February Scrap Our Stash challenge.

Hi, I'm back and today I'm playing with the February Scrap Our Stash tic-tac-toe challenge:

I've used the diagonal line, doily, hearts and tag.

I'm once again using my Cocoa Vanilla "Free Spirit" expanded kit with photos from the shoot taken at my parent's 50th Wedding Anniversary.  The only things on this page from the original Cocoa Vanilla collection are the journalling box from the cut-apart sheet and some of the die-cuts.  I love how the background sheet brightens up the page.
  

If you're interested in seeing how I mixed the "Free Spirit" collection in with some older supplies to make this kit, here's the video again:

Celebrating 50 years!

I'm back with a page I made using this month's challenge from "Scrap Our Stash".

The requirement this month is to use the following sketch . . .

and use a stash item for each of the letters of the word GOALS.

My items:
G - Gold Glitter paper
O - Orange paper and butterfly
A - arrow
L - lace
S - Spray mist.

Photos taken on the day of my parents 50th wedding anniversary.  Congratulations, guys!

Play With Me

Why hello there! Today I'm playing along with Scrap Our Stash, using this lovely sketch:

I found some photos of our dog Hamish, from when he was a puppy, and they fit the sketch perfectly!

I really enjoyed making this page, but I almost forgot the "stash" element of the challenge, which was to use some metal - and that was nearly my undoing. I couldn't find anything in my small metal stash that would go with the gold elements I had already included on my page, and I was loath to take them off.  Eventually though, I settled on the yellow star paper clip, and it turned out to be the perfect finishing touch!

Scraptoberfest

Many times on this blog in the past I've talked about how I love sketch and colour challenges as a way of focussing on using my stash instead of spending money building up my stash. (like here) I've proven this to be true over the last month as I've forced encouraged myself to partake in a number of challenges, instead of spending all my spare time on Youtube, which invariably leads to me looking for particular supplies on my favourite internet Scrapbooking sites.
But I've got another reason to add why I love these challenges so much . . . they can really help when your creativity is low.  A sketch is the perfect solution when you feel like you've gone to your "go to" designs to death, and a colour challenge is a great help when you can't see past the fact that your daughter is wearing (yet again!!!) pink, and you don't want your page to mimic the Barbie isle at Kmart.

This month, I've come across not just a sketch AND a colour challenge, but a chance to participate in 4 challenges AT ONCE!!! If you're visiting from any of the sites involved in Scraptoberfest, you know about this already, but if not, here's all the challenges:

The Memory Nest has this sketch:

My Scraps and More has this colour palette:

Scrap our Stash asks us to use 2 different types of washi tape.

And finally, Challenge YOUrself asks us to "include yourself in the photo".

The option is to do any or all of these challenges individually, but I took the combined option of all 4!
Here it is . . .

I had a photo of myself ready to scrap (tick!), with neutral-enough colours that I could use the colour palette (tick!).  By using two of the three photos from the morning, I was able to easily use the sketch (tick!) and the royal blue and pink washi tapes complete the final challenge (tick, tick, tick, tick!)

 I decided to scrap the final photo from the morning separately, as I had a story I wanted to document but didn't have a specific photo to go with it . . .

. . . about how I worked my childcare magic on my niece that weekend, who's always been really shy with us.  To the amusement of all my family, she now loves her "Uncle Julie".

I'm still working with my September Counterfeit Kit, and both pages use those "Best of" Crate Paper papers, which makes me very happy!

Thanks for stopping by, and don't forget to let me know you've stopped by.  I'd love to hear what your favourite type of challenge is!

September "Stuck?!" sketches and "Scrap Our Stash" page.

This month, my first page using my September Counterfeit Kit is for the combined challenge from "Stuck!?" sketches and "Scrap Our Stash".

Here's the sketch:

and the "Scrap Our Stash" Challenge:

And here's my page:

The items from my stash to fulfil the "Scrap Our Stash" criteria were:

• L- label stickers
• A - alphabet stickers
• Y - yellow (paper and frame)
• E - epoxy stickers (on faux flair)
• R - rub-ons
• S - stamps (faux flair)

I've got some old rub-ons I'm trying to use, and on this page I used white rub-ons on white cardstock, then applied gelatos using the packaging/"smooshing" technique that's all over Youtube at the moment.

Thanks for stopping by!

A win!

When I was checking my inbox the other day and there was an email with the heading "you won", my first thought was that it was some sort of spam mail.  But no!  Turns out Tammy had chosen my layout "Facing 40"  as her favourite "pagerize" at Scrap our Stash!  I couldn't be more excited! This means that I got to choose the next month's pagerize challenge!  I immediately thought of this page I did last year about Hamish.  I love the fun stamps, the hidden journalling, and how the gold-embossing, the colour purple and the bit of bling all come together to make a layout that is "regal" but fun.

If you want to play along too, here is where you go.

the journalling tag

Three fun challenges

Here is the first page I want to share with you: it came together really quickly the other night after Masterchef.  I already had the photo and the journalling ready to go, and decided that the Pick of the Week (July, week 2) was the look I was after.  And I decided that the Aunt Gertie's Garden papers strewn across my desk would work really well!  This page is almost 100%Aunt Gertie - papers, rub-ons and ribbon.  And yes, they are off-cuts this time.  In fact the brown circle you can see is actually the outside of the circle from the "Hannah" layout on my last post! (Reverse side)




And now, a question for you: how do you take decent photos of a 12 year old boy who has braces and is very sensitive about his looks?
Answer: I have no idea, but in the meantime, download his photos from his Facebook page!  As a basis for this page I used a fun sketch idea, also from Scrapbook Challenges (SS11 by Natalie Jane)  And I do mean fun! Note to self: must use stamps on layouts more often!

The stamps are all really different, but they work together simply by being all stamped in the same ink. The order I constructed this page was: paper circles and title stuck down first, photos roughly positioned.  Then large collage stamp.  Arrow stamp next, to link journalling to photos.  After that, it was just a matter of stamping largest image to smallest, then adhering journalling dots and strips over the top.
I was quite apprehensive showing this page to Rohan - he didn't even know I had printed the photos out!  His response? "Put that on the internet!"
wow! You don't get much higher praise than that!

And finally, my version of the Scrap our Stash pagerize challenge, where we were challenged to use memorabilia on a page.  I have been saving clothing labels for a while, so I used a whole bunch of them peeking out from under this photo of me.  I think I was originally planning some indepth reflective journalling on this page about "facing 40", but in the end I quickly jotted down some things that came to me quickly, and fit them around the page.  For example, "I'd rather do craft than housework".  Sound familiar, anyone?
On a construction note, some of the labels are quite thick.

I ended up attaching the photo using a couple of generous strips of foam mounting tape in the middle, enabling me to put it down first, then tuck the labels behind, one by one.

A new place to play

Wow, the blog hop was so much fun, but so many blogs to look at it was too hard to really have a good look at all of them.  I did come across a few new challenge sites (not that my TAFE course will thank me, it's easy enough getting distracted from study already!) I am particularly excited about one site called "Scrap our Stash"  .  Sounds like my kind of people!  I have already completed a "pagerise" challenge;  the winner of the last challenge posts a layout of their own for you to "scraplift" in any way you choose. 
For me, this was another chance to do a bit of a budget page.  It was made using only one sheet of patterned paper, offcuts from two shades of cardstock, some very old letter tiles, machine stitching, stamps, sizzix dies and punches.  The green border strip is the reverse of the page.  I then decided  that I could cut the title from the background as well, so had to cut some more away.  This big hole is of course covered by the strip of photos!