Fossil Hunting - We Scrap

The last page I made using my We Scrap kit (tho there is still enough left to make more).

I love this photo, and tried to keep the page fairly masculine, though there is a little twine flower (which I saw on Hannahs site here)!  The shot is my DS next to a massive ammonite fossil that he found quite unexpectedly on the beach....we never find fossils normally even in places where there are meant to be loads, and unfortunately it was too large to take home, so we had to have a photo for the memory instead.  

I started with a mist of the page, I used some of the jillibean soup letters to be the mask for the word fossil, and then added some flicks of blue and white mist.  Once the mist was dry I outlined the word with a white gel pen.  I stitched, inked and layered up a couple of rectangles, and wrapped twine around another strip and stuck them all down.  I die cut several different sized stars using a cuttlebug die, once I had worked out where I wanted them I folded them in half and then stuck them lightly to the page with a repositional glue and stitched down the centres.  I also added a few smaller punched out stars around the paint splats and on the papers.  My twine flower was a tip from my Handmade Hannah, and I think they work well on male pages too (tho I use flowers generally on my boys pages as I can't help myself!).  The word hunting is my favourite Ali Edwards font at the moment welded together and cut out of kraft paper on my craft robo.

Sunny Afternoons

Crate Paper have been having a collage week all this week showing some beautiful creations on their blog.  They also had a competition to do your own collage page taken from their inspiration and then tweet it.  I'd started this page but not quite finished it til last night (just before the light became to bad to take photos), set up a twitter account for myself which is @fruitofmyscraps and tweeted it to them.  I was delighted to wake up this morning and find I've won some paper :D

Here is a picture of my DS and one of his favourite friends who we go camping with, so here they are on a campsite field with a gym mat....they spent ages doing cartwheels, headstands and just messing around on it, and then did a little pose for this shot my DH took, I love the light in the shot and it is just one of those end of a sunny afternoon happy shots.

The papers I used for the page are Crate Paper's Farmhouse - still one of my favourites at the moment.  I started working on the collage block behind the photo, where I layered up several strips of paper and inked, ruffled and added some lines of zig zag and straight stitch....leaving the ends long to be piled under the buttons.  Once I knew the size of the main paper bit I then worked out where to put my grid and arrow stamp (American Crafts Chaps clear stamps) and inked them in aquamarine and poppy red from colorbox.  I used some blue memento ink for the circle stamp too, I also aded some images at the bottom of the page too.  I also added some flicks of shimmer mists, a nice peacock green and some firefly red.  Once all the inky bits had dried, I started to arrange it all.  My white doily didn't look right so I covered it in Spice Marmalade distress ink, just wiping the pad across the doily, and put some of the crate ruler sticker at the opposite corner.  I then added some chipboard pieces, both the banner and little circles into the ink splatters.  I piled up the thread ends under some buttons (if you look closely you can see the clear glue wasn't quite dry when I took the shots!.  Then finished it off with an Authentique mini alpha and some Echo Park For the Record alpha stickers too.

So I am off to where my big smile all day now :)

My Gorgeous Boy

The new sketch challenge goes live today over at The Studio Blog, so here is my creation and a copy of the sketch I worked from ;

 There are lots of other fabulous pages over on the blog click here if you want to go and have a look and join in too.

The inspiration for my page was obviously the sketch!  I choose an older shot of my youngest - I tell you having a brand new nephew in the family has made me dig out lots of baby photos and play with them - it also helps that my DH is sorting out all our photos into one all accessible place so I can quickly pop back in time and pick up the ones I have missed.  I love this one as he is all snuggled up and just gorgeous!

I bought some dusty attic chipboard and haven't used much of it yet, so this was my excuse to get it out and have a play with it.  I embossed both the butterfly and vine in silver and then went around the edge with an inkpad and sponge just to add a little metallic blue.  The papers layered up behind the photo are October Afternoons Farmhouse collection - just using up odds and ends and strips, and I added one of their Rocket Age cards and some tissue tape behind them too (all the pieces were inked and distressed as usual).  The photo is mounted on some MME Lost and Found print paper.  The alphabet is a mix of some of the prima tiny letters and some of the velvet MME Lush chipboard which I did ink a little to make it not so bright baby blue.  For the line of circles in the sketch I added some flicks of white chalk glimmer mist and blue patina mist.  I then punched out some hearts using a poundland punch from a while back and a few tiny blue button stars were also added to the mixture.  The silver oval is part of a costco kit and something that has been lurking in my collection for ages so it was good to dig it out. To finish off the page I added a stitched square around the edge.

I loved using the sketch - it always makes me scrap a bit faster too as I have less deliberating to do on where I want the paper, if you fancy a go here is the link.

UTEE frame over at It's A Creative World

Just a quick post with a sneak of my new UTEE frame that I did for my post over at It's A Creative World today.  They are really easy to make, though you have to avoid the slightly burnt UTEE fingers by being patient and letting things cool :D.

Penguin Love - We Scrap

I hope everyone had a lovely Valentines...here is a love themed page from me, we have been out and about over half term and so far the kids highlight has been the Dr Who experience which we kept as a complete surprise for them, an they absolutely loved.  It made up for us going roller skating, but when we got there we couldn't 'cos it was full - lesson to book ahead :) - so we did popcorn and a movie at home instead.

Here is another page with the North Shore kit from We Scrap.  I have thought for sometime that I should document my sons favourite soft toy....which is now in a very well-loved state, so this is his penguin which he still loves :) so this was my inspiration.

I started the page with a circle - drew very lightly around a plate and then stitched around it 3 times in brown thread, and rubbed the lines out afterwards.  I distressed and inked the edges of the Jenni Bowlin bingo cards, and then layered and distressed lots of the MME papers, made a little tag out of one of them too.  The pink ruffle of paper is from the co-ordinations page in my pack, I sanded it and then lightly wet it and folded and gathered it together, sticking it onto tape and then I stitched it along the top.  I also made my own little chain of hearts (I know MME do them in circles) but I used a little heart punch and then stitched through them, letting the machine run for a few stitched in between each one.  I added some of the felt ribbon and another punched line (ek success abstract flower punch) and a spare doily.  The alphabet is jillibean soup and I die cut the word love using the Ali Edwards font and welding it together on my robo.  The finishing touches were to add the bunting and a Tim Holtz ticket.

Buddies - We Scrap

Here is my 2nd page with the We Scrap North Shore kit, the picture was on my eldest's birthday and 'cos it was quite dark and inside I edited it in some photo software and then made it black and white.

The inspiration is an eclectic mix for this page - I have seen the little stitch patches on the sides of pages lots, and I love the stitched through letter look as well as kraft doilies, so I just wanted to have a go at all of that!

To make the page I dug out some of my Christmas presents for this page which include the Spellbinders iron works die, some gorgeous doily type shapes which I have also seen used on Christmas cards to (so got to remember that for next year).  So I made some kraft doilies and inked around the edges with distress ink too.  My other Christmas present was the the ek success abstract flower punch which I used on a strip below the photo.  I started by mounting my picture on some white card to make it more polaroidish and then stitched around the photo and inked the edge.  I layered up some squares of the paper, stitching and inking the edges as I went.  I made a little journal block out of the lined MME paper and wrapped it in twine, then added some of the tags and flags, ribbon and bunting, stitching bits as I went.  I also added some strips of stitching at either corner of the page and then finished it off with some flicks of Antique Copper Glimmer mist.  The title is jillibean soup corrugated card and I added a few rows of stitching through that too (so a thoroughly stitched page for this one :))

And in other exciting news I have been asked to join the Studio Challenge Blog design team, which has bi-monthly sketch and themed challenges, my first page for this will be up on the 19th February.  It is a great group of creative ladies to be a part of so I am really excited.

Candy Floss - We Scrap

Here is my first page as Guest Designer over at We Scrap, I made it with the lovely North Shore kit, there is lots of beautiful MME goodness in it.  

The photos are from a fair we went to last year (I only just re-found them!) and we have some lovely shots of the kids with the most enormous piles of candy floss - it's amazing stuff the way it fluffs up and then goes to nothing in your mouth.  Thankfully neither of them could finish the enormous quantity of floss that they were given, but it was their first time tasting it and something they loved.

Inspiration - don't have a clear idea for where this came - I have seen lots of framed pages on my blog browsing so I thought I would have a go and the ticket paper worked perfectly for this, I liked the way the browns pulled out the lovely pink of the candy floss.

I started the page layering up the papers, using both sides, bit of distressing and fluffing of the edges to roughen them - even used some of my poundland sanding blocks!  I made a paper ribbon below the photo by folding the paper up onto some tape, I then stitched through it to hold it.  I cut the journal tag out of the papers and then made a couple of flags and used the funday name on the paper too :).  I added some more twine and a tim holtz ticket and stitched around the edge. Bizarrely for me on this page the stitching was left til near the end which meant that I couldn't stitch around all the papers so I just did the odd bit of zig zag stitch but I really like the effect.  I had a play with my twine and wrote the word candy with it, this took a little while.  I started by lightly writing the word on the page and then covered sections of the word in glue - I worked out where I need to cut the twine and did it a section at a time.  My finishing touches were a few flicks of white acrylic paint (cover the photos as paint is hard to get off them).

There is lots of inspiration going up in the galleries so here is a link for you to have a look.  I will be back with more projects and details later on in the week as I have lots to show you.

Notebooks

I have only had a small play with my Bind it All since getting it - mainly making books for my kids so that they can create their own Skylanders (very big in my house at the moment - I'll have to do a page on it so I can show you all - but it is a computer game that comes with little characters you put on a portal and then they turn up in your game!).

I picked up some woodgrain plastic covering sheets from the poundshop as I love that dark woodgrain effect (you can tell that the sheets didn't cost much, but they work fine for this project).  I cut some mountboard to size for my covers and then covered them with the woodgrain plastic which went on really well without any bubbles.  I then cut some pages to size and made all the holes, next the decoration.  The  wide squareish book I used a Fat Face clothes tag - they have these beautifully aged tags on their clothes at the moment with the piece of material stitched on the bottom (I actually used them rather than just keep them because they are lovely :)). I used some scraps of a brown ruler paper I have, and then made a rosette flower out of some scraps of October Afternoon Farmhouse paper, I used some Martha Stewart butterfly punches, inking it all with distress ink and a Tim Holtz ticket, and lastly some yellow twine to stick it all together.  My intention for this book is that I use it a bit like an art journal though mainly with ideas or sketches or links that I find useful.

The second book is my Lists book - now I know there are some fantastic list makers out there, and I finally decided that I need to write down the things I have to do somewhere, so that I remember them and don't have to rush around trying to do them really quickly because I forgot!  So it is nice and thin, and I can pull out the pages once they are done.  Again I used scraps of paper for the decoration these are from the Crate Paper Farmhouse line, and an American crafts rosette, a bit of lace and cosmo cricket mini alpha.  I think these might make nice presents for people too, so you may well see a few more!

Other news I have is that this month I am very excited to be the Guest Designer over at We Scrap - they have beautiful kits and lots of challenges - I will show you my creations later on in the week.

Project Life 1st 2 weeks

Here is the rest of my Project life page if you've not seen it...having seen lots of beautiful Project Life pages I decided to sign up and got some of the WRMK page holders, I am doing a double page spread per month so here are my first 2 weeks.  I had a play with my Silhouette and used the free Ali Edwards downloads to make the January and the big outdoors rectangles.  It took me a little bit of fiddling to get what I wanted but I am really pleased with it as a silhouette novice!

The papers are my Amy Tangerine American Crafts ones, I love all the colours, so they were cut and stitched and layered and journalled on, I think this is the most writing I have every done on a page which I really enjoyed, here are a couple of close ups (and yes it is really hard to photograph the page in the wallets without getting too much reflection :D)