Painted Faces

I decided to play with some digital brushes this afternoon and created a layout for the Scrapbooking Competition challenge blog. The blog owner Ingeborg designed the sketch to use. I looked through my old photos and picked this one of Kyaa and her cousin Matthew who was visiting us part way through a round the world trip with his family at the time. They look pretty cute don't they?!


I created four different sized circles and layered them on top of each other. I used a clipping mask to attach the photo to the smaller circle, then picked colours from the photo to fill the remaining circles. Then I started playing with brushes! Altogether I used brushes from butterfly_by_ShadyMedusa-stock, Porcelain brushes by Miko, KPertiet_FloralEdger (not sure where I picked that one up from?) and Circle Flourish Brush from Little Dreamer Designs. The fonts I used were One Fell Swoop (one of my favourite script fonts!) and Papyrus (aside - while looking for the link for the Papyrus font I came across several links about the overuse of the papyrus font. Lucky I didn't know about that before I finished my layout!!).

Till next time, happy days!

Francine

Rock Art (at Fantail Falls)

I finished this layout quite a few days ago but I seem to run out of time when it comes to posting these days. I'm entering this layout in the Southern Girls Challenge, anything goes. Unsurprisingly there are 100's, literally, of entries this fortnight! So, maybe mine will take it up to 400...


I was originally going to make this layout for this challenge over at Apron Strings (using Blue and white), but once I started it wasn't turning out any good so I canned that idea and sat on it for a few days. And,guess what - shock, horror, I didn't use a sketch!!! That's the first time in ages. Still, I think it looks like I used a sketch - probably because I've used so many now. Despite it not turning out how I first anticipated, I love how it turned out. The muted green of the Kaisercraft papers I think is just wonderful. I picked up the rub on branches at the Craft Show last year for $1 I think, and I love how they look. I also had these rock alphabet stickers that I picked up somewhere some years ago that turned out perfectly for this layout. Too bad there was only one of most letters and I needed 2 Rs but there was only one of those, so had to change to plan B... So, what do you think?

The pictures by the way were taken at Fantail Falls in Mt Aspiring National Park on New Zealand's south island during our Holiday there in January. We had seen a few of these rock piles around the place, but when we turned the corner off the path from the parking lot we were greeted by hundreds of them. Naturally Kyaa had to make one too. She said it was pretty hard to make them balance, but she managed a little pile in the end!

Well, till next time, happy days!

Francine

Funny Face

This is my entry for the Get Picky #9 sketch challenge. I rotated the sketch 180 degrees and used photographs of some of Logan's funny faces.

The papers are from Pink Paislee (Amber Road Collection), Bazzill cardstock, and rubons from my TLC stash (quik Words - smile). The title is Maya Road raw chipboard alphas, coloured with Charcoal Versamark ink. Here are some closeups of the layout.






Till next time, happy days.
Francine

Scrappassion International Challenge Blog

I recently won a spot as guest DT on the Scrappassion international challenge blog for this month. Unfortunately however, this month is to be the last month that the challenges will be running. Because of the small number of participants lately, and other personal challenges faced by the blog owner at the moment, the decision was made to wind up the blog on June 30th 2011. But, before then there's still time to get your entry in for this month's challenge. Go here to read the full rules of the challenge.

The challenge is to make a layout inspired by this advertisement. You can choose any part of the ad - the layout, the colours, the angels, the butterflies, the words, the bottle, the swirls, etc. What part will you chose?

For my layout, I chose to focus on the fact that there were lots of rectangles, and I liked the 'explosion' of swirls etc in some of the pictures. The result is a layout about my Goddaughters' (yes they are identical twins) 21st birthday party with lots of rectangles (the photos) and an explosion of stuff in the middle around the cut out photograph of the balloons.

For the explosion part I cut out several flourishes with my Big Shot. I also added 'Happy Birthday' and '21' table sprinkles, some tiny mirror tiles, some beaded wire, and some curling ribbon. Around the large 21 chipboard numbers I attached some purple heart beads. At the top I cut a corner bling flourish in half and put half of it on either side of the photo. Everything I used on this layout is from my stash.



I hope you all have a go at this challenge too! I'd love to see what you make of the inspiration.

I also entered last month's challenge, but the blog owner didn't get a chance to upload it, so here it is.

The challenge was to create a layout using at least one handmade embellishment based on the tutorial given here to make felt flowers. The flowers were easy to make and turned out very nicely. Instead of using a button for the flower centre though, I used a bead.

The layout is based on a PageMaps sketch. For those spots where I didn't put a felt flower I used swirls grungeboard circles. I coloured the debossed parts of the circles using my Sakura stardust pens, then swiped ink across the raised portions of the circles. The title (mixed minis) and tall flowers are also grungeboard coloured in with my Sakura pens. The papers are TLC from my stash and the black tile letters in the title are from Kaisercraft. A couple of dragonfly brads and some ribbon from my stash, and the layout was finished.

The photograph is a black (or blue, depending on your point of view) flower wasp. We had lots of them buzzing around the ivy on our fence this year. Their wings are gorgeously iridescent.

Even though this challenge is finished, have a go at making some of these flowers - they're great!

Until next time, happy days!

Francine

Cowgirl

Well folks, it's been a long time since I put up a new post, but that's not because I have nothing to share, it's just because I have been so busy. So I'm going to spend some time writing some posts, and this first one is especially for Kylie. (I would put one of those cute little moving smiley icons waving at you here if I knew how!) I want to say thanks Kylie for having me over to your place last weekend and letting me use some of your masses of goodies! The layout I finished when I got home (because I stupidly forgot to bring the photo with me!!) was this one. I really like it despite its simplicity.

The layout is based on a sketch from Ideas for Scrapbookers called Postage Stamp. While it's really a Christmas sketch, you can see that that's not the purpose for which I used it, I changed the inverted scallop border to a different border (using Kylie's Loops border punch), and didn't put on all the embellishments on either.

Thanks to Kylie I was able to cut out the doilies with a Dienamics die. She also provided the stamp for the middle of the doily (Papertrey Ink), and the bit of brown fibre under the title. The rest of the stuff was mine from my stash. The patterned papers are quite old ones from TLC. I also used some cardstock, flowers, brads, and stick on pearls, none of which I'm sure who by. The title was made using a new alphabet die set that I just bought. I then coloured it with my clear Sakura stardust pen (you know the ones I always rave about) to add some sparkle.

As far the photo is concerned, it is of Kyaa when she attended a friend's birthday party and had to come dressed up as a cowboy. The background (believe me!) was very distracting so I cut just her out of the picture and threw the rest away. I think that it looks quite effective.

Until next time (maybe even today), happy days!

Francine