Our 2 Little Stars

Earlier this month I made this digital layout using a sketch by Pam Callaghan from Ideas for Scrapbookers. I love this sketch so decided to make a paper version of the sketch as well, and use the Wrapped in Paper monthly challenge kit to do it. Since there was a chipboard robot in the kit that needed to be used, I went through some old photos from 1999 of the kids as toddlers, hoping to find some photos of Logan making something. Well, I found these photos of the kids that I’d taken at Floriade instead, so decided to go with the star theme that was both in the robot and the diecut paper. I love how this layout turned out and I think it’s one of my favourites ever. Here it is!

This is the kit I started with: white and grey Bazzill cardstock, half sheet of diecut paper, half a sheet of patterned paper and an A4 sheet of blue checked paper as well as two pieces of ribbon, some red Kaisercraft mini letter stickers and the chipboard robot. I thought that the blue checked paper clashed terribly with the grey cardstock so had to put them as far apart as possible! From my stash I also dug out some orange Basic Grey (I think!) paper scraps, a TLC tiny tag, some mini Kaisercraft beige coloured letter stickers and (shock, horror!) some red star eyelets that have been in my stash forever!

Here’s another look at the sketch I was using. I rotated it 90^o this time.

I found putting this layout together was a bit fiddly, probably mostly because I’m a perfectionist and the circles had to be just so. I cut out the circular photos, circles from the checked paper and rectangles of patterned paper first. Then I laid them out in order and stuck them onto my craft mat with removable tape. I then cut the circular bits out where the circular paper and photos joined the other patterned paper. Then I lifted them all off my craft mat and attached them to the cardstock. I’m thinking there must be an easier way to do this, but I’m not quite sure how. I added the other embellishments and used the 2 from the diecut paper as part of my title.

The end result I think is stunning. Hopefully everyone who votes at Wrapped in Paper will think so too!

Till next time, happy days!

Francine

Superb Fairy Wren

My latest layout is one I made for the Get Picky Sketch Challenge #7. I combined it with the Southern Girls Green & Blue challenge and came up with this layout about the cute little Superb Fairy Wrens that have been visiting us lately. They’re terribly hard to photograph as they’re so quick and it seems that as soon as I open the back door with my camera, they’re off. Finally one day though I was lucky enough to get a few shots. The male, the beautiful blue one, isn’t often with the group of females, but on this occasion he was. I love these little birds and the lovely twittering that heralds their arrival in our yard.

So much for the birds, here is my layout. I made it completely from scraps and bits from my stash. The cardstock and ribbon are both from TLC, the patterned paper is by Sandylion, the green felt flowers are from Stampin Up!, the title letters are by Portacraft and the little blue flowers, blue metallic thread and green heart buttons have been in my stash for some time.

Logan thought this layout was too plain, but I think its simplicity suits the subject well. What do you think?

Till next time, happy days!

Francine

Another top 3 pick!

Yay, I was chosen as a top three pick for the last Southern Girls (sketch) challenge with my Our Team layout. I'm feeling proud!

Our Team

Here are some more photos from our Otago Central Rail Trail tour (on New Zealand’s south island) in January. The main picture is of the tour group we were with. They were lots of fun. There was another family from Brisbane, Australia, another woman from Brisbane and one from Melbourne. As well, there were three couples from Wellington, NZ, a woman from the UK, and the two guides who were both from Christchurch. At the time I found the going really tough, but in hindsight it was a great trip, due mostly to the fantastic people on our tour. This photo was taken at the bottom of Baldwin Street in Dunedin, purported to be the steepest street in the world. I certainly only ventured part way up – I had to stay behind to set up the tripod for the shot! The two photos at the bottom were taken on the trail. The one on the left was our first day on the trail and is near Chatto Creek where we stopped for morning tea. The one on the right was taken on our last day on the trail and is nearing the end near Middlemarch. I was really struggling against the wind at the time, so stopping to take a photo was a welcome relief. It helped that the scenery was lovely too.

The layout is for the latest Southern Girls challenge, a sketch by Trace Jackson. Interestingly there are not many entries this fortnight. Since the entrants are overwhelmingly card makers, I guess they’re not much in to using sketches. Me on the other hand, that’s my favourite thing! I rotated the sketch 180^o, and since it is relatively simple so is my layout, but I like how it turned. I think the emphasis is on the photos which is generally what I strive to do with my scrapbooking.

Everything I used on this layout comes from an old TLC Runway kit called Urban Threads. Much of it has skulls on it which was popular at the time, but I carefully covered all those up! In order to record all our tour mates’ names, I made a pull tag from some of the diecuts in the kit, attached it to a piece of cardstock and slipped it behind the main photo. That way I didn’t need to take up room on the actual layout, because I’m not really sure where I would have put it anyway. What do you think?

Till next time, happy days!

Francine

Apron Strings last birthday challenge

This layout was inspired by the Apron Strings last birthday Challenge. The challenge was to create a layout inspired by the subway art pictured at right. I've seen these popping up more and more on blogs and like the look. So, I decided I would create my own version of this subway art and use it on my layout. I picked some photos from our Otago Central Rail Trail tour we completed in January. This was a fantastic adventure where we biked 154km over a period of 5 days along what was once a railway through Central Otago province on New Zealand's south island. You can read more about it here.

I picked this sketch by Susan Stringfellow of Sketch Savvy and set to work. Instead of a photo in the bottom right corner of the layout though, I made a CD pocket. I've made a movie of all the photos that I took on the tour and will transfer it to CD. Once I've done that, I'll keep it in this pocket.

I used papers from Stampin Up! as well as some of the Scrapmatts chipboard that I won on the recent Scrapmatts blog hop. (Thanks Sophie!) I used twigs 02 (CB5056) and floral designs 03 (CB5057) that I coloured with my Sakura star pens (the chipboard is so easy to colour with them). The letter brads for my titles were purchased from a $2 shop and were in my stash as were the brown and green flowers. The brown felt flowers are from SU! and the cream coloured flowers are from Hero Arts.

The small cream and black alphabet stickers are from Kaisercraft and the others are from Adornit. Brads are by Jasart. I also put a few skeleton leaves under the floral designs chipboard in the top left corner and on the CD pocket. I bought those when we were in Thailand.

I made the subway art inside a text box in Word. The fonts I used were:

touring: Dymo

pedal: Trubble; ride: Bleeding cowboys

bicycle: Birmingham

coast: Varsity Regular

wheels: LD Chubby

whirl: One Fell Swoop (I love this script font!); turn: Trubble

velocipede: Stripes Caps

So, what do you think? I love how this layout turned out and am very happy with it. I hope you like it too.

Till next time, happy days!

Francine

Pelicans

Well, from spiders to pelicans...

I checked out one of my favourite blogs this morning, Ideas for Scrapbookers and came across this cool layout template. I immediately fell in love with it and had to make a layout!

This is the result.

I haven't made a digital layout for a while, and with the help of the layered template it came together very quickly! I have to admit that as I haven't worked out where I can get 12x12 prints made economically that I haven't printed any of my digital layouts and they just live on my computer at the moment. So, I'm also loathe to pay for any digital supplies. Hence I tend to use the bucket tool and pick colours from my photos. This time though I did use some freebies that I had downloaded . I haven't worked out how to record them well, so I can only tell you that the patterned papers around the photos are by Jessica Sprague from a collection called LoveYa. The background paper by Amy C Bleser is called "acbleser-rds-addon-pp1".

I remembered to write down the fonts this time! They are: for the title - Do you Like Stripes? and for the journalling - Bitstream Vera Sans.

Till next time, happy days!

Francine