Geocaching in the Aussie Bush

There's a blog I like to look at called Ideas for Scrapbookers. There are lots of great layouts for inspiration, tutorials and best of all templates to follow! Pam Callaghan is the blog owner and the maker of all these wonderful templates. I really liked her latest template and couldn't resist downloading it and making a digital layout with it. I didn't download the PSD template, just the jpeg of the frame itself. I then made a similar but different (IYKWIM!) layout with it. Here's the frame, and my layout.




I started with the frame and used a clipping mask with this kaleidoscope made from the photo of lichen on a rock (also shown here).




I then added the background colours, taken from colours in the photo. I added the photograph and some special effects. Finally I added the text. The font is JoeHand. I'm pleased with how this turned out. Now if I could only find a place to print these digital layouts in Australia at a reasonable price I'd be completely satisfied!

Till next time, happy days!

Francine

Mend a Broken Heart

I made this layout for the Ally Scraps sketch contest over at PageMaps. Becky accidentally used this sketch for her last contest as well, but I don’t mind since I love this sketch and I couldn’t enter the last contest as it was only open to US residents. Initially it was a real toss up as to which photo I would use. In the end, I opted for this photo of Kyaa, taken ten days after her open heart surgery when she was 10.5 months old. I think it is my all-time favourite photo. She is so full of life and happy – you would never know she had had three and a half hours of heart surgery and been in the paediatric intensive care unit only two weeks earlier! The hearts in the sketch also just kind of leant themselves to use this picture too. So, want to see the layout?


Here’s the sketch it was based on.

I combined this challenge with the monthly Layout kit from my LSS, Wrapped in Paper. Once again I forgot to take a picture of the kit before I started cutting it up, but basically it contained two pieces of Bazzil cardstock – white and black. It also had two 6” x12” pieces of double sided patterned paper as well as a 6”x6” piece. I don’t know who any of them were made by, but they were all black and white. There were also 3 pieces of lace (1 white, 2 black), a large black flower, a large skeleton leaf, a flocked lace like border sticker, a large white shipping tag, and a gorgeous small white rose. One of the rules of the monthly competition is that you have to use at least a little of everything. That was hard with this sketch, since there was only one spot for ribbon/lace, and nowhere for the flowers or the tag. So I improvised, and added them – but then, that’s what using a sketch is all about, using it as a base and then making it your own.

I also wasn’t enamoured with the fact that the papers were all black and white, and the 6”x6” piece was actually black and cream. I fixed that one by colouring in the cream dots on one side, and the cream flowers on the other with my pink Sakura stardust pen. (Are you sick of hearing about these yet? They’re my favourite ‘tool’ at the moment if you hadn’t guessed!) I also added the pink and white daisy paper as a mat under the picture, and for two of the little hearts, as well as another piece of pink paper for the larger heart. These were all in my scraps. The white chipboard heart is from my TLC days, and the journalling/title was made with my Dymo Caption Maker and some pink (and some clear) Dymo tape. I put the tag for some journaling in the pocket behind the photograph. To finish off the layout I stitched on some beads instead of stitching through the hearts themselves as in the sketch.


The dymo tape says: When you mend a BROKEN HEART your reward is a SMILE like this {3 heart symbols} (10 days after open heart surgery).

I really like how this one turned out. I hope you do to!

Finally - on another note - subconsciously I think one of the reasons I decided to use this photograph today is because, little Evan, the grandson of my online friend Kathy, is having open heart surgery in the US today. He has a similar problem to what Kyaa had, but in a different area of the heart. His family is full of trepidation about the whole thing (who wouldn't be?!). Having been through it though, I'm sure it won't be long till young Evan has as gorgeous a smile on his face as Kyaa did. Mandy, Kathy, Obee and Ed, we're thinking of you today and await the news that all went well with Evan's surgery!

Till next time - happy days!

Francine

An Autumn Card Freebie

On the CRII member's forum that I belong to, I've been doing a year long challenge that requires the making of a layout, and a card each month. This month the card challenge was to read this passage, close your eyes and try to visualise what you have read and then create a card from that. The skies the limit!!!

"Most of all, Autumn means colored leaves: a spectrum of shades between the green shades of summer and the dull browns of winter. Crimson, fiery red, maroon, ruddy orange, pure orange, yellow orange, soft yellows and bright yellows. Red maples, yellow birch, scarlet sycamores, aspen golds. Mottled leaves of several colours in transition. Each deciduous tree, each bush, strutting its own autumn wardrobe. Naked willows dancing in the wind. In their midst, the smug conifers stand. "Evergreen," they say to us, "ever green."

Ahhh, those bright autumn spells that bring out the most vivid of hues. Days so delightful you can almost taste the colour. And those cold, crisp nights when the air has its own special vintage to entice us back outdoors one last time. A bouquet matched in no other season — aged in Northern realms and blended just right.

This is how I see and have seen Autumn over my half century of life. I hope such joy and beauty, such stability and changeability, surprises and routines, continue through my next fifty. I love a good season, watching it turn, engendering days of joy and days of melancholy. Sorry, must go. Adventure lurks outside my door."

Well, I like autumn (it's a toss up between Spring and autumn as to which season I like better) and I have some photos of some of the trees in our neighbourhood that turn beautiful reds, oranges and yellows during autumn. I decided to make some kaleidoscopes from the pictures, and then thought why not make the whole card from scratch - literally. So I started with these two photos (not necessarily the best photos, especially the left one, but the colours are great!):


I then made a circular and a flower shaped kaleidoscope from the left photo, and a square shaped kaleidoscope from the right hand one. I then made the square one into kaleidoscope paper for the background of the card, then added a solid green inlay to put the flowers onto. I also used the cookie cutter tool to cut some leaf shapes from the square kaleidoscope. I printed a sentiment as well (font is "Just one more Picture'), taking the colour from the flower kaleidoscope. This is what the card ended up looking like when I finished it.



Do you want to make one too? Well you can (for personal use only, not to sell), and here's how.

You can try to right click on this photo, click on 'save target as' and save the print. However it appears that this is not printing out clearly enough, so please email me (email is in the left hand column) and I will send you the file, then print it out on thick white paper, or cardstock. It's scaled to fit an A4 sheet, so it should fit on letter size as well, although you might need to scale it slightly. The finished card will fit in a standard C6 sized envelope. (Sorry, I'm not sure what the US sizes are.)

Besides the print out, you will also need some Kaisercraft (deep yellow)rhinestones , glitter, glue dots, or craft glue, foam/mounting tape and double sided tape.

Step 1.
Cut out all the shapes, the sentiment and the card base. Note that you can make three large flowers and two small flowers from this print. I only used two large, and one small flower on the final card, so you could use the other two for another card, or a layout, or just not make them all. Similarly, I only used seven of the nine leaves. You should end up with this. (Remember you can click on any photos in this post to get a larger view.)


Step 2.
Cut slits about half way to the middle in all the grooves of the flowers. Try to actually cut from the groove, not next to it like I did!

Step 3.
Cut the circular kaleidoscopes into a spiral like this.


Step 4.
Take the end of a pen, paintbrush, etc - I used the end of my scalpel, and starting at the outside, curl the spiral onto the object until you get to the centre circle. (Please excuse the look of my fingernails - they break all the time so are very short just after they break. They're not as beautiful as I see in other people's blogs!)
I used sticky glue dots, but you could use craft glue, and put some adhesive on the centre circle, let the spiral open out a little and press it into the adhesive. I added a rhinestone to the centre, and on the larger circles, some gold coloured glitter as well to cover all the exposed glue. (See next picture to see the final result.)(Note, there are lots of people who have included this technique on their blogs, but the most recent post I saw about it was on DeAnna's blog here)

Step 5.
Curl under the petals on the flower around a pen or similar object. You can dampen the paper slightly (on the back if you have an ink jet printer) to make it a bit easier, but then you have to wait for it to dry completely before you can continue. I then put the flower in the palm of my hand pressing my finger in a circular motion into the centre of the flower to make the petals rise up a bit. (Does that make sense? - I don't know how else to describe it!) You should now have two parts of the flower - the outer petals, and the inner 'rose' section.


Step 6.
Put a glue dot in the middle of each flower and stick the 'rose' centre on top. join the bottom flaps of the leaves together so that they curl up a bit, and put some double sided tape across the back to keep them this way.


Step 7.
Put the card together. Either follow the layout I used, or use your own. I put the sentiment on with foam mounting tape, and stuck the leaves down, then put the flowers overlapping them. Here's a side on close up view.


I'd love to know if you download this card. Please leave me a comment and link me to a photo of your finished product!

Till next time, happy days!

Francine

Family predecessors

I wanted to enter the new Southern Girls first challenge - 'anything goes'. I made a layout with my LSS's monthly layout kit and quickly put it up on the blog as time was running out. I'm afraid the picture was not so great as it was taken at night under artificial light and that never really works well. So here's the result:

Later though, I kept looking at it and decided I needed to add something, as well as putting some journalling on. The layout now looks like this:

The kit that I started with had a piece of Bazzill cardstock, two pieces of Kaisercraft patterned paper (Loire Valley - Celandine and Dahlia), several diamond/oval shaped rhinestones, a piece of striped ribbon and a piece of leaf ribbon, a wooden frame and a chipboard flourish. Here's the kit before I cut it up!

I loosely based my layout on this sketch from Twisted Sketches.

I loved the edge detail on the Celadine paper so cut it out and used it as my "border" under the picture. I turned the paper over then and used the dotted side under the border and added the leaf ribbon with some gold coloured brads. I coloured the chipboard flourish and the wooden frame with my Sakura star pens. I really do love that sparkle, and the ink flows so easily. Then I made a five petalled (is that actually a word?) flower out of the striped ribbon, and added a button into the middle using foam tape. I got the flower instructions from a video by Shar . (BTW - If you live in NZ or Aus, you can become a member of the forum she made just for us - it's called Crafting Passionz. Just click on the Join Our Group button at the bottom of the left hand column.)
I inked all the edges of the papers with black chalk ink, added part of a 'Say it in Crystals' flourish, some Dymo tape subtitles, and a red flocked Family sticker (from the Anna Griffin Flora Collection that I won from an online crop - thanks Sue) for the title.

Here are some closeups too.



Finally, just in case you're curious, this is a photograph of my father (the toddler), his sister, parents and grandparents. It was taken about 1936. My grandfather is riding a tandem with his mother-in-law, and my great-grandfather is looking rather stern, while his daughter, my grandmother is looking quite happy with herself. I had to call my dad today (it was his birthday recently) so I took the opportunity to confirm my grandparents and great-grandparents' names to put it on the page. I had tried to find somewhere online to find them, and ended up spending quite a while building a family tree on ancestry.com instead. Very interesting, but time consuming! I'll get on there again another day, but now I want to do some more scrapping!

Till next time, happy days. And oh yeah, if you're in Gold Creek at Wrapped in Paper next month, please vote for me!

Francine

Birdworld

PageMaps blog is having another sketch challenge. The prize is 16 pieces of chipboard from Dusty Attic as well as an ornate shadow box kit. So, since this one was open to people all over the world, I decided to enter. This is the result.

I liked the sketch,
but had trouble choosing the paper to use. Once that was chosen though, the rest came together quite quickly. In the end I used a piece of patterned paper from a recently purchased pad of (Garden Party)papers from DCWV. The blue flowers in the corners matched perfectly the SU blue paper I had already chosen to use! I added some feathers that I had bought on a whim, as well as the Scrapmatts birds that I purchased at the Craft Fair at the beginning of the month. I added a couple of leaves made with the SU bird punch, and coloured the birds with my Sakura pens. I drew a quick border around the pictures, added the silver brad letters title, and a Dymo subtitle. The journalling I put on a journalling sticker from one of my SU Simply Scrappin kits. It reads:
While Gary read his paper outside, I spent an hour or so with the birds at Birdworld. Since the blue & gold macaw loves chewing it was suggested that I remove my earrings before going in! Just as well. Sam the black cockatoo was just content to sit on my shoulders.
Here are a couple more shots.


And here's a shot of the blue & gold macaw chewing my hat, and thankfully not my earrings as I had taken them off. Apparently a woman lost her stud earrings earlier in the day because she didn't take them off, but the bird did!

Till next time, happy days!

Francine

It's never too late I guess...

I had decided that I was going to apply for the Design Team on a new challenge blog called Southern Girls Challenge, especially for ladies down under. Well, I didn't read the instructions properly! I'm so used to entering challenges that close at midnight, that I didn't take in that the challenge ended at 3pm (New Zealand time)! I haven't had any time to work on the layout until today, the last day, although I knew exactly what I was going to do. Anyway, long story short, by the time I finished it and went to send the email I saw the post "Call closed". So, instead of entering the DT call, I'm just showing all of you what I made. Hope you like it - I really do! Gary even says it's one of my better layouts!

Remember this layout I made from a sketch from Beggahuna? Well, I liked that sketch so much that I had to use it again. This layout turned out completely different. For starters this picture is landscape as in the sketch rather than portrait like the last one. I used lots of chipboard painted with Twinkling H2Os and/or my new Sakura pens (bought at the Craft show at the beginning of the month). For the circle, this time I used a piece of wire strung with beads. One of my friends, Lainie, is competing in a challenge at the moment that required you to use wire, so that gave me the idea. The background paper is from the Halloween Spotlight kit from Breezy, and the green papers are from Stampin Up! I borrowed my neighbour's eyelet border punch (thanks Katrina, I promise to return it soon!) to use on the cardstock strip, and put a Kaszazz rubon on there as well. The big butterfly at the bottom comes from the craft fair too, and was also coloured with my new Sakura pens. In fact, I went a bit crazy with the pens. I love the sparkle! The sparkle from the Twinkling H2Os is sooooo much more subtle and less obvious! But, it's great to match up embellishments. I used it on the chipboard, as well as the large butterfly, the Tim Holtz grungeboard letters (love them!) and the little bead butterflies. Those butterfly beads were actually blue and a funny creamy orange colour before I painted them.

Anyway, want to see some close ups? Here they are:


Sorry about the quality of some of these shots. They were taken indoors at night, not the best conditions in which to take pictures like these.

Well, I have set my sights on several more competitions that all need to be done before the end of the month, so I better hop to it!

By the way, in case you were wondering, the picture on the layout was taken at Floriade last year (Sept 2009). It's a tradition in our family - every year I take a picture of the kids in the flowers just outside the gate to Floriade. Last year, I even convinced Gary to come along. We brought the tripod along too, set the the timer on the camera, and, hooray, a whole family shot! Maybe it will work this year again - only 2 weeks to wait till Floriade opens for this year to find out. Hopefully the rain will stop before then - I've had enough!

Till next time, happy days!

Francine

Want to win some blog candy?

Everybody loves blog candy don't they? Well, my online friend Ingeborg is running a competition of a differnt sort this month - she's giving away the chance for some blog candy just for linking to her site. Here's what she's giving away:

The pack contains:
An acrylic block for your clear stamps
Chipboard Shapes 'Turn, turn, turn, a time for love' (Buzz & Bloom)
Chipboard Shapes 'Pointers: Swirly Snails' (22 pieces, Buzz & Bloom)
Chipboard 'Corner Flourishes' (Buzz & Bloom)
Glue Sticker Sheet for flocking or glitter 'Dingbats' (Around the Block)
Flowers 'Blossoms' (Making Memories)
Clear Stamps 'Emotion' (Heidi Swapp)
Flowers 2 packs: green and pink (KaiserCraft)
Pearls green (KaiserCraft)
Rubons 'Baby' (KaiserCraft)
Rubons 'Months' (KaiserCraft)
Rubons 'Urban Threads' (TLC)
Clear Stamps 'Doodled Frames' (KaiserCraft)
Clear Stamps 'Christian' (Scripture by Design)

What a fabulous prize! And Ingeborg is always so lovely that even though she lives in Europe she opens her competitions to people all over the world!

The other parts of the competition are
1. you need to become a follower of her site, which I can do now since she created a way to follow her other than through facebook (which I'm not on - so thanks for adding that functionality Ingeborg!);
2. post a picture of the blog candy on your blog and add a link to her blog on yours;
3. leave a comment on her blog with your link and an idea for next month's competition. My idea is to create a layout with at least 5 photos on it, at least one of which must be 4"x6"/10cm x 15cm or bigger.

So why not join in the fun - go check out her blog here. Hopefully you'll join her for next month's competition too (whatever that may be - the winner of this blog candy will determine that!). You can get to her blog from the link on my sidebar at anytime.

I haven't had any time for scrapping lately and there are several competitions I want to enter with one due today, so I better get to it!

Till next time, happy days!

Francine