King For A Day

At last I've been crafting again! And here are some details from the light-hearted page I made this afternoon, showing my dear Hubby after he had finished the Brighton Marathon last month. I used a sketch from The Scrappiest for my inspiration.

You can see the 3D elements of the flags and the crown, and the brown circle tag beneath the main photo. This pulls out to reveal a second photo, shown below.

The title 'King For A Day' is a bit of fun because Hubby's surname is King, and it seemed appropriate for the layout.

Firstly, I cut out the background shape from plain blue card and then used a Versamark pad to create a watermark effect with the Hero Arts clocks stamp. I also stamped onto white card the crown, the Papermania alphabet title and the clocks once again. Then I distressed everything with Tim Holtz distress inks. The journaling card is from My Mind's Eye and the orange card that I used for the flags is from my box of scraps.

At the end of the event, the King decreed that he will enter both the London Marathon and the Brighton one next year. They will be just one week apart in 2011.

Personally, I think the King is mad!

Happiness

I've made this page using a sketch on Pencil Lines as my starting point. As you know I usually make layouts with two or more photos but this sketch called for just one. I found a shot of Karen aged 6, taken in our back garden. She has always loved dressing up and even today she has her own inimitable sense of style.

For this page I brought out my somewhat neglected Cuttlebug. I used a flower die to create tone-on-tone white cardstock, leaving just one flower falling over the edge of the cut shape. Then I used a Sizzix Alphabet for the title and embossed the letters with a dot embossing folder. I also used the stamp dye and love embossing folder that came with the machine and tucked this square behind the photo for added layers. The papers are K&Co, the journalling spots are My Mind's Eye, and the ribbon is from American Crafts.

I think this tone-on-tone technique gives an added dimension to any layout but it is very time-consuming to do. Luckily, today, I had 4 hours to myself. Plenty of time to play!

Origami Flower Tutorial

I'm having problems uploading to Blogger so my apologies for the quality of my photos today. 

Here's what I have been playing with this afternoon. It's the start of a layout and you might have noticed the paper circles cut from My Mind's Eye papers. There are eight of them and I'll show you how I turned them into an origami flower. I cannot claim this to be my technique. I found it a long time ago and have never attempted it before, but I'm happy with the result, so here goes....

For each circle you need to fold it in half and then again so that it is quartered. The pattern you want to see the most of when completed should be on the outside. (My paper though is only patterned one side).

Fold back two edges as shown, from one fold line to another.

Fold the circle inwards so that the folds you have just made are inside.

Now fold up the bottom edge to the top. Turn the paper over and do the same for the other side to form this shape.

Open out to form this petal shape. Keep doing this to all eight circles.

Finally, the eight petal shapes can be adhered to a scrap piece of card or directly onto your project in the shape of a flower, as below.

Now you can make a centre for the flower from paper, a button, or small punched flower and it is completed.

Here then is my finished layout using the origami flower and some American Crafts ribbon. I wrote the words on my computer and printed directly onto the paper....

So, why not give it a go? I hope I've explained it so that it looks as easy as it really is. If I can do it, anyone can!

Playing With Paper

I've been playing with paper this morning and enjoying myself. I've made a layout for Your Scrapbook Stash using their Friday Sketch and a mixture of My Mind's Eye and Hot Off The Press papers.

• I've stamped letters onto paper and cut them out
• I've cut rounds of paper, distressed and inked them, stacked them up
• I've stamped journaling blocks and cut those out too

• I've torn a paper border and punched another
• Finally I've cut a circle of paper using my magnetic circle cutter from We Are Memory Keepers (I had to use it sometime!). Great fun and a light-hearted page featuring my daughter and her boyfriend.

Common Ground

If you live in a household with only one male, you'll know where I'm coming from when I say, Hubby's feeling lonely. He's never had a son to play football with, although the girls would kick a ball around with him when they were younger. He's never had to watch football practice in the pouring rain or had a kindred male to watch sports on TV with. Not that he has ever complained. He loves his daughters to bits!

But since the girls have left home he has no-one to meet from school, ferry around in the car, wind-up constantly or tease about their outfits. The girls never were much into football or rugby, neither were they particularly keen to sit and watch gymnastics or the Winter Olympics, but they obliged to keep Hubby happy.

Now he has only me to tell how well or badly his favourite team, The Arsenal, are doing. I'm the one who hears who's injured and out of the match, how near to relegation Brighton are this season, and his commentaries on the Six Nations Rugby, most of it going in one ear and out the other!

I do feel sorry for him and try to appear interested and knowledgeable, but I draw the line at standing for the teams' National Anthems when I'm crafting in the Lounge!

So, when I came across an old photo this week I knew just what I wanted to say on the layout.

The photo is of Hubby and our eldest daughter, taken in 1993 when he was dressed to take part in the London Marathon. Jenni is looking a bit scared and unsure of him as he's wearing a brightly-coloured clown suit and white make-up.

I used My Mind's Eye and K&Co papers, MarthaStewart punches and Prima flowers to make the layout. The journaling tells why Hubby's wearing the costume and how Jenni (in 1993) doesn't know yet that she too will take up running and join a running club.

They do have common ground after all.

A Confession and White Space

Firstly, I have a confession to make. I've failed on my pledge not to buy more Stash this year. I couldn't resist the Martha Stewart punches on QVC the other week and bought one set. So, that out of the way, here's my layout for this week's challenge on Scrap Weekly in 2010  The challenge is to use lots of 'white space' on a page. The photo's not that brilliant due to the poor light in the house. It has been raining non-stop all day here in Sussex and a few local areas have flooding.

I've said before that I'm not a fan of 'white space'.  I tend to use more than one photo and lots of papers or embellishments to fill a 12x12 layout. However, I'm fairly happy with this attempt.

White space doesn't have to be white but I've taken the challenge quite literally and used white cardstock for the background. I used My Mind's Eye 'Pretty Please' papers, my new punches and Papermania alphabet stamps, with some doodling and journaling in black ink.

These photos of Summer 1999 make me long for warmer weather and an end to the rain and snow!

Catching Up

I'm playing catch up with pages for my 52 in 10 album. I've been so busy at work  this past week that I've not had any crafting time. Today I set up the table, pulled out loads of stash from my cupboards and set to work. Happy times ensued for a couple of hours.

This first page is last week's prompt about what traits you've inherited from your family.

Do you look like a family member for example.

Well, I definitely look like my mother. I see her image in the mirror whenever I look. Be that good or bad, it's the way things are. But character-wise I'm more like my father. He is patience personified. I can rarely remember him getting angry when I was a child. He also loves photography and I take after him with that. Finally, he is artistic and creative (as previous posts have shown) and my sister has inherited that from him, but I believe that is where I also get my love of crafting from.

For this page I used the packaging showing bits of each paper in the My Mind's Eye pack and cut it into strips. Then I cut a pelmet-style strip for the top of the page from one of the papers and hand-wrote the journaling. The layout template was provided by Karen at '52 in 10' for this week's prompt but I used it on last week's page instead.

Onto this week's prompt. Week 7 (can you believe 6 weeks of 2010 have gone by already?) is about Family Traditions. I didn't want to make a Christmas tradition page in February so I thought about any others we might have. There are very few I could think of, but today being Valentine's Day, there is one that ought to be written about I guess.

Hubby and I have our own unspoken Valentine Tradition.

He always buys me roses and perhaps some chocolates or perfume. I always make him a handmade Valentine card and buy him a present that is what he needs but doesn't want to buy for himself. It could be anything at all - within budget of course! - and is always a surprise. This year was no exception!

Now, green and pink would not be a colour combination I would readily choose, but the green pattern appears on the next page in my album. Don't they say 'Need is the Mother of Invention' or something like that?
So a photo of this year's handmade Valentine card appears on the layout, along with more hearts and some pink ribbon!
And this year's gift to Hubby is named on the back of the heart tucked under the photo.........but I'll keep that a secret between him and me for now.

52 in 10; Prompt 5

This week's prompt for 52 in 10 is Family. I'm half-regretting (if there's such a word!) my choice of 12x6 format for my album as the size of page doesn't give me enough room to explore each Prompt in detail. To get around that choice today I used two pages, making a 12x12 layout, but split into two halves to fit in the album.

I used Bo Bunny and My Mind's Eye papers along with green Provo Craft word stickers (which don't show up very well on the photo). There are journaling tags under the girls' photos describing each of their characters. As I've said before, they are so different in appearance and character too. Jenni is chatty, bubbly and The Scrapbooker. Karen is quirky, creative and The Photographer.
I sometimes wonder how people choose their childrens' names. How did you choose yours? I was going to be Andrew but that was hastily changed to Ann when the expected boy turned out to be me!
I chose Jennifer's first name because I have always liked it and Hubby was tasked with choosing her middle name. It seems that the oldest girl in his family is always called Ruth (I think I was taken for a ride with that tale!) so Ruth she is. But, for our second child, roles were reversed and Hubby got to choose the first name. Never give a man an important job, I say! I had Elizabeth ready weeks beforehand for the middle name- we knew she was a girl -  but she remained nameless for three days, poor thing, because Hubby couldn't decide!!
Eventually she was named after Karen Carpenter because he liked her singing voice. That's the honest truth.
(I've just Googled Karen Carpenter and discovered her middle name was Anne - now there's a coincidence!)
Perhaps I should have devoted the 'Family' page to how our family got their names?!

Getting Ahead

I often try to get ahead with card-making. I've made Christmas cards in July, sometimes straight after Christmas! And I just hate to be caught out and have to make a card in a hurry for someone's birthday. I need time to come up with an idea that's personal to the recipient or in a style they will appreciate.

So what's next on my calendar for getting ahead? Valentine's Day of course!

Am I really going to be sending two Valentine's cards this year?? Does Hubby know about this? No and no.

One card is for me to give to Hubby and the other is for my eldest daughter to give to her boyfriend.

So which one's for Hubby? Would you believe the frilly one? I know no other man who likes flowers and frills as much as my dear husband. He often gives me a bunch of flowers and then proceeds to arrange them in a vase and centre them on the table - you see he's actually buying them for himself but pretends they're for me.

I stamped the card background myself with Tim Holtz distress inks (Faded Lipstick and Shabby Shutters)and a small heart stamp, then sprayed with two colours of Glimmer Mists to get a sparkly finish, which doesn't show very well on the photo. The large hearts are cut from My Mind's Eye paper and backed with cream card. The sentiment stamp is from Graphicus and I also used some American Crafts ribbon.

I just love the effects you can create with the new punches from Martha Stewart, but with my self-imposed ban on buying new stash, I had to dig out my Fiskars border punch instead to make the frilly border.

Maybe I should have made three Valentine cards as my younger daughter has a new boyfriend? Hmmm, maybe not. Something this pink and girlie would probably frighten him off!

52 in 10....Late Starter

I admit I'm a little late in posting these photos but I do have an excuse. I've had a bad week with no buses running here to get me to and from work, so I've had to sleep over at the hospital twice more this week. I am fed up with the snow and fed up with sleeping on a trolley! But it looks as if the thaw might begin this coming week - fingers crossed. End of whinge!
I'm taking part in 52 in 10 as I have pledged to take part in more Challenges this year. Here is my first week's entry. I decided to make a mini album (although after 52 weeks it won't be all that mini!) and chose a new size of page for me - 12x6. The first week's prompt was to review the past 10 years. My journaling lists the main things that have happened over the past 10 years, that I can remember. I never think of things in terms of decades though and I needed to think hard about events that had happened. And the start of a New Year is nothing special to me either, it's just another year, but I saw this challenge as an opportunity to keep me scrapping throughout 2010!

Above is week 2 where I had to think of the year ahead and what I want to achieve. I have listed my Crafty Goals For 2010 and tucked them behind my photo. The sharp-eyed among you have probably spotted that this is the reverse side of Week 1 as the punched holes are on the right-hand side this time. I was challenged to include stitching on the layout, but with Week 1 already completed, and not wanting to make holes through the paper, I drew faux stitching instead.

For the mini album itself, I was limited by my Crafty Goal number 2 of not spending on Stash this year, so had to use what I already had. I chose papers by Bo Bunny and My Mind's Eye and cut them in half for the 12x6 format, punched the holes and used book rings to keep it all together. It's easy to disassemble every week when I need to make another entry, and I can also swap the pages around at the moment if I prefer to use a different pattern for each weekly prompt.

Finding the time to craft with a full-time job is never easy, especially when I have to get everything out of the cupboards and put it away again the same day, but having made a start on this Challenge, I'm hoping to see it through to the end of 2010.