Paper flowers

This week's challenge at Let's Scrap was to create a page using paper flowers.  Andrea, the DT member who set the challenge posted a great tutorial on what she calls "punch and scrunch" flowers on her website, which you can jump over to here. 
I don't have a scallop punch like Andrea does, so I had a go with the flower punches that I have.  The shape and size of my flowers meant I probably couldn't scrunch quite as much as she did, but I'm pretty happy with the results, which I used on this page showcasing Maddy's ballet photos from the end of last year. 

So you think you can scrap

I signed up to the "so you think you can scrap" challenge at colorful creations, which started this week.  It basically consists of a series of weekly challenges which have to be finished by the due date.  When you miss a challenge, you're out, and it will keep going until there is one scrapper left! 

 I had no idea what to expect, but luckily, the first challenge was pretty easy: make a page with two DIY embellishments.  So this is it, this photo of Rohan dressing up as a pirate for a birthday party.  My DIY elements are the eye patch and the pirate flag, (made by printing out an image found on a google search, distressing and adding a skewer as the flag pole).

spring cleaning

As I mentioned in my last post, this week I am doing a bit of "spring cleaning" ie, finishing off some half-done pages that have been lying around.  Here is a page I think any mother of boys can probably relate to, "brothers can be friends, (can't they?).  It feels like they do nothing but fight, but then sometimes when you're out, this magical thing happens - they forget that they are mortal enemies and have a great time together! As I say in my journalling, hopefully we won't always need a north Queensland stream and 10x optical zoom to prove to them that they can be friends!

It's funny how some photos you grab and scrap straight away and others sit around for a lot longer.  This next lot of photos is from "graduation" day from a dog training course I did last year.  first they sat around because I realized I wanted to print out some of the trainer's photos, so I waited for them.  Then, I think the problem was I had too many photos.  Finally, I had a bit of a "eureka" moment, when I thought to myself, who said I only had to do one page!  So even though all the photos are from the one day, I divided them into a page about the training course itself and another about the graduation day.  Finally, they sat around waiting for me to do the journalling tags, which I finished tonight.
I linked the two layouts by using the same two dog-themed sheets of patterned paper (I think they might be from Max and Whiskers by Basic Grey) in the same way.  I used the striped paper as a photo mat on the left hand side (sewed around three sides to make a pocket for my journalling) and a pawprint strip on the right hand side to break up the photos. I cut out  framed dogs from the other sheet of paper to make cute embellishments and mounted them on foam mounting tape.

 For the background, I used cardstock in a similar tone of the same texture, and used the same rub-ons for the titles. 

The blue page about the graduation was the one I did first, so I had to get a bit more creative for the second one.  Here, you can see I didn't have one continuous strip of paper to use, so I used two different strips, and hid the gap later with a puppy embellishment.

 Unfortunately, the framed pictures on the patterned paper overlapped quite a bit, so when it came to using this big picture, I really had to get creative!  I'm pretty pleased with the finished result - if you don't look too close, you can hardly even tell!

The blog about the page about the blog

This week I am hoping to focus on finishing off a few almost-done pages I have waiting for some journalling or some finishing touches.  Here is the first of two pages I have been planning for a while about my blog and the whole "spend less craft more" project.
It was important to me that this page contain a range of little bits of embellishments, different ribbons, flowers, buttons and brads.  The title stickers are Basic Grey Fusion, the very first Basic Grey set I ever bought.  I needed to use both colours off the sticker sheet and the negative of a few of the letters, and that seemed appropriate to the theme as well.
If you double click on the photo to enlarge it, you should be able to read my journalling more easily, especially where I have stamped around some of the words on the "frequency grid" and added some hand-written journalling.
Hmmm  . . . . maybe I could take a photo of this blog post, and scrapbook about that, and call it "the page about the blog about the page about the blog", and then . . .

The festival of Dad(s)

I didn't have the most productive week this week, study-wise, which translated into not doing much craft. However, there were a few cards that I was determined to get done!  Robert's birthday is the 3rd of September, which means, of course, that it is right on top of Fathers Day.  This year, his birthday is today, Saturday, and Fathers Day is Sunday.  A few days ago, he referred to this weekend as "The Festival of Dad", which I liked, and used as the basis of this his card.

 Next, the cards for the grandfathers.  Our parents don't live nearby so I try to get a card in the mail each year.  This year, I thought I would give ColourQ a go and see what this week's colour scheme had to offer.  Turns out, they are celebrating their 100th challenge, which this week was a sketch, and you could pick any colour scheme you like to accompany it.
This is the card I made for my dad, based on the sketch plus challenge #25

And this is the card for my father-in-law, John, using #85

two pet pages

 On top of my list of things to try this week were a few sketches and ideas involving one 4x6 portrait photo on a page.  So it was back to the archives, and I found photos of Angus and Maddy with their guinea pigs when they first got them .  no problems there, except that both of these pets have now passed on.  A bit weird to be scrapbooking them now, but once they are chronologically in the album, they will have an appropriate place in my kid's memories of their childhood.
First up, I did this page with Angus and Kayla based on the January 4x6 photo love tutorial.  When I was choosing colours, I noticed that this week's awesome Colour Q challenge would work really well.  Love that!

In fact, there's lots I love about both these pages, the primary embellishments were scrap papers, buttons and machine stitching.  Great for the budget, and great for kids pages.

 The page with Maddy and Hannah is inspired by week 2 POTW from Scrapbook Challenges.  It was a weird moment when Maddy wandered in as I was finishing this page.  First because, as previously mentioned, Hannah is no longer with us, which makes her a bit sad, second because it's a very pink page, and she's not a pink girl anymore, and third, because she is wearing a shirt with cats on it, and she is very much a dog girl now.  but like I said, chronologically, it makes sense!

Does anyone remember these Making Memories dot letter stickers?  When I was first starting out in scrapbooking, they were on my "must have" list, I think because so many projects in magazines used them.  By the time I bought them though, I didn't actually use them that much.  Being me, I still haven't thrown them away, but I tend to cut off the lumpiest bits of the dots before I use them!

7 photos on one page with an accordian album.

Yesterday,  I put this page together using a technique I found at 2 peas in a bucket, in one of their free video tutorials,

July's 4x6 photo love by Shimelle
Now I know what you're thinking, if you've been reading my blog.  Didn't I bag these videos only a couple of weeks ago as being full of advertising?  Well yes I did.  It was kind of like going camping for a long time and not watching any TV, and then suddenly watching TV again and being overwhelmed by the ads.Then, in a surprisingly short amount of time, you hardly notice them anymore.  Now I tend to just ignore the fact that they are using beautiful new products and try to focus on the techniques they are demonstrating.  And sometimes I have a little giggle, like when they say things like, "I tend to use as many stickers as I want on the one page and then throw the rest away".  Easy to say when you are being paid to advertise products, but some of the rest of us have to keep more of an eye on the bottom dollar.

 Anyway, back to the page.  the 4x6 photo love series has a video each month, each one focusing on a different number of 4x6 photos on a page.  January had one photo, February two, and so on which brings us to seven photos in July.

When I saw this technique demonstrated, I thought it would be great for those kinds of photos you take, you know the ones, that aren't that great, but they still make up an important family memory.  these photos definitely fall into that category.  They come from a trip to Jenolan Caves two years ago, a spectacular series of limestone caves.  You know that your photos aren't going to look anywhere near as good as the real thing, but you can't hep but take lots of photos anyway!  And that's what I journalled l about, as emphasized in my subtitle, pictures can't do it justice..
In terms of product, the accordion album uses 2 sheets of 12" cardstock, as in 2 strips slightly bigger than a 6" photo, then a mat for the photo on the right.  To minimize waste, I used the same cardstock to make the two strips with my border punch. Other than that, the patterned paper is offcuts of two different double-sided papers that I bought at the end of last year.  Then the title is sizzixed with a scrap of shiny cardstock and a corner flourish stamp.  Plus the subtitle used my brand new tiny alpha stamps! How cool is that!