Father/Dad

(Poor picture quality - sorry! Despite it being a sunny day I still got glare, and I took several photos before I gave my perfectionism away!)

I decided fairly last minute that I would enter the latest Get Picky sketch challenge. With Father’s Day coming up soon I decided it would be good to make a layout about Gary and chose these two photos of him and the children I thought were nice. As I’ve always loved the saying “Any man can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a Dad” I decided (unlike me) not to do any journaling and leave it with the quote. I did write the dates of the photos on the back of the page though *wink*.

The challenge was to use this sketch.

For the layout I used lots of things from my stash. I’m mostly trying to do that at the moment, but because I can’t help myself when I see nice things, I still do have some new things too. Here’s what I used:

· Cardstock: My Mind’s Eye (Penny Lane) (new from the Craft Show)
· Cream patterned paper: TLC (stash). I cut the word Dad from this paper too using Cuttlebug Curls and Swirls alphabet die.
· Brown ribbon and brown/white flowered paper (American Crafts) – left over from an LSS challenge. I cut the word SPECIAL, the small hearts, the arrow and the asterisk out of this paper with my Cuttlebug Typewriter alphabet die, and the two snowflakes with my (new from the Craft Show) Marianne Creatables die (LR0125).
· Brown chipboard tag and string – clothing label
· Brown stamped love heart – leftover from a Kaszazz workshop I hosted some time ago (stash)
· Dad acrylic word – Go West word chime coloured with pinecone Versamark ink (stash)
· Large round brads – from an Apron Strings kit (stash)
· Small metal button – Smart Kraft (new)
· Lace – unknown (stash)
· Butterfly – Porta Craft (stash)
· Brown jute string – left over from a bit Kylie gave me for this layout.
· Chipboard ribbon slide, pink heart, flourish (if that’s the right word for it!), and cream spotted ribbon – all TLC (stash)
· Small envelope – K&Company (stash)
· Metal letters (father) – unknown (stash)
· Dymo

Phew! That was a lot of stuff. I’ve been seeing lots of layouts on the net where people have clustered a number of small embellishments and wanted to try it, so this is my first attempt. Turned out pretty good I think. I want to try it again on my next layout. We’ll see how that goes again.

One last note about the Marianne Creatables snowflake die. I have been buying a few different cutting dies lately and absolutely love the Papertrey Ink and My Favorite Things (MFT) dies that I have. They cut very well and the die cut just falls right out. It is rare that paper gets caught in the die and if it does they have tiny holes that you can poke them out with a paper piercer. The two Marianne Creatable dies that I got at the Craft Show on the other hand, make the most beautiful die cuts (my other one is a butterfly - LR0115) but the paper sticks in the die. It takes about three times as long to remove the paper and all the little bits from the die as it does to actually cut it! It’s driving me crazy. So today I thought, what if I put a piece of wax paper between the die and the paper I’m cutting out. Well, that worked like a charm and the die cut just fell out. I have yet to try it on the butterfly die which is the worst one for keeping bits of paper in it after cutting, but I suspect it will work well too. So I guess I need to keep up my supply of wax paper now! Seeing as I have a nearly full roll of it from about 1990 though, I don’t think that will be a problem!!

Till next time, happy days!

Francine