You Have my Heart

Here is one of the baby pages that I made with Simple Stories' Hello Baby collection.  

I started off by using some distress inks as watercolour paints, then I layered up the papers, as well as some embossed vellum - distressed and inked the edges.  I also added some washi tape, a couple of buttons and then some stickers as well as some little cut out embellishments from the insta cards they do in this set.

I loved digging through my photos and this is an early shot of my youngest - I added a polaroid frame effect and had a little play with the settings on the photo too, but just really enjoyed digging through and scrapping some older photos.

Last post for Inspiration Elevator - with Websters Hall Pass

After some thought and consideration, the time has come to retire Inspiration Elevator. But before we go, we need to hold a big retirement party, so we've invited everyone who's been involved with Inspiration Elevator back for one last reveal, and to our delight most were able to accept! We are so delighted to have so many IE alumni along this month! Thank you to each of you for helping us end our elevator ride with so much fun and creative energy!

This month's challenge is posed by one of IE's co-creators and team admin, Ann.
This month's challenge is simple, but I hope, challenging as well. 
Here's the challenge: Inspiration Elevator launched on May 15, 2012 and at that time, we explained our purpose as, "Welcome to Inspiration Elevator! What a thrilling day! Today is the launch of Inspiration Elevator (IE), a challenge blog created by my dear friend Christa Uttley and me. We chose the name Inspiration Elevator because it is our intent to raise our creativity to heights through challenges issued every month. We want to raise our designs from the ordinary to the extraordinary. We hope you'll join us on our journey!

IE is a group of like minded scrappy friends who want to raise the bar in their own creative process through unique challenges that we issue to each other once a month. These won't be run of the mill challenges and we hope you'll join us each month and be inspired by the creative designs we've created." 
That vision has remained unchanged over the last (almost) 3 years. The challenge this month is to just create - no holds barred. Take some time, or challenge yourself to do it in 1/2 hour if time is tight, but think about what you'd like to create if there were no agenda, no design team requirement. In other words, create for you, and enjoy the process!


So here is my creation with some papers I got for Christmas and have been wanting to have a play with....

I started with some white gesso on the base, then added some stamping and splatters of distress stain. I layered up some of the squares from the Hall Pass papers, and then added some cut outs, like the owl, books, pencils...then some buttons too.  I made little polaroid frames for my photo and used some thickers for the title.  The photos are from the book hunt we did around London on one of our days out last year.  It was great fun and took us to new places as we hunted out the books.

We hope you'll take the time to hop through and visit each of our participant's blogs, beginning with our guests, then our current team, and finishing off with our co-founders. Feel free to leave comments and lavish each one with appreciation for all that they each brought to the Inspiration Elevator challenge over the last 3 years!

Audrey Yeager

Christy Riopel

Denise Morrison

Jodi Wilton

Laura Whitaker

Laurel Seabrook

Shelby Dwyer

Jayne Morgan

Joanne Burton

Katherine Sutton

Lisa Moen

Lisa Spiegel

Michelle Hernandez

Wendi Robinson

Christa Uttley

Ann Jobes

Happiness Starts Here

Here are a couple of pages I did for the Virtual crop ATDML are now doing monthly - you can buy kits, or just join in the classes which are all on their site - it's a fab resource just to inspire you, so do take a look.

I used Simple Stories Say Cheese, and went away from the Disney theme of the papers - I found they worked quite well with lego too.  The first page is using lots of 3 3/4" squares and a little polaroid app I downloaded for free on my phone.

My second uses some of the 3 by 4 cards you get, and I thought it would be a nice way to use up any of those cards that you might have left over from pocket pages or project life.  I offset them and put in a couple of photos, as well as mounting some on foam dots.

If you want to check out any of the classes here is a link

Some cards

As there are loads of bits you can cut out in the Craft and You papers I enjoyed making some cards...I also got to trial some new distress stain colours I got with some of my Christmas money.  The first is a lilac ones - I started with some splatters and washi tape, then added on some jars and a little pound land flower.

Next up a very Graphic 45 style hen and sunflowers, I decopaged one of the sunflowers, and then added microbeads to the centre of all of them.  I stuck the chicken on with 3D foam to add some more dimension.

A few more splatters of another new stain, and then some torn paper and a tag - lots of fun to make!

Home Grown

A little more Autumnal for this page - here are some of the first apples off our apple tree - the kids love them.  I used some Craft and You papers for this page, and started with a diamond pattern, which I then stitched across.  Around the photo I added a doily and glassine envelopes, then some ribbon and a few of the cut out pieces you get in this paper pack, as well as a wood veneer and metal tree.  The alphabet is an older American Crafts one.

Whilst it's still feeling cold

Here is another page I made with the DT kit from ATDML for January by Craft and You - I used a Maya Road chipboard house as the template for my little houses, and constructed those with the offcuts of paper, then I gessoed, inked, stamped and use pastels on them.  Whilst they were drying I also added some plasterers tape, and then some gesso on my card stock.  I got some new prima spray mists that apparently don't clog (I will let you know) and used the gorgeous teal colour, then did some stamping on the background too.  I layered up my houses, and added some muslin and a mixture of embellishments across the bottom, with the photo of the gingerbread house central.

I am up on the ATDML blog this morning with a couple of pages I made with this months kit - and they involve some baby photos - I haven't scrapped any of those yet as I started scrapping after both my kids were born, but I have loved digging through those slightly older photos and writing down memories, plus the kids have loved it too.