So you'd think with a broken foot, a spending freeze until I've completed 100 pages and a fun new kit to play with (see previous post), I would have spent a lot of time in the craft room in the last 3 weeks . . .
well I kind of did, but most of it was spent in assembling flat packs and rearranging things, getting my new look craft room ready!
I'm hoping to do a room tour video, but there's a bit more fine tuning and another trip to Ikea to do first! (I'm pretty sure Murphy's Law states that the further away you live from your local Ikea, the more likely you are to make mistakes and buy the wrong stuff! Luckily there's a new Ikea in Canberra, and while this is certainly not our closest store, it is only a couple of suburbs away from my mother-in-law, who we visit multiple times a year.)
Anyway, I finally broke my new craft desk in with the current challenge from Scrapbooking Top 50, to use the quote "be happy, be bright, be you"
The words "happy" and "bright" were both in the "Free Spirit" embellishment pack, making this challenge the perfect first choice to break open my kit.
As you can probably tell, I had a lot of fun with the stamping on this page! It took a bit of experimenting working out what colours to use with the Altenew layered stamps, but I'm glad I made the effort.
Thanks for stopping by, hopefully I'll be back soon.
Well first up in the most literal sense . . . on New Years Day my brother-in-law was teaching me how to slackline. I was looking pretty good if I do say so myself . . .
. . . until the moment I came off on the edge of the mat and felt my foot twist under me! I've ended up with a fractured bone in my foot, and 6 weeks with a cam boot and crutches. Not the start to the New Year that I imagined!
But in lighter news I've managed to edit and upload my third video to Youtube.
The concept of the video is "Expand a Collection". I show my process for taking a relatively recent collection, Cocoa Vanilla's "Free Spirit" and pad it out into a larger kit using products from my stash.
Hopefully I show that it's a process that you could apply to any collection, not just this one.
It's the first step in my third piece of news . . .
Announcing my . . .
100 page spending freeze!
You read that right, I have made a commitment to myself to not spend any money on paper crafts until I've made at least 100 scrapbook pages!
Trust me, I have more than enough supplies to make probably twice that amount! And if you're honest with yourself, maybe you could too?
OK, so, at the end of last year I did do a stock-take of the absolute basic supplies, like adhesives, refill blades, etc. My very last craft spending was a Christmas present for my son combined with some page protectors. I don't want anything getting between me and my determination to complete this challenge!
Thanks for stopping by, and I'd love to hear about any challenges you might be setting for yourself for the New Year!
I'm pretty happy with the pages I made with my November kit. I made all the pages I had planned for Angus's album . . .
I'll often make my titles on my Silhouette, but something I haven't done for a while is give them a bit of a lift with Silhouette-brand chipboard. So I kept working on pages until I had enough titles to fill a cutting mat . . .
I still had quite a bit of paper left over, so then I pulled a few more photos, this time from Rohan's albums . . .
I still have journaling and dates to add on most of the pages, and the last few for Rohan still need their titles, but I've done enough to pack the scraps of the kit away . . .
That's because I have some exciting plans on the horizon for the New Year, including a big spending freeze challenge for myself, starting with an "Expand a Collection" kit I've made, with a video here and on Youtube coming soon to show you how I've done it!
So my oldest son, Rohan, completed his last HSC exam, turned 18 and did his first shift at Macca's, all in just over a week. That's a pretty big week!
Currently his plan for next year is to take a gap year before starting Uni the year after, work at Maccas, make art videos and become a Youtube superstar, as you do.
Being the super-proud Mum that I am, here's his channel, MadeByRohan.
At about the same time that he and my husband were making a camera rig for his desk, I bought a huge huge huge stack of patterned papers (all on special of course) so I thought, why not start my own Youtube channel and make my own videos, starting with one on how I sort my patterned papers. So I did! And here it is:
(Warning: it's literally me rambling on about papers for nearly 15 minutes, so if that sounds boring to you, I won't be offended if you don't watch it!! Also I didn't check the focus before I started, so it isn't great. Sad face.)
My son said to me, Mum, your channel is called "Spend Less Craft More" and one of the first words you use is "splurge". And it's true, I have let my stash build up a scary amount since starting this blog however many years ago, so I have a spending freeze challenge in mind for myself in the new year.
This year, my blog has read like one long series of failed attempts to get back into the craft room. Which it kind of has been. Mind you I still stand by the list of tips I posted here and here
It's been more of a case that I haven't been in the right head-space for crafting.
What's helped me this time (as well as a tip I shared earlier - gather some supplies together into a kit!) is my tip number 5: Choose some low-pressure photos to scrap
and tip number 6: scrap in a way that you're comfortable with, rather than trying out something new and daunting
This month's Counterfeit Kit, which I've called "Dinosaur Tales" has a bright, sunny vibe that leans towards little boy photos, so my first stop was Angus' album, and I've pulled a number of photos from 2008 and 2009. None of them have a particularly memorable story to go with them, but they're memories I'd rather scrap than not.
It turns out that even when I'm flush with supplies, I still don't find
it very easy to cut into brand new sheets of paper, so I chose one or two sheets to match each photo/set of photos, planning to add off-cuts from other sheets as I make them or from my stash as required.
But enough chit-chat, let's see those pages!
There's that dinosaur paper! (And would you laugh if I told you that I gutted the centre of both the dinosaur and blue papers before adhering them down?)
I've cut a sheet of circles from vellum and added them to the kit, I love how they make a little home for the buttons and wood veneers.
Thanks for visiting, and I hope you'll take the time to say hello and share with me your tips or stories of how you like to get back to the craft room!
I recently had a bit of a splurge on discount papers at one of my favourite online stores. Before I'd even opened the box or seen the inspiration kit for this month, I decided I wanted to make a Counterfeit Kit using these new papers. Want to see how I did it?
Here's this month's inspiration kit, "City Park" by Cocoa Daisy:
The very top paper in my parcel was a cute dinosaur print from Echo Park "Little Man" and it struck me as being a similar style of whimsical print to the trees and acorns in the Cocoa Daisy kit. Unsurprisingly, it became the starting point of my November kit . . .
Dinosaur Tales
As you can see, I've taken the kit from an autumn theme to more of a boy/summer theme. There's plenty of Echo Park here, as well as "Little Man" there's "Anything Goes", "We are Family", "I Love Sunshine" and "Sweet Summertime". Then there's a sprinkling of "Shine" from Maggie Holmes, and some token October Afternoon "Travel Girl", Simple Stories "I Am", and "Memorandum" and "Cedar Lane" both from Pink Paislee.
When it came to alphabets, I had the sticker sheet from "Little Man", so that was an obvious choice, and I've added a set of black Thickers. The box of wooden icons (from Kmart of all places!) has a similarly whimsical feel, and using some of them might help me work out how to store the rest!
Wanting to keep the embellishments simple, I've added some washi and bakers twine . . .
and I plan to leave my boxes of buttons, brads and eyelets out on the desk, in the hope that I use some of those too!
