Day 54 - Scrapbooking

Hello lovelies. 

I haven't done any Scrapbooking for a while now so I thought I'd try to find my mojo and enter a challenge (albeit meeting the deadline by the skin of my teeth) over at the lovely Scrapology http://scrapology-adventuresinscrapbooking.blogspot.co.uk

I enjoyed getting back into my crafting. I need the distraction right now.  

A good old Bank Holiday Scrap!

Hello Bloglies!

I hope the sun is shining upon your Bank Holiday day.  If its at least dry then its a bonus in Bank Holiday terms eh?!

I seem to have lost my crafty mojo of late - it happens occasionally - and I hadn't ventured to my little Pod in what seemed like an age.  Yesterday, however, we had a free and relatively quiet day and so after pre- preparing the evening meal and feeling very domestic goddess-like, I ventured out there and sat at my desk waiting for inspiration to strike.  I really am a hopeless crafter.  I push papers around for hours, get frustrated with myself that I can't commit to what I want to do and get relentless brain fog as soon as I decide to do some crafting.  Yesterday was no exception.

I've had some photographs of my daughter's eighteenth birthday for nigh on 10 months now and haven't done anything with them so I decided that this would be a starting point.

Colour is a huge thing for me.  I like to think that I have a good eye for colour but my OCD meant that nothing was working with the featured colours in the photographs.  I guess I was focussing too much on the pinks as they are very dominant however when I began laying out the cardstock and papers all I saw was clashing shades which did nothing for the photographs at all.

How frustrating.

Looking beyond the ridiculously garish pink of the sash however, the green of the door seemed to provide a perfect background for my beautiful subject, and delving further into my stash, I found some green wood-grain effect Cosmo Cricket paper that I'd had for an absolute age and which picked up the colour in the photograph beautifully.  This was to be my base.  I wanted a vintage theme, and found a suitable shabby looking lace effect paper in a book of Prima papers I'd been stroking for ages but not actually used.

I've said before that my scrapping idol is the very talented Gabrielle Pollacco, and there was a beautiful layout of hers in the April/May edition of Scrap 365 and so I used this as inspiration, putting my own spin on the basics of her layout.

I ripped the Cosmo Cricket paper in parts, backing it with the lacy effect Prima paper, and spritzed the edges with water which enabled me to gently distress and curl back the torn edge.

Doilies came next - rubbed with a little Distress Ink in Pumice Stone, and filigree die cuts I'd purchased from ebay recently were added to opposite corners by way of balance, again, with a hint of distress ink to remove the stark whiteness of the card stock.

The photographs were placed, and then it was time for my favourite part - the embellies!  Remember the die cut I'd embossed a couple of days ago?  Well, I added  some script paper behind the aperture and some paper flowers to this like so:

Next was the piece of drain cover mesh I'd cut into a heart shape and heat embossed a few weeks ago - more floriferousness was added here, so softening the industrial look of it into something soft and feminine but still edgy.

As the layout features a coming of age, how serendipitous to find an undressed chipboard key in my stash from a magazine freebie from EONS ago.  This was also heat embossed to match the other embellishments, and, you guessed it, more flowers!

I covered a parcel tag in the lacy Prima paper, and then journalled on the back of it, so keeping it private but also documenting the date and what the day meant to us - which is what scrapbooking is all about.

And finally, the finished article.

And..... erm......  the "craftermath".

**Blush**

Oops.  Looks like I'm going to be doing a bit of tidying then eh?!

Happy Bank Holiday to you all

With Love xx

Scrapping Sunday

Hello there

A very warm welcome to my new followers AJ and Monalisa - many thanks indeed for becoming followers of my whitterings.  :)

There's not much to report from Peapodland right now.  I went back to work last Wednesday so my days were taken up in the latter part of the week with the mundane goings on of a law firm.  Move along there - nothing to see!!

Project Shed-pod is coming along nicely, with the insulation and cladding all but finished.  The painting can start then and after that, the flooring and shelving.  And then I can bliddy well get in there and do stuff!!


As there is a dearth of photographs to share from the last few days, I thought I'd share some scrapbooking layouts with you which I created at the Cardinal Colours retreat back in September.  Please excuse the shocking picture quality.  I've decided that the GE X5 really is the most rubbishest (!) of cameras known to man. I've tried very hard to love this camera but truth be told  I'm so disappointed with the picture quality - particularly those taken indoors.  It takes about 20 shots of the same subject to get once half decent one.  The macro function is awful.  The focus is terrible and the lag in taking an actual photograph is far too lengthy.  I'm really not impressed and shall be looking to replace it as soon as possible.  Photography is a hobby of mine and I do like taking close up shots which this camera doesn't cope with very well at all.

Anyway - I digress.

Shocked, aren't you?!

Here are the layouts then.

It's quite difficult I find to create teenage boy layouts without them looking too 'girly'.  This was a scraplift from a magazine (so sorry I can't remember who to credit :( ) but I found that the simple lines of the circles and 'ribbons' worked well on a simple grunged up white sheet of card stock.  Rather than use flowers (heaven forbid!) I used a red button on some chipboard shapes to give a bit of interest but kept this one very simple apart from the patterned papers.

This one was adorned with buttons and twine, some black ric-rac, sticker letters and some copper letters I'd had in my stash for about 8 years!

Sticker letters cunningly chosen to match the Motorhead font on his tee-shirt!  (It's not just thrown together yer know!!)

I was pleased with this embellishment which I created by covering a chipboard shape with some chalk ink, and then covering it in diamond glaze which gave it a porcelain-like quality.  Blue cabachon glass stones were kindly donated by a friend at the crop.   I also covered the little hearts with some iridescent stickles to 'pop' them a little.  

And finally, just a very simple layout with the photograph matted up on onto some contrasting card stock, then onto a beautiful piece of Kanban card which I had 'glittered' a little.  Matting and layering on to more card stock was all it needed really.  

So there you go - Its only taken me three months to show you!  If you click on the photographs, hopefully the should enlarge a little.  

Have a good week!  

Friday Crafty Corner

Hello lovelies!

I haven't crafted for a while, mainly due to lack of time and space, however just lately the yearning to play with bits of paper and glue has returned with a vengeance! 

I first developed a passion for paper crafting (mainly scrapbooking) some time ago now when an American friend introduced me to it.  A little later, after visiting a couple of scrapbooking fairs, I enrolled on U K Scrappers, a crafting forum, and through that forum met a group of ladies who I am blessed to class as some of my very closest friends.  We've been friends now for a number of years and have our own closed community forum where we chat every day.  A little later this year, some of us are getting together at a weekend retreat to indulge in lots of eating, chatting, laughing (lots) and maybe a little crafting too!

One of our number issued a small round robin challenge recently.  Basically anyone who wanted to take part would put together a small kit together with instructions for a project to be created by the recipient.

Yesterday I received my package of goodies (and I've just remembered that I didn't photograph the flippin' kit before I attacked it with the scissors and glue!).

The project was to use the papers and embellishments provided to create a decorated 'minibook'.  My friend had kindly created the 'book' for me out of 8 x 12 cardstock, but I'm a clumsy, sausage fingered crafter and needed something a tiny bit bigger to work on, so re-created the minibook from 12 x 12 card stock.  

Having inked the edges of each page with a nut brown ink pad, I matted up the front cover with two types of gorgeous patterned paper, I cut spirals from some dark brown card stock and attached two butterfly embellishments.  When the book is moved, it looks like the butterflies are fluttering!  

 

These butterflies are so pretty - they have an iridescent sheen on them which reflects the light.  Gorgeous!

As it's well known that I'm head over heels in lurve, the sentiments, papers and embellishments provided were of a very romantic nature and complemented each other perfectly.  The flourish and picket fence were provided to me in white card stock, so these were inked up to give a little definition.

Aww - L is for Lurve! 

Again the die cut butterflies were beautifully cut from white card which allowed me to employ my snazzy copper gilding pen to do a little 'colouring in'.  I was really pleased with this effect.

This is how the book looks in all its glory!

I sealed the bottom of two of the pages to make pockets, then decorated two of the tags with more of the embellies provided.

The tags slot perfectly into the 'pockets' and give a bit of added interest.

Ta-dahhh!  The first crafting I've done in ages!  Thank you Sherri - I've had a lovely chilled out afternoon, cutting and sticking to my heart's content!  

Looking forward to the next challenge now!