOs that I felt really worked well.  The black and white photos really added a nice elegance and removed the issue of colour clashing between my mother's dark rose and mauve interior design and the typical Christmas red of paper and embellishments.  I also really like using 20x30cm photo enlargements for chapter LOs in my albums so I thought I would repeat that again this year.  In fact, I used the exact same sketch, as it worked so well with this gorgeous framed ledger paper with the pretty Merry Christmas corner design.

This year's supplies will include red/white twine, gold accents (gold lame mist, resin flowers, Thickers, etc.), doilies, enamel dots, probably sequins again and I've also pulled out my wax seals, which I had planned to work into this cluster but the spacing and balance just weren't right for it.

Here's a close-up of that pretty pre-printed corner detail.  I added in some gold lame mist, a tiny bit of stamping and then the embellishments and date number stickers.

And now I'm stuck.  I pulled out the next Christmas photo I wanted to scrap and I just haven't been able to get anything to work with it the way I like.  In reflecting on why this is, I've realised the difference between this year's and last year's collections is that nearly all of this year's papers are very busy and often text-based and therefore not good for writing directly onto.  I'm going to have to add in some additional papers for journaling on (and I don't feel I have much that co-ordinates well), work in journaling cards & tags or try painting over spots to compensate for this.  I'm sure I'll work it out, it's just going to take a bit more playing with than I had expected.  Wish me luck!

Pinspiration Sunday

Hellooooo!  Yes, it's been a while since I last posted but you see, for we teachers there is currently a much bigger, more stressful time of year upon us than Christmas - the dreaded report-writing season!  However, I'm happy to announce that despite nightmarish dreams last night involving me suddenly discovering I had new students added to my class, for which I had to write reports last minute (true story!), I am officially finished writing reports for my class.  Whew!  So now I can finally start to enjoy the holiday season - I'll share with you what I've been up to recently later this week.  For now, go grab your hot beverage of choice and let's have some pin-sharing fun.

Currently:
* listening - to the radio; Sunday countdown programme
* reading - hahaa!  No, seriously, you think I have time to read these days?!
* making - Secret Santa gift for a co-worker (squee!)
* eating - nothing yet
* drinking - water
* wearing - PJ shorts and fleece top
* weather - cloudy, wet snow, 1C
* feeling - starving!
* wanting - more hours in the day
* needing - to seriously get back in control of the eating situation
* planning - everything that needs doing before flying on the 18th
* thinking - I'm sorry, I don't understand the question...  Brain is mush.
* loving - being done with report writing!  Did I mention that already?  Whoot!
* enjoying - the wee bit of snow we received

And on to the pins...

One-Day Wonder Pillow

Still need some quick gift ideas or home decor for the holidays?  Consider some quick and easy throw pillows.  Love the star but also the running stitch in the background adds great dimension, texture and interest.

DIY Earbud Case

Here's a cute stocking stuff idea that the music-lover or smart phone junkie in your family would likely appreciate.

 

No Sew Tree Skirt

Here's a modern but simple take on the tree skirt that anyone with a glue gun and a pair of scissors can do.  I love how delicate it looks.  Perhaps add a few gold beads to the centers of the flowers?

Perseverance by Amy Heller

I'm totally in love with this LO and not just because I was a figure skater half a life ago.  I often enjoy circular designs but what really did it for me was the wiggly stitch lines that mimic blade lines on the ice.  Total nostalgia.

Mistletoe

I also really love this LO.  Crate Paper has been featuring crafting with pink for the holidays on their blog, as their Bundled Up collection features a lot of pink and it's been very inspirational!

Twine Wreath Card

I know, I know - Thanksgiving was months ago now but I really like the idea of the twine wreath; easily adaptable to Christmas cards if you're still frantically searching for inspiration for those last minute cards (or haven't started yet - eek!).

 

DIY Ornament Wreath

 And speaking of wreaths, how about this gorgeous DIY bauble wreath?  Totally gorg, right?  And what's even better - super cheap and easy to make!  Win, win.

Felt Owl Decorations

Owls!  Yup, my owl obsession kicked in when I spied these cuties!  No ready-made pattern but really, you can figure it out from the photo.  Felt, embroidery floss, ribbon and black beads.  You can do it, I have faith in you.  ;)

Cookie Cutter Decorations

I also thought these were a cute and unusual idea - use cheap cookie cutters as shadow box frames for little holiday vignettes.

Colour Share

And a little colour palette love to leave you with today.  I just love red and turquoise together - they're like the perfect combination for just about anything, as far as I'm concerned.

All right, I'm going to cut myself off there or I might just spam you with another 100 or so images (gah, don't you just love/hate Pinterest?) and deprive you of any time to actually get your own holidays sorted.