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

Christchurch in Ruins

At the last minute, I decided I wanted to enter my online friend Ingeborg's Scrapbooking Competition for February. She provides the sketch, one of her own making this month, and you make the layout. Having visited Christchurch in January I have been quite heartbroken by the scenes of devastation that have taken place there following the earthquake last week. As we stayed in a hotel right next door to the Cathedral, and visited inside it, it has been especially poignant. Christchurch is such a beautiful city and we certainly enjoyed visiting there. It seems so unfair, and my heart goes out to the families who have lost loved ones, homes, businesses, etc in the quake. So, here is my tribute to their city, or their Cathedral at least.

I took the photographs on the left when we were there. The night time photo was taken from our hotel room, and the other one from Cathedral Square. I got the photograph of the ruined Cathedral from the internet (it was taken by UK TV I think).

Here is the sketch I started with.

Most of the things I used came from my stash. I bought the papers (Kaisercraft) just the other day, but everything else I've had for some time. Here are the ones I can remember:

cardstock - Bazzill

pearls - Kaisercraft

chipboard shapes - A2Z Scraplets painted with twinkling H2Os (persimmon, skyblue).

Since I needed 3x C's and 3x H's (for Christchurch), I found these silver alphabet sticker letters were the only ones in my stash that were small enough and had enough of each letter, so those are the ones I went with. Unfortunately they didn't really show up against the cardstock. So, I painted over/around them with the twinkling H2Os, then rubbed it off the letter stickers. I think that turned out quite well.

Here are some closeups.

If you are in New Zealand, and Christchurch especially, I send you my deepest sympathy and hope that you will be able to recover from this tragedy in time. I hope to return there some time in the future to see what it has once again become.

Till next time, happy days.

Francine

Farmers' Filing Cabinets

I love Becky Fleck's page maps, and she has a competition on her blog that is open to scrapbookers worldwide this month (which doesn't often happen), so it was definitely time to enter! The Southern Girls challenge this fortnight is blue & brown, two colours I love together, so I decided to combine these two challenges and use some Kaisercraft paper I had just picked up that happened to be the right colours!

Originally I was going to do a layout about our day on the glacier at Franz Josef, but the colours in the photos didn't go with the papers at all! So, instead I opted for these photos. They are of beehives that we saw everywhere in our travels through the Otago region of New Zealand. While we were on our bicycle tour our guide joked that they weren't "farmers' filing cabinets" so that's where the title came from.

Anyway, without further ado, here is my layout.

And here's Becky's sketch.

This layout is kind of a hybrid layout I guess.

Instead of using paper for the middle square that the photo sits on, I used a photograph of the beehives in the field as the background. I typed the journalling and title directly onto the photo, then had it printed out on photographic paper. (Fonts are 'Marker Fine Point' [one of my favourites] for the journalling, and 'Hotel Coral Essex' for the title.) I attached the closeup photo using mounting tape.

Paper: Kaisercraft Prairie Lane collection

Pearls: Kaisercraft.

Ribbon: Brown velvet, and blue velvet rickrack both from inque ribbon

Pens: Sakura (I coloured directly over the title onto the background photograph.)

Tiny Alpha stickers: Kaisercraft (on the blue paper under the photograph)

Brads, buttons, floss from my stash.

Here are some closeup shots.

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

CRII - December Challenge

OK - Post number three for today! See, I told you I would make up for not posting in December!

So this post is about the December CRII challenge. The layout was based on a Nov 2010 Page Maps sketch. While I had decided on the photographs to use, I had trouble finding paper that I liked. In the end I went for plain papers with the central vertical piece only being patterned. I had it in my stash, it's by 7 Gypsies (I think!). The paper under the title on the left is actually a K&Co tag that I cut in half. Ribbon is from my stash (left over from an LSS challenge I think) and the title letters and embellishments are both sticker sheets that I bought from one of those $2 shops. For the embellishments I stuck the stickers onto some white cardstock and then cut them out. I stuck them onto the page using foam mounting squares. To make the swirl at the bottom I used my new gold gel pen (a Christmas present since my last pen ran out) and my new Swirly Doodles (Hot off the Press) template. The template is really easy to use as there are several swirls that depending on how you put them together make different flourishes. There are suggestions on the template explaining exactly how to put them together.

While this layout is quite simple, I'm pleased with how it turned out.

For the card, it was a straight scraplift. Unfortunately Sue didn't know where she saved it from in the first place, so sorry I can't acknowledge the maker :( Here is the original on the left, and my version on the right. Mine is nowhere near as nice when I see them side by side, but at least I had a go!

Till next time, happy days!

Francine

CRII - November Challenge

Yes, I know, it says November challenge, but the two of us left in the year long challenge both forgot to do the November challenge, so the organiser decided we should have to the end of December to finish November and December! Thank you Sue! Sue is so sweet, organising all the challenges for us and helping us with inspriation.

If you've been reading my blog for any time, you know that the CRII challenge involves a card and a layout. The cards are always challenging for me as I really don't enjoy making cards much, but this one was reasonably simple. Here it is, along with the sketch (originally from Page Maps):











I made the flowers with my Sullivans daisy punches adding a rhinestone centre, used a rectangular die cut tag from my stash for the vase, and drew the flower stems in with a green marker. The die cut tag was a bit plain so I drew the flourish on using the Swirly Q's template from The Crafter's Workshop.




For the layout, this was the sketch by Susan Stringfellow of sketchsavvy.blogspot.com. It was meant for an 8.5"x11" page, so I stretched it to fit a 12"x12" page. I also made the photograph larger.

Earlier this week we drove to Sydney to visit friends and family. For the first time in a long time there was water in Lake George! On the way home we stopped at the lookout and I took some photos that I stitched together to make this panorama. Here's the layout.





All the papers come from my stash. Mostly they are TLC papers, except for the brown ones (left over from some LSS monthly layout challenges I think), and the blue/white patterned paper circles which is definitely left over from the Dec Wrapped in Paper challenge from the previous post. The ribbon is from my stash (bought at Costco when we were living in Canada) and the arrow and flourish are from the Tim Holtz mixed minis grungeboard collection and painted with twinkling H2Os. The title is Heidi Swapp ghost alphabet, attached with bronze coloured brads.

This is not one of my favourite layouts, but it will do.






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