2012 Marathon

We went to the London Marathon this year to support 2 friends running it.  We painted a yellow banner the day before, got up early made packed lunches and headed into London.  We saw them both around Canada Water and then again alongside the river Thames near Horse Guard Parade - it was a great day (we were quite exhausted from dashing across London with the kids- tho you can't say anything to people that have just run 26 miles :)).  It was a great day with huge crowds of people, live music and lots of cheering.

I decided to have a go at using a map as a background (I do wonder about my choice as other people seem to work the map background a lot better than me and I think mine is a bit too busy).  The paper is pink paislee.  I then used some of the portrait line by Crate Paper to pick up the yellow and red in the banner, I layered up lots of die cuts and doilies and added bits of guess.  I used my negative strip to thread twine through and added some vintage buttons.  So another quite messy painty page from me, but a good use up of some of my older bits of papers.

Oh Happy Day

I know Spring is here...it's getting warmer, but I still have some gorgeous winter photos to use on my pages!!!  Here is my page for the latest challenge over at the studio blog....all you have to do is use a song as a title for your page, and you are in with a chance to win a gift voucher for Craft Island.  So my song - Oh Happy Day...it was the one that immediately sprang to mind when I looked at this photo, it is mid snowball fight and I am not sure what my son is giggling at but he is loving it.  This was a good use up page for me, I had some of the hexagons left over from my last snow page, I layered up a mix of Crate Papers Farmhouse and their new Pretty Paper collection.

I start by layering all my pieces on the page 1st, and then decided to free stitch some circles at either corner, so I lightly drew these on and then removed all my bits of paper (I only stick them down when I have to and am totally happy with where bits are).  I just removed the foot from my sewing machine and then stitched away (it did take me the 1st circle to realise that I didn't need to actually turn the paper around in circles to stitch this way too!). I then inked, stitched and distressed all my bits of paper and started sticking them down.  I made some bunting using the lovely chipboard pegs I have been saving, and made some glassine snow flakes.  I also added some hand stitching to the hexagons too.  I picked up some great arrow paper clips from paper chase...and they worked with my colour scheme (that must have happened subconsciously :D), as well as adding a Tim Holtz ticket tag for my journalling.  The alpha is a mix of Amy Tangerines and Echo Park for the record's sticker sheet.  My last additions were some flicks of white acrylic and red glimmer mist.

Here is a link to the blog to see all the other beautiful pages that the ladies have created, hope it inspires you.

I need a Carry

This is a photo of my DH having to carry my DS as we were on a stoney beach and they kept getting in his crocs LOL. 

 For this page I used quite a few bits from my beautiful Handmade Hannah grab boxes, the doily is from the embellishments box, the date stamp is from her shop (I love it as you circle the date and add the year).  The Papers again are mostly from grab boxes, crate paper Portrait (designed for weddings but it is so versatile I love it) and there is a small scrap of glitz and American Crafts too.  The Rose embellishments are from the Portrait collection, and the chipboard is maya road and I managed to fit in a glassine pocket for my journalling.  The alphas are Echo Park for the record and the glitter one is American Crafts, the other stamps are MME.  So those are all the little bits.  

I started this page by using a Crate Paper die cut to fit my photo in and then I backed it with some of the green Portrait paper and edged it with scalloped scissors.  I cut up my papers and started layering them how I wanted them to look, once happy I inked the edge with black memento ink and then ruffled the edges.  I layered them all up and then sorted out the glassine pocket by folding the top over and stapling some string that could hook around the teal brad.  Then I started layering the embellishments,  I made some flags to go down the edge of the page and added bits of book paper to these, then I slotted in the doily and added a 3 embellishment combo which includes a snowflake :)   I ruffled and added a rose to the other side of the picture and a seagull pin I got in a quirky kit.  I then stamped my chipboard banner, 2 are stamped with a newspaper print in broken china distress ink, and then the centre one has the Boy stamp. I covered them in PVA to add a different texture to them and then added some book pages to the 2 print ones, and finally smeared some liquid pearls over the top to give a bit of shimmer.  I threaded through some twine and added the title and some more little blobs of liquid pearl.  

So this is my attempt at the layered page prompt for Shimelles pretty paper party, I concentrated on lots of layering as well as keeping it fairly simple in colour (not something I often do).  Hope you like it.

Aim, Fire

Another grab box LO, this is done using some more Crate Paper - Portrait, Echo Park - Country Drive and Glitz papers, toy box embellishments and a maya road doily......and some twine :)  I finally found a site (which I can't remember) that had a method for sticking twine and string like things in wavy patterns on your LO - so here is the tip - use some wet glue that dries clear in a tube with a fine nozzle - I found a scotch acid free glue in a tube in my local shop, mark lightly in pencil on your LO the swirly path you would like the twine to take, then squeeze out  line of glue - just small bits at a time.  On my LO I did the right hand side portion down to the doily in one go, then carefully lie the twine on top.  The nice thing about the scotch glue is it dries fairly quickly - and is very much like PVA just with a nice nozzle :)  The other twine item I had spotted on my blogging journeys was Hannah's flowers - I cut a small circle out of card and then placed glue on it, and twirled the twine around, placing a button in the centre - they are so easy to do and work really well on boy LOs too as they aren't overly flowery (not that that stops me).

This LO is some shots from our holiday in May where we all had a go at archery - twice it was so good.... the journalling is on an echo park block behind the photos.  The inspiration for this LO was from the archery boards - I cut the circles out using a mixture of plate and compass, then inked, stitched and distressed the edges.  Before I put the photos on I flicked the paper with some water down white paint, and then once dry stuck my photos and all the embellishments on.  The title is girls paperie - ecclectic - the Fire didn't stand out enough in the biege colour so I covered it in firebrick distress ink - took quite a while to dry.  So here are some close ups, and some close ups of the flowers.

Home Grown

This was the 3-2-1 challenge for Scrapfactor - 3 different papers, 2 photos and 1 piece of black cardstock.  The photo I choose was from our haul of raspberries and strawberries...which my kids help me pick (well actually mostly help me eat as not many make it to the fridge!).  I worked on a strawberry flower (and already  had a request for a little tutorial....which I will do :)) - I made them curling some circles and then threading them together.  The leaves are made out of spritzed paper - I mix all my distress inks in the spritizer til I get the colour I want, I cut them out with pinking shears to give the edge and then dry embossed the veins on.  The strawberries are embossed (swiss dots) and sanded and then glossy accented in the sepia on, I also did some little paper swirls too.  I cut out the red (die-cut looking) shape - it's crate paper's portrait line) and then I stitched and added a scalloped edge border which I also inked with tea dye distress ink.  I added a few more bits of papers behind the photos and some stickers (crate paper, portrait and echo park, for the record stickers).  I made a journalling spot and added a pearl bead swirl and some jenni bowlin chipboard buttons.  A few spots of paint and a glossy accented martha stewart butterfly and a touch of lace.

This week the challenge was to be out of the box, and my peak doesn't quite show the full extent of how out of a box it is.  We had to treasure some special memories - didn't have to be a LO but it had to capture the essence of scrapbooking and preserving memories.  There is some lovely work in the gallery on ukscrappers so go have a look.  You can also play along with the challenges and win prizes if you go have a look in the scrapfactor forum.

What a Mess

Our challenge last week on Ukscrappers Scrapfactor was to re-scrap a photo from one of our early LOs.  I choose this lovely picture of my DS eating ministrone soup and coating himself in it at the same time.  So here is the original LO too - using DCWV Family Stack, vellum and gel pens.

For the new LO I had a go at a couple of new techniques, the 1st was for the background.  I had seen a LO with a lovely bubbley effect and remembered a paint technique we used at nursery school...must have been locked in my memory as I enjoyed it so much.  All you do is get a small shallowish dish and mix up paint,water and washing up liquid and then with a straw you blow bubbles into it so that they rise above the edge of the dish. Once happy with your bubbles you then place the paper on top and it gives you a lovely bubbley print.  I used red and yellow paint for mine.  The papers I have used for this are from Crate Papers Portrait pack, and the yellow in there is from their restoration collection.  I stitched, ruffled and layered the papers, added a piece of dictionary and cut out the definition of mess.  Most of my embellishments are stars - I used the cuttlebug set of 4 star dies for all my stars and stitched them down the middle.  The flower with the star centre is a firework flower which I found on the october afternoon blog.  I glossy accented the star in the middle.  I stitched some of the stars and added buttons and stickers too.  The alphabet is Heidi Swapp and the red is from Echo Park, For the Record.

This weeks challenge on Ukscrappers is the 3,2,1 challenge - 3 sheets of patterned paper, 2 photos and 1 piece of black cardstock.  Here is a peak at mine, head over to the gallery and look at all the beautiful creations, and you can play along too with the chance to win a prize on ukscrappers too.