Mothers Day Cards

Second time lucky, my mothers day cards are done!

My starting point is one of my favourites, the monthly challenge from Scrapbook Boutique:

 I love pink and green together (and purple with green for that matter), I think the green means it still looks sweet without being too overwhelmingly girly.

And speaking of all things sweet but not overwhelmingly girly, I have a special guest to introduce to you before you see my cards:

Here's Maddy, my "stylist".  She had so much fun on this photo shoot she has made me promise to let her style all my cards in future!  So any magazine editors out there, bookmark this page and come back in about ten years, by then she will have had plenty of practice!

No prizes for guessing what that iced butterfly biscuit reminded me of!

I am also entering this card into the Simon Says Stamp anything goes challenge.

A funny thing happened on the way to making my Mothers Day cards . . .

The other day, I sat down to make my mothers day cards, but it just wasn't happening for me.  I came and went a few times, prowling the house trying to be constructive in between.  But then it hit me what the problem was . . . that old mojo-killer, the messy desk, had struck again! 
So I tidied up my desk, putting away every stray button, flower and scap of paper, even the tools I knew I would get out again immediately. 
And it worked like a charm.  No sooner had I pronounced the desk "clean", I was ready to start creating . . . a completely different project!
In the cleaning up process, I had stumbled across some photos that had missed the marathon putting-photos and finished scrapbook pages-in-albums session, and it struck me that they would work well with the Scrapbook Supplies Online sketch for this month:

and the colours from this gorgeous inspiration board from Jay Gee's Nook:

For the second time  in a row, I have used both sides of a single sheet of paper, this time with a much larger cardstock mat in between.  Such a great way to match colours, not to mention great value for money!

Thanks for stopping by, hope we all have a weekend as beautiful as the one in those pictures!

I managed one more challenge from Shimelle's weekend challenge last weekend . . . . challenge one

When you're surrounded by males and a not-particularly-girly girl, the opportunity to use a hot pink background like this one doesn't come around very often, but this was such a fun, happy page, I decided to give it a go!

Here's my page, it's a "this is why I scrapbook" kind of theme.  (It's very overcast right now, so I'll come back and add some better pictures tomorrow!)

This is totally my favourite page of the moment, so much so that I'm going to write a list of all the things I like about it:

• While there's no doubt this is a "scraplift" I feel like it's not a blatant copy.  
• The B-side of this pink paper is a very fine black and white chevron that I wanted to use to matt my photo.  So I cut the middle out the page, added a second matt in black, and sewed the lot back together!
• There is a lot of different things going on on this page, but I think I managed to pull it off without distracting too much from the photo and the message (I hope!)
• I used my go-to design principle, the visual triangle, but didn't use exactly the same items in each cluster like I would normally do.  Each cluster has a vellum butterfly, some kraft, blue and green, but the actual items vary.
• I love how this page mixes items that are new, quite new and much older, without feeling at all dated.
• It also mixes some tried-and-true favourites (like the vellum butterflies) with some less-used and never used items (like the stamps on the tickets)
• And finally, I love how, even though this is a fairly busy page for me, it's still a very budget-friendly one!   

Scrapbooking one event multiple times #3.

And finally, Maddy's page.

For challenge 8, Shimelle suggests we use a stamp (or set of stamps) we "should use more often".

Where to start.  Many stamps come to mind when I think of stamps I "should use more often".  And I'm quite sure there are plenty more that haven't come to mind that could also see a bit of use.  But let me tell you the particular story of the stamp set I did use on this page . . .

There was no one single purchase that created the need for "craft more, spend less", rather a series of many, many purchases, but there is one which really was the final straw, and that the chain of events which led to me owning  this Kaisercraft "doodled flowers" set.  Back in 2010, Rohan was showing some interest in animation, and I went to Eckersleys looking for animation supplies for his birthday present.  They didn't really have what I was looking for, but the sales assistant did get me very excited about a set of Inktense pencils, which I spent way too much money on.  Of course, before his birthday came around, I had decided I definitely shouldn't give them to him for his birthday, but I loved them so much I ended up keeping them for myself.

To justify their existence, I went looking for something new to colour in, and that's when I bought these stamps.  To date, I have used the pencils (a few times) and the stamps (a few times), but neither have earnt their keep yet, and I'm pretty sure they are yet to be used together!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Craziness!!!!!!!!!!!!

Scrapbooking one event multiple times #2

Next up is Angus's page.  Which challenge I was doing for this one was a bit of a coin toss, as it could just as easily fit into Challenge 9, take your pick, where you are allowed to "reopen" any old challenge you like.  This could have fit into the Glitter Girl challenge to use up your scraps, or the one to DIY your own embellishments. But yes, I have done both of those previously, so decided to put it under Challenge 2: Mixing papers, the idea being to use 3 or more paper collections. 

Now I promise I've done this, but as I used mainly scraps (except for the yellow mat, which I almost used once before, but only got as far as cutting the branding strip off!) I didn't actually have any labels on these papers!  There's a fair bit of Basic Grey in there, definitely "Out of Print" and "Marakesh", and was there a collection called "Hopscotch" I bought maybe that one sheet of?  I'm pretty sure there's one other BG collection in there as well. There's one sheet that's Kaisercraft, couldn't tell you the collection though, and I have no idea what brand the yellow I used for the matting is.

One more to go!

Scrapbooking one event multiple times

In my house there are 4 "sets" of albums (not including the occasional themed ones): the family albums, and one for each child.  It took me a while, but I now have a bit of a system when it comes to working out how many photos to have printed out.  When a child has a birthday party, for example, I print out a full set of photos for their album, and a couple for the family album.  For a family holiday, I print out a full set for the family album, and a couple of photos highlighting the holiday from the perspective of each individual child.  and so forth.  So, there are many events which have 4 sets of photos printed out.  Lucky I don't expect to ever "catch up" on scrapbooking every single photo in my life, because who feels like scrapbooking the same event four times?

But when I was catching up on the blogs I follow after getting home from camping, I came across Shimelle's scrapbooking event, with 16 challenges to choose from!  I decided to try, just once, to scrap the same photos three times in a row!


Not long ago I did the page for the family album, here:

(Still not sure about those pinwheels, but that's beside the point)

First up is Rohan's page.  I used Challenge 10: use two photos on a bold background.

The inspiration piece is this one by Jill Sprott:

Shimelle tells the story that she originally thought the heart had been stamped multiple times, then select ones coloured in, only to find out that it was actually a transparency.

Not having either a transparency or any other bold background that worked with my photos, I went with the stamping/colouring idea, using paint on some old Making Memories (I think) foam paisley stamps, and then colouring a few with prismacolors.

See you soon with another version!

One quick starting point

Good morning crafty adventurers.
A quick post this morning before we pack up our new camper trailer and head off for a week of camping!
Once again, I used one of Shimelle's starting points for this page.  Shimelle used a stack of journalling cards, which I subbed for a couple of clothing tags on top of a scrap of patterned paper.

I came across this paper in my stash from Life Stories by My Minds Eye.  I thought the text on the page, "Things to do around the House" summed up this page about some school holiday craft as effectively as any lame title as I would have come up with! 

Maddy loves wearing her dog T-shirt. She made it all by herself, except for a little bit of help from Mum and her Silhouette to make a stencil for the writing.  Rohan also made a skateboard-themed T-shirt, but I am yet to get a photo of him wearing it, and Angus . . . well, let's just say there's still a white T-shirt lying around for him to do when the fancy strikes him!

Well, the sun is shining and it's looking like a great set-up day!  Talk to you again in a week or so!

"Ever After" inspired scrapbook page

Here's my first challenge layout for the month, for a new challenge site I've recently come across called From Screen 2 Scrap.  Here's the inspiration for April:

 The challenge is to tell your own "Cinderella story" with bonus points for using bling, and for using a fairy-tale title.  Maybe because we're coming up to twenty years of marriage this year, or maybe because I could count the number of pages I've done about our relationship one one hand, but for whatever reason, I decided to give this one a go.  Here's what I came up with:

Now, I don't know about you, but I don't believe in fairy tale happy endings that rely on the feeling of being "in love" to see them through.  I think it's the work that you put into a relationship that really makes it count.

 My first thought on where to put my journalling was to hide it behind the big butterfly, but it quickly became apparent that there wasn't going to be enough space there, so I settled for a few verses from 1 Corinthians 13 instead:

Powerful words that remind us love isn't just about how you feel, but how you act towards those you have feelings for!

Here's to happy endings, in spite of the fact that we live in real life, not in a fairytale!