Birds of Prey (show)

I realised that I hadn't shared my latest layout for the September Wrapped in Paper monthly challenge. I absolutely love it, partly because these photos turned out really awesome (to use today's parlance *grin*) and partly because I just like the layout of it. I used a sketch by Heidi Myers from the online publication  Scrapbook News and Review (SNR). I submitted my layout to SNR and it was published (yay!) on Nov 16th, 2011. So, if you're looking at this post in the 30 days following 16.11.11 you won't be able to see my take on the sketch. Check back later!!

Sketch by Heidi Myers

I wasn't very keen on the papers in this kit (again!) but made the best of them. The orange dotty paper that I used as the background had garish purple, orange, pink and black words on the other side that I couldn't work out how to use, so I just used the patterned side. The three pieces of cardstock were easy to layer. The sun ray striped paper, oh my, I don't like at all, but in small doses it's ok. There were a couple of orange and green leaves which naturally made me think autumn, but I've done several of those layouts already and wanted to do another subject. In the end I just hid them in my embellishment cluster, using the (Collections, I think) chipboard buttons that were also in the kit. I inked the star with some orange ink to give it colour and tied them all on with some jute string. 

I ended up punching some holes around the central photograph part. I goofed though so had to cover up the crooked line of holes. Can you guess how?! The two ribbons were also in the kit, so I used them for the "frame". the leaves were punched from the yellow cardstock with my Sizzlits Little Leaves die. 

I finished off the layout with some (brown) Scenic Route and mini Kaisercraft black/white letter stickers. Since I had too much to say, I typed it out and printed it on some of the orange dotty paper that I cut out of the middle. I don't like to waste paper, so I often cut the middle out of paper if I put another large piece over the top of it :-)

The photos by the way, were taken by me (yes really!) at the Birds of Prey Show at the Alice Springs Desert Park. If you get to Alice Springs this park is not to be missed! They have recreated the different kinds of desert that you will find in Central Australia in this one location. They have lots of plants, animals and birds to see from each type of desert. It's a very interesting place, and the show was particularly good. I never thought I'd think that non colourful  birds of prey would be interesting! I'm so pleased too that I caught the barn owl with wings starting to unfold, just about to take off. 

Well, I've been very busy scrapping this past weekend so hope to be back later and share some more of my work. 

Till next time, happy days!

Francine

Always in our Heart

Oh my goodness, where did September go?! While I completed a few things I haven't posted anything, but I really wanted to show you this one!

This layout is one that I made with the August Wrapped in Paper monthly challenge kit. There was little in the way of paper in it, only one full sheet of  patterned paper (I can't remember the maker now), a half A4 sheet of gold and black striped paper and a half 12"x12" piece of Teresa Collins lace look paper. For the rest there were two flowers, a chipboard heart, two pieces of lace and a length of ribbon. The paper had a large carnival scene on one side so I used the reverse which was a deep maroon colour, although it is showing as more purple/red in this photo :(


I was inspired to make this layout by this one by Celeste Vermeend that I saw on the Scrap the Boys challenge site. I absolutely loved all the layering of papers and bits and pieces and just had to scraplift it. So thank you Celeste for the inspiration!


I ended up raiding my stash to find things to use. I found several papers and die cuts with gold to match the gold/black striped paper. I also embossed some black cardstock and then rubbed gold ink across it. I still had a few printed chipboard embellishments from an old TLC kit, and a frame that I picked up somewhere in my travels. I diecut some daisies from the papers as well as the large butterfly and doily. I stamped the "En Francais" (SU) background stamp on a label diecut and found a small printed vellum butterfly as well as a small metal key. I also added some buttons and scraps of a floral patterned paper and some gold corner stickers. The stark black and white Teresa Collins lace paper didn't go with the rest of the layout, so I used some fired brick distress ink to colour it. 

butterfly die cut from Marianne Creatables

The photograph is of my grandmother a few years before she died. The colours in the photo were all wrong with the papers so I turned it into a sepia tone picture (after much ado - but that's another story!). 


All in all I love the way this turned out, and the visitors to Wrapped in Paper obviously thought so too since I found out today that I won the September monthly challenge! Yippee!

Padlock and key - spellbinders die cut

I'll leave you with some more close-ups.

Till next time, happy days!
Francine

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

Bows

I posted just the photo of this layout yesterday so that I could link it to a challenge at Apron Strings (and still managed to miss the link - only by a few minutes though!). The challenge was to put something on your layout on an angle. In my case it was the photos and the butterflies. Anyway, I thought I should come back and add some more pictures and tell you the story of this layout.

It was made with my monthly Wrapped in Paper challenge kit. Unlike last month, I really liked this kit, but am a bit sad about the way it turned out in the end. It looked much better in my head, LOL! I once again forgot to take a picture of the kit before I cut it up, so I'll try to tell you about it. It had two pieces of cardstock, the yellowy cream that I used for the background, and a piece of beige. There were two pieces of patterned paper by Webster's pages (Feather Fashion and Stardom), as well as two lengths of cream ribbon (which I layered on top of each other in the centre of the layout), the large chipboard flower and two chipboard flourishes, the purple and green flowers, a length of string and the white flocked design paper strip.

I found this great sketch (by Michelle Fowler for Handmade by Suzanne) while blog hopping and instantly fell in love with it. Since my photos were landscape though, I flipped the sketch 90degrees to the left. Initially I tried to colour the chipboard with ink, but it just didn't turn out right, so I ended up colouring it with twinkling H2Os. They're much brighter than I would have liked, but at least the colours match!

I cut a lot of the flowers out of the papers, and had the most difficulty in using the piece of string. In the end I put double sided tape under the centre of the chipboard flower and wound the string inside the space. I did this once before on an ATC that I made, and I like how this looks. I punched the butterflies from the patterned papers with my Martha Stewart (stamp and) punch. For the title I added some silver glittered letters from my stash, and pierced some holes in the corners to finish it off. I guess the layout is ok - but certainly not one of my favourites. I do really like the photos though! They're pictures of my dad and his older sister when they were children in the 1930s. I guess that bows were in then for little girls since the pictures span a period of five or so years and my aunt has bows in her hair for all of them! I think it's quite cute.
Well, till next time, happy days!

Francine

16 years & counting...

Well, I'm combining challenges again! I used the monthly challenge kit from Wrapped in Paper (who finally have a website, yay!), the sketch from our monthly challenge at the Crop Room II, and added brads and bling as required in the challenge at Southern Girls. Not bad I guess, killing three birds with one stone! So, without further ado - here's my layout

and here is the challenge pack I started with. It contained a piece of lilac coloured Bazzill cardstock, papers from Kaisercraft (I know I often say I dislike the papers in the kit, but this time they were really terrible!) The front sides were way to gaudy and kitsch IMHO (see left hand picture), so I used the backs that were much plainer (see right hand picture), although I did cut some hearts out of the purple coloured paper (the middle one in the left hand picture). There were also five different ribbons/laces - a pink velvet, pink/white gingham, yellow rick rack, red loopy ribbon and white eyelet lace. They actually turned out to be easier to use than the papers! As well there two large chipboard hearts (one with a removable centre) a chipboard crown, and three (round) red buttons.

It took me a while to decide what photos I would use with this kit. I finally decided since there were hearts all over the paper, that I would make a layout with a picture of me and Gary, after all I rarely scrap pictures of me and since we didn't have a recent shot of us, I asked Kyaa to take a picture. She loves using my new camera so was happy to oblige. We even got several good photos where we both look good!

I also decided I'd use this sketch from the CRII challenge. I actually turned the sketch a quarter turn to the right, and then I had lots of fun going through my stash looking for heart embellishments - buttons, brads, bling, stickers, etc.

The paper was a bit bland when I used the back sides, so I stitched the paper onto the cardstock which added some more colour and made it stand out. Stitching also allowed me to stitch on the lace (which I threaded with the rick rack first) as a ruffle and attach the red loopy ribbon all at the same time.

I attached the round buttons from the kit with heart shaped brads. I like how they look. I also found a heart shaped paper clip but wasn't sure how to attach that, but in the end filled it with Diamond Glaze so it kind of became an epoxy like sticker. Worked like a charm! The hardest item from kit to use was the chipboard crown! By putting the shaped paper clip between our heads on the picture though, the crown just naturally seemed to fit above it - so voila!

I painted the chipboard pieces with my twinkling H2Os. I stamped the XOXOXOXO stamp that Kyaa bought me for Christmas onto the white chipboard 1 in the title. The chipboard 16 came from my TLC selling days. I do love those monogram chipboard letters and numbers because you don't have to paint or cover them, but I'm gradually starting to run out of them :( The glitter alphas were a cheap buy from one of the $2 shops around town. I just put them through my Xyron X sticker maker so that I could attach them.

The rest of the hearts were from my stash and have been there for a loooooooong time! I have no idea where they're from. I did cut a few of the hearts out of the patterned paper as I said before, and drew over the words and borders with my favourite Sakura gelly roll stardust pens. I attached some of the hearts with foam mounting tape to raise them up a bit.

All in all, I like how this one turned out. I guess it's good to be challenged to use something you don't necessarily like in the first place and see what you can come up with!

Till next time, happy days!

Francine

A Scrap Lift - Eco-rafting

Hello everyone. It's been a while since I posted, but we were in New Zealand for three weeks, so I think I had a good excuse, LOL! We had a fantastic time and now I have lots of pictures that I can scrapbook, although based on last year's trip that might not happen for quite a while!

Anyway, I recently received a copy of "the Complete Scrapbooking Handbook" through this offer. There was a layout in there (Sweetheart) by Missy Neal that I really liked. This is it (at the right):

I decided to use a picture from our trip, and the January monthly scrapbooking challenge kit from my LSS, Wrapped in Paper. I even remembered to take a picture of it too so you could see it before I cut it up. Want to see? Here it is.

I didn't really like that papers as I didn't think they really matched the bling cardstock. However, since the rules state that you have to use at least a little bit of everything in the kit, scraplifting this layout was perfect because I could use the papers I didn't like (the one with the rainbow particularly) very sparingly!

As well as using these papers, I also wanted to enter the Southern Girls challenge. This time it was to use some dry embossing somewhere, and since my in-laws (parents and sister) banded together to buy me a Big Shot for my birthday/Christmas I was dying to use it! So this is what I came up with:

I used a piece of the rainbow paper I disliked so much and embossed the back side of it. I rubbed some brown ink over it to make the embossing stand out. I did the same to the chipboard shape and was

pleasantly surprised to see that it worked too! The bird and branches on the right were made with my Stampin Up! two step bird punch. I added the rubons (the birds on the left, and butterfly and hearts on the right by Kaisercraft) from my stash. The only other thing not from the kit were the title letters. They are foam stickers by tim & tess. Originally they were a baby blue colour, but they just didn't match, see... so I took out my trusty Sakura stardust pens and recoloured them. Boy I love those pens - the ink flows so easily, you can easily colour large areas, and the bling they add is gorgeous! (If you've been reading my blog for any time, by now you might be thinking that Sakura is paying me to say these things, but really they're not. If they wanted to though, LOL ... I'd be open to it!)

I'll leave you with some close up shots.

On another happy note, when I took this entry in to Wrapped in Paper this week, I found out that I won last month's challenge with this layout! I haven't won a challenge there for ages so that was a very pleasant surprise. I'll pick up my prize when I pick up the layout at the end of the month.

In the meantime, if you're in Nicholls and feel like dropping in to Wrapped in Paper to vote for my entry this month, I'd appreciate it!

Till next time, happy days!

Francine

Sweet Little Man

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Wow - no posts in December! Well, I guess with the end of school, finishing off things at work in order to close down for a longer period, and all things Christmas related, I really haven't had time. So, to make up for it, I'm going to try and do several posts today with the challenges I finished just in time for the end of the year!

The kit for December's Wrapped in Paper layout competition wasn't one of my favourites. Once again I forgot to take a picture of the kit before I cut it up, so you'll have to make due with a description of the inclusions: pastel yellow cardstock, an A4 sized piece of white cardstock, three 6"x12" pieces of baby blue and white patterned paper, a large yellow flower, a piece of thin yellow ribbon, two other lengths of ribbon/lace - one blue, one white, a shaped piece of chipboard, a card of blue elliptical shaped bling, and a pearl set brad. The whole thing screamed baby to me, so I dug through my old photos and found two pictures of Logan at 7 months old (some 13 years ago). I used a sketch from Ingeborg Dijkstra-Verbeek from her scrapbooking competition website, and here is the final result:

The only things I added to the kit were the butterfly stickers, phrase/letter stickers and the title. The title was made with TLC/Breezy Designs rub on toppings. It does actually say 'sweet' with a flourish above 'little man' and I tried to rub white flock onto the adhesive, but it really didn't work. You can (kind of) see it in real life, but not in this picture! I used blue foil for the 'little man' part of the title. I inked all the edges of the papers with some blue ink from my stash and painted the chipboard shape with some blue twinkling H2Os then cut out a piece of blue paper to fit the inside of the shape. I had a sticker sheet with Logan on it that I bought in the US, and the other phrases came from a sticker book that I received for Christmas. The bottom phrase used to say "Our bundle of joy, our sweet little boy", only after I stuck it on I realised that it actually said budle, not bundle, so I cut the top line off. I guess that's what you get when you buy "Made in China" :P

If you're wondering where the white lace is, I cut one small piece of it and stuck it at the bottom of the vertical piece of patterned paper using the brad, and the flower I cut up into pieces and stuck it behind the chipboard. Other than the fact that the background is pastel yellow, I really like how this turned out.

And finally, here is the sketch that Ingeborg made. She does beautiful work and you can check it out on her blog. Why not participate in her monthly challenge at her scrapbooking competition blog too?

Till next time, happy days!

Francine

Mend a Broken Heart - Take 2

You may have seen my layout here, about my daughter's open heart surgery as a baby. While I made it for a Page Maps competition, it was kind of inspired by the fact that one of my online friends in the US was going through the same thing at the time with her grandson. Well, Evan has had his surgery and is well on his way to a full recovery. I really liked my layout of Kyaa and asked whether I could do a similar layout for Evan. I'll be sending it to his parents next week.

Kyaa's layout used the black and white monthly competition kit from my LSS. I just added all the pink touches since she was wearing a pink top in the photo. Since I still had enough paper left from the kit I made Evan's exactly the same, but with different embellishments and I used blue instead of pink. Kyaa actually likes Evan page better than hers, but then she doesn't like pink! I like the blue version too, but I still like the pink version as well.

Enough chit chat - here are both layouts side by side so you can judge for yourself.



I think I'm going to change a few things on Kyaa's layout before I hand it in for the competition, like adding some feathers to the chipboard heart embellishment, and doing the white lace as a pull on the tag like I did on Evan's (If I can get it off first without damaging the layout!), and changing the clear DYMO tape for pink at the bottom of the layout.

I decided also to enter Evan's layout into the Southern Girls challenge. You can do anything as long as you add glitter. Well, all the blue colouring in was done with my Sakura star pens which add lots of glitter, and the 'lace' type border along the bottom is also glittered. It was white to begin with and I actually rubbed ink over it to turn it blue. It turned out really well IMHO. Here are some close up pics so you can see.



Even the flower I used on the chipboard heart embellishment has sparkle in the ribbon!


Speaking of glitter, I was making a set of Artist Trading Cards last night as well and I ran out of gold heart brads. I was three short, and yes I should have checked how many I had before deciding to use them, but I didn't, so I had to come up with something else. Well, I used different coloured brads and used Stamp N Bond adhesive powder to add gold glitter to them. I hadn't used this product before and it worked great! Here's what the previously green heart brad looks like now:


I'll do a post soon about the ATCs I've been making recently so you can see the whole thing that I used the brad on.

Till then, happy days!

Francine