Made with love

The April Kaisercraft challenge really appealed to me because I could instantly imagine what I would do for the sketch. Here it is.

My thought was to use True Love  and die cut a bunch of hearts for the centre area. But ideas don't always end up being reality and as I got creating, my design got simpler. Here it is.

So not what I planned but I still love it.  I used the Kaisercraft Love quarters stencil and a gorgeous Scrap Fx chipboard that I attempted to ink in an ombre effect...I love it.  

The photo is one from Penny Black photography, taken at the kids childcare. Little darlings right!

All my supplies were from The Paper Teapot, my favourite scrappy shop.

Crazy and Cute

I'm still working on getting my mojo back so decided to try a sketch to see if that helped.  I wanted to scrap another photo of my wee angel using WRMK wildflower so when I hunted for a sketch I was a little biased and chose one that looked easy and didn't present much of a challenge....oops.  It wasn't really on purpose!  Here is the sketch I chose from Scrapbook and Cards that originally came from Pagemaps.  It's pretty old from 2011.

http://www.scrapbookandcards.com/documents/SCT_Spring_2011_sketch.jpg

Here is my page.  I didn't deviate too much from the sketch, the main difference being that I used only two photos but because they were longer it was still basically the same.  I'm sorry the photo isn't the best, I have to hunt in the craft room for my white board to take photos on and I need to learn to photo straight when I have put a border on my layout!

This isn't my favourite page.  I feel like the photos get lost on it. I thought the colours worked nicely but I wish I had used a white cardstock base so the page was lighter.  Perhaps the busy carpet in the photos also doesn't help ;-)  Anyway, I completed another wee challenge to myself and have two more ideas to try getting my mojo back.  

Adventure is out there

I've been feeling a bit creatively blah lately, and have found it hard be enthusiastic about scrapbooking despite having so many lovely things.  I think it's all the changes we have had lately and finally settling into a new home..I'm exhausted!

But I love to scrapbook and it makes me feel sad when I don't get around to doing anything so I pulled out my WRMK Wildflower collection with the intention to finish a pocket page - I attended Joanna's pocket page class using this paper range and I really wanted to do a matching page but there it has sat since...hmm about September!  Now, I thought this would be an easy undertaking but even after sitting staring at the completed pages, I just couldn't get into action so instead I trawled the WRMK blog for a page I liked using the collection with the intention of creating a blatant scraplift, design, papers, embellishments and all.  Here is the layout I found to scraplift.

I really love the florals in the Wildflower collection which is what drew me to this page.  I also really liked the large doily.  Here is my version of the layout.

I'm pretty happy with the end result.  It has the same base and a doily but otherwise it is quite different which goes to show that sometimes just sorting the foundations out is a great step towards creating something.

I'm not sure if I have found my mojo yet so maybe I will try a couple of sketch challenges to really get me back into the swing of things.

Kaisercraft Storybook

Hi everyone, I have two layouts to share with you on this blog.  I received the Story Book collection at the beginning of March and it has taken me a very long time to complete my pages.  Not through lack of loving the collection because I DO, but I confess that I really struggled with the muted tones and my crazy attempts to add mixed media were no help!  This range is really gorgeous and I wish I could have done it more justice, and I think a super talented person would have a lot of fun creating an off the page project with this!  There are some very inspirational pieces on the Kaisercraft Blog so I recommend checking those out.

Here is my first layout called Just a Glimpse that seriously took about three weeks!

The photo is of my husband and little girl walking across the school field and I loved the way the trees looked so this I wanted to reflect this with stamping and papers choices.

To start with, I used Borrow as my background page, and stamped with various stamps and stencils from my stash using both archival inks and distress inks.  Then I mixed some Finnabair Glass Glitter into some old modelling paste that was going a bit gluggy (not sure this was a good idea!) and used a stencil to spread onto the background.  To be honest, this looked kinda crazy but I decided to battle on in my mixed media attempt.  To make it merge into the background a bit I stamped over top in some areas….not sure if it improved the look tho!

I layered up Library Card, Novel and Books papers to place my photo and embellishments on.   I love how this range is very themed but at the same time can be used for a totally non booked related photo!  After I had layered the paper and photos, I needed to add some bits and bobs and because I was a little horrified at my flower collection I figured I had best use some.  I mixed together some Glass Glitter with Tim Holtz distress glitter to put in the middle of some of the flowers to add a little extra bling.   I also added some distress glitter to the wooden leaves.

My next move was to try heat embossing my chipboard title with the Blue Fern embossing powder.  I made a few mistakes while doing this, remember I am no expert with mixed media products!  To start with, I knocked one piece when it was still hot and whoops, embossing sludge got pushed into a pile on the word.   I also wanted to stamp over top and instead of using archival ink, I used distress ink so the stamped image wasn’t clear and thinking now…I suppose I could have wiped it off and restamped but ahem…didn’t think of that at the time!

So, all in all, not a very successful attempt at mixed media and I think it is time to pull out my so called art journal and do some playing.  I wish I could come along to Joanna’s journal class, I think it would be a lot of fun as her card classes always included a new technique and it was great to learn!

My second layout Every Family has a Story is a lot cleaner and more my style.  It is a photo of my husband and small nephew on my wedding day.  It’s funny how similar my nephew looks to my daughter, they sure have the same fine hair and there is something in face too.  Rose thought it was her when she first saw the layout.

Individual pearls are another item in my stash that I have millions of and never use so I decided to pull these out and place along the strips to fancy them up.  More flowers on this page too, along with some old stickers from my stash and I also inked a Bo Bunny laser cut chipboard heart and nestled this in the flowers.   After I added this heart, I made sure to also add hearts in my other two clusters to balance things out.

I attempted hand lettering a title but what I wanted to use was just too long and it didn’t work so instead went with small letter stickers and large thickers.  The title is taken from one of the collectables and I was planning to use the collectable piece but decided I needed a bold title.

So plain and simple for this page….well sort of! It was fun to play with the mixed media things and the best thing is that mistakes can be covered up mostly and more layered on top, so don’t be scared to try something new even if you think it might go wrong.