It's the end of our two week mid year school holidays around here, and the time in the craft room over the holidays is always a bit erratic, and the time on the computer to blog about it even more so!
But I've grabbed my turn on the computer tonight to finally show you what I've been up to over the past couple of weeks, with pages using my last month's Counterfeit Kit and my Cocoa Vanilla "expand a collection" kit (with not much Cocoa Vanilla left!)
Let's start with a challenge, shall we?
I do like a good sketch challenge, and Stuck?! sketches is one of my regulars:
Dolphins and whales are always wonderful to watch, but ridiculously difficult to photograph! On this dolphin cruise page I put a frame around the other dolphin watching boat and the little speck in the water that is a dolphin fin!
I also completed my July Stash It Monday video for the Crafty Mavens Getaway channel, which went live a week and a half ago:
And some more pages:
A warning: the last page I am going to show you is about my son's infected toenail that he had a couple of years ago. Scrapping doesn't always have to be about the good stuff all the time, does it? But if you have a delicate stomach for such things, you might not want to scroll down to the end!
But exciting news!! The pages I'm showing you bring me to 99 pages out of my 100 page spending freeze! As you can imagine there is much rejoicing in my craft room as I come to the end of this phase, (and much thinking about what I might buy in my first purchase). I think page 100 deserves a process video, don't you? Hopefully I'll be back with that in a couple of days.
I had high hopes for finishing my spending freeze this month, starting about 5 pages on the long weekend, but then life got in the way!
I have a drawer full of photos waiting to be scrapped and it is in a woeful state! I started this month by going through an envelope of photos and making up little page kits from my June Counterfeit Kit, mostly just paper and cardstock. I did pull some more supplies as needed - this doesn't bother me at all! I see a kit as a starting point and have no problem pulling out extra stash.
This first page has a process video and is for Scrapbooking Top 50's challenge for the month:
The photo I chose to scrap isn't the most non-perfect photo - it's really just the bad lighting, but the story is definitely "real not perfect", telling about an attempt to make a pavlova with stevia instead of sugar, early on in my sugar-free days.
I had some white rub-ons in my kit, and I decided to rub them onto my background and then do my gelatos over the top. I love how that turned out!
Although I didn't quite meet all the goals for my April kit, (what with a holiday, work, illness and other projects), but I decided it was time to put it away and start again. A few bits and pieces have moved into my latest Counterfeit Kit, and I made 7 pages in total:
The bright colours in this kit were perfect for this page about Maddy's Drama Club performance, where her character was a stand-up comedian on an X-Factor-type show.
Another one from Maddy's primary school days, this time a Book Week Parade:
And a string of birthday pages for the boys:
For this page, I resurrected the method of using both sides of a sheet of patterned paper by cutting it a third of the way across, flipping one side and reattaching it, in this case by adhering a thickish offcut of cardstock at the back and a packaging strip on the front. Actually, that was one goal I think I did achieve this month, I think I used at least one packaging strip/thin strip of paper on every page!
Finally, a fun page where I was reading "Winnie The Pooh" with our pet rabbit on my lap - we all need to be exposed to the classics, don't you think?
Did you spot my DIY flair on some of those pages? I've recently uploaded a video to Youtube outlining my super-cheap and easy method, along with a couple of tips:
Two of the pages above have process videos, also - if you want a laugh, I totally recommend the Bookweek one if you haven't already watched it - Maddy and Rohan do the voice-over for me and it's very funny!
Thanks for visiting, as always I love sharing my creative process with you!
Every couple of years or so I consider joining a Scrapbooking Kit Club. I look at all the different websites, compare the style, the amount of papers, embellishments, stamps etc, then do the maths: kit plus postage(mostly international) times conversion rate. The result is always the same - I simply cannot justify the price! I actually have a bit of an idea up my sleeve I want to try once my spending freeze is over, but in the meanwhile, I've got the Counterfeit Kit Challenge to keep me distracted!
Excellent timing, because who was in my top 2 kits this time around, but Felicity Jane! This month's inspiration is their May kit, "Willow":
So pretty! How close can I get to making a similar kit? You can watch my process and find out:
After doing 80 pages on a spending freeze, I was stoked with how great this kit pulled together! With any luck, this kit plus the odd other project will see me through to the last 20 pages of my spending freeze. I can't wait to start playing!
So it's been pretty quiet around here in blog-land. In real life, it's been a lot busier! We had a week away in Melbourne, plus visiting relatives on the way. I'd barely recovered from that before I had a couple of weeks full time work, with a birthday party in the middle and a Eurovision party this weekend just gone. Of course I got a pretty bad head cold in the middle there, but soldiered on! I managed to get Rohan and Maddy to voice-over a video for me which I haven't yet shared here. If you haven't yet watched it yet, you should - it's absolutely HILARIOUS!!! (at least I hope you'll think so, I sometimes wonder how the Australian sense of humour translates to the northern hemisphere)
But wait, that's not my exciting news. Drumroll, please . . . .
The kids actually allude to it in the video above, incorrectly stating that I have joined the DT for the Counterfeit Kit Challenge. Well, that would have been awesome too, but in fact . . .
. . . that's right! I've joined the Crafty Maven Getaway Summer team!!! (Winter here, but that's OK! lol)
and I may have accidentally chosen a date earlier than was wise my first video . . . but it's done! Croaky voice and all!
For my first video I chose to do "Stash It Monday", where, you guessed it, you make a page from products deep within your stash. Actually, there are no rules about how deep within your stash you have to go, but boy, I dived in deep! Coloured brads, knitting wool and DIY flair from a counterfeit kit that would have easily been 2 years old! Basic Grey monograms that were a freebie when a store was getting rid of sharing some older stock with purchases. None of those papers were exactly purchased yesterday either!
Foot update
It occurred to me that I haven't mentioned my foot since just before my last x-ray. Good news although not the best: my foot is "healing" which means I don't have to wear the boot any more but have to be careful for quite a while, as apparently this type of fracture is "notorious" for re-breaking. Turns out being in a CAM boot for 12 weeks means your foot forgets how to walk properly, so I'll be hobbling around slowly for a few weeks to come.
March Counterfeit Kit
Well this kit was huge, and although I never expected to "kill" it thoroughly, I ended up with only 2 full sheets of paper out of 25 or so, so I'm pretty happy with that! Here's the last pages I made:
This first one started with me thinking that if I fussy-cut the flowers out of this particular sheet of paper, I would be more likely to use it, followed by the realisation that the B-side of that same paper matched my shirt in this photo from our auction day:
Next I noticed how many bits of Echo Park bits and pieces I still had in the kit, and made my next page, complete with process video:
In the video I show what I have left from the kit and mention my hope to make 2 or 3 more pages before finishing with the kit (including that one).
I knew I'd be annoyed if I didn't use this pink Basic Grey paper so I used it on this page about when Maddy and I went to see the musical, Wicked. I'd been really enjoying using the mistable butterflies (not that I've misted them yet!) and wished I could make them match the glitter thickers a bit more . . . which sent sent me on a hunt for what is possibly my oldest remaining papercrafting supply - my clear KindyGlitz! It needed a good shake and the nozzle is a little more prone to blockages, but it worked great!
This next page would have been almost entirely from the kit, with a polka-dot background paper, until I came across the rocket paper as I was preparing my April kit.
It's a page about our church's space-themed Kids Club I helped at last year. I mean, how often does a girl have a reason to make a space-themed page after all!? (I'll do the title next time I get my Silhouette out)
So then I still had a polka-dot paper with a bit of work done on the bottom, as well as the other dotted paper I had gutted the middle out of. I didn't want to put that back in my stash as I was worried about damaging it, so I finished off with these two back to school pages:
I was scrapping with (Youtube) friends again, and the black stripes in the background of this one were inspired by a video I was watching by Hannah Lemieux - you can watch it here. I really love the look of it, but I think I'll have to do it again on a one-photo page so you get more of the effect!
Spending Freeze Update
Last but not least, I've made it to half way through my 100 page spending freeze!!!! That last page was number 51!
Thanks so much for stopping by, why not take the time to leave a comment and tell me what crafty goodness you're getting up to lately!
It's the February kit from Cocoa Daisy! I wasn't sure if I would play along this month, but that was before I say this kit. The bright colours and whimsical details are perfect for so many pages.
Here is what my kit looks like:
and the video that shows my process for choosing what I did:
In other Youtube news, I've started a new series, which I've called "Ultimate Scrapbook DIY's", beginning with my absolute all time favourite money-saving DIY, fake enamel dots:
