Fun with ColourQ and challenge heaven "bust-ups"

I've said it before and I hope I get the chance to say it again - I love it when the weekly ColourQ challenge coincides with a scrapbook page I'm working on!

Becci's challenge this month at Challenge Heaven is "bust-ups", and that was all the incentive I needed to scrap the photos of Rohan's broken arm.  I had the photos, ready to go on the table with a green, blue, brown and white colour scheme, and then I saw this:

Perfect!  I ditched the brown for the grey and added a hint of orange. Love it!

PS. The cast came off on Tuesday.  Woo Hoo! Now we just have to survive the next 4 weeks while he's not allowed to skateboard . . . .

PPS. after publishing this post, I realized that the Challenge Heaven challenge also required some stitching, so here it is again - and yes, I do think it looks more "finished"!

February Pagemaps entry

I've been waiting for a suitable sketch to use for this photo of Hamish.  At the same time, I've been hoping to find some photos to use for this months PageMaps sketch.  When I replaced the two small photos with one 4x6, the two came together with perfect harmony!

The tags on the sketch combined with the colour of Hamish's jumper said one thing to me: Basic Grey "Fusion" tags!  Joy of joys, the tag I was thinking of was still in the stash!  I think it brings a real "dog tag" feel to the page, enhanced by stamping his name in the middle of it!

This page ended up being an explosion of "Fusion" goodness.  I pulled out all the left over bits of paper I could find, as well as the tags and letter stickers.  I love the Dr Seuss feel of the title, "No coat?  New coat!"
Hidden journalling behind the photo tells the story:

I have to tell you one more thing about the papers on this page . . . one of the offcuts I used to make the banners had been dropped on the floor and run over by my chair or something - it was looking pretty scrunched but it was so beautiful I wasn't going to throw it away!  Luckily in paper-craft land we call that "distressing" and sometimes do it on purpose! I distressed the other paper to match (not by running it over with a chair this time) and I'm very happy with the finished page!

Challenge Heaven/Scrapbook Boutique combined challenge

Don't you love it when you find a sketch challenge and a colour challenge that go together perfectly with a page you want to make?  I sure do!

Here's a page I just finished which combines the February sketch challenge from Challenge Heaven, and the colour challenge at Scrapbook Boutique.  I don't think I've missed one of these delicious cupcake challenges since I first discovered them!

  I was inspired by the pink, red and white colour scheme, as well as the scallops around the hearts.  The other obvious product this picture brings to mind is bakers twine!  Since using embroidery floss in place of bakers twine on a card, I've had the idea to twist two colours together.  Funnily enough, before I had a chance to try it out myself, a visitor posted a comment saying she had seem someone do just that! There really is nothing new under the sun, is there?  Never mind, the fact that it's not an original idea doesn't mean it's not a good one, so I tried it out.  What do you think? 

This page will be the title page for one of Maddy's albums, hence the title "M" and no journalling - and the excuse to use fun stuff like bird cages!

The Silhouette bit:
Apparently the code "CRAFT" will get you 25% off at the Silhouette online store until 22/2/12.  Sorry but I was on a different computer when I found that bit of information out, so I can't tell you where I got it from.
Anyway, wondering if there was anything I should get to take advantage of this special made me think about what shapes I had already purchased but not used.  Hence lots of fun Silhouette shapes on this page.

• The birds are from a "bird on a branch" set, (I used the "cut" function to separate the standing bird from his branch).
• I cut the scalloped circle in two different sizes, adding the "M" inside the larger one.
• I resized the birdcages down quite a lot, which meant I was worried about how close together the cut lines would be.  I countered this by using the "offset" feature, set at just 0.02, to give a bit more thickness to the bars.  If you do this, don't forget to delete the original shape and only cut the "offset" line, otherwise you really will have a lot of cute close together!

Use what you have . .

Inspiration sometimes happens in the funniest ways, doesn't it?   The other night in the shower I was pondering two things:

1. I was feeling very pleased with my collection of words I have been gathering on Pinterest, and how fabulous a great quote plus beautiful typography can be. So much scope for the imagination . . . 
2. I was pondering the bizarreness of Blogger randomly re-posting "Using your old Patterned Paper", which I had actually written and posted last year!  (I decided not to bother deleting it, a casual visitor won't notice, and any really regular visitor will be reading this and go "oh. so that's what happened").  Mainly, I was just thinking about how happy completing that scrapbook page had made me - so happy to be using supplies that had been sitting around unused.

And just like that, a new motto (and a new project!) was born:

Sometimes my life feels like a list of under-used purchases.  Of the three stamp sets used, only the butterfly set feels like I've used it quite a bit, and I'm still enjoying using it (but then seriously, who could get bored of butterflies?)
The bird comes from a Stampin' Up set which I bought on Ebay, not sure if I've ever used it before!
The flourishes are from a Fancy Pants 12" set.  I've used the alphabet from the set a bit, but some of the other stamps, not at all.

Bit I'm so happy with how they all came together on this page!  Sometimes these days I push myself to use more "product", and other days I say no! enough! and just love the simplicity.  


The colours come from this fabulous mood board at Jay Gee's Nook, and I am entering it in their monthly challenge:

I fell in love with this the minute I saw it, and knew I would be using these colours somewhere before the end of the month! 

Using your old patterned paper.

Here's a challenge that I've been thinking of setting myself for a while, to help me work through some of  that old patterned paper. . . . the ones that you're starting to wonder if they are worth holding on to. . .

Start with an old sheet of patterned paper as the starting point, alter with paint or whatever if necessary.  Then use any or all of the following:

• old supplies that are lurking in the bottom of boxes, again, the ones you're wondering if you should still own them
• supplies that you own a seemingly endless supply of (ribbon instantly springs to mind!)
• offcuts of cardstock or other patterned paper from the stash
• re-usable supplies such as stamps, machine sewing etc
• and, need I say it, nothing new!!!

Here's my first attempt:

The patterned paper was definitely old!  Very pretty, but never used.  I swiped a light layer of paint under the journalling to help it stand out more.

Unused supplies: The little flowers were bought at a $2 shop who knows when , and the packet had never been opened.
Reusable supplies: the sewing, the stamped and embossed title (my chipboard 3 was also embossed with glitter embossing powder, awesome!) and of course the hand journalling.
I'm not sure how to categorise the chipboard, it's not that old, but unlike many scrapbookers, I don't use chipboard that much, I occasionally buy it, but then worry about running out of letters so tend to not use it that much.  but anyway, it was in the stash! 

I hope to revisit this challenge again, and don't forget, you can give it a go to! 

Let's Scrap Blog Hop around the World: Dawn's card

I'm probably doing myself  real disservice here, but if you haven't been there yet, Dawn's stop at her blog Scrap My World, is definitely worth a look!  Heaps of lovely examples for the sketch she is showcasing, and such fabulous blog candy!

Now, as you know, I'm all about using the stash, so it's not too often that you'll hear me waxing lyrical over new products.  These days, I'm trying to spend my money thoughtfully, on items I'll definitely use. 

And last week I discovered the new Echo Park line, "A Boy's Life" and I just love it.  I went to the shop looking mainly for papers I could use on boy pages.  Boy, does this line fit the bill!  I bought 2 12" papers and the 6x6 pad and there is not one paper I can't see myself using at some point.  Not only are they great for men and boys of all ages, but they could easily be mixed with other colours for more feminine subject matter.  The few pages with cars and planes don't excite me so much, but who cares when the B sides are equally nice!

(The more product-savvy of you out there might have actually recognised these papers in my previous post, on the page "Sk8 Belco")

Anyhoo, here is my card based on Dawn's sketch, featuring Echo Park papers, brads and embroidery floss:

Since I first wrapped embroidery floss around a card a week or so ago, I can't seem to stop!  I don't know that it would be that cost effective to buy the stuff purely to use on your cards compared to other options (or maybe it would, I haven't bought the stuff in years!) but in terms of using what you've got, it rates an A+ with me, and the colours . . . so many choices . . .

The robot stamp is from an acrylic set from, I think, Stampendous.  We've used it heaps, and the kids have loved "building" their own robots for their friend's cards.  There is even a little robot dog and cat!  The sentiment is a combination of a "happy birthday" stamp, and the word "human" spelled out using letter stamps which came from the same set (and no, don't ask me for the manufacturer of that one!) 

I love letter stamps for their potential to say whatever you want without waste (like stickers) or unnecessary expense (like stamps with phrases that are way too specific)

Fun with Dingbats

I wonder if anyone can guess what book I have just finished reading when I say that using both the positive and the negative of a die-cut gives so much scope for the imagination?  The same could equally be said for dingbat fonts.

Were you a scrapbooker way back in the day before we learnt to love our handwriting and all our journalling was done on the computer using fancy fonts.  I'm pretty sure the enticement of being able to download free fonts off the internet was one the key factors in finally getting the internet connected at our house!  I probably downloaded about a thousand, and regularly backed them up so that I could easily take them with me when we upgraded our computer.  Clever, hey?  But did I mention that I backed them up onto floppy disks? LOL. 

It was a good thought, but by then I was tending to do most of my journalling by hand.
My interest in fonts has revived somewhat of late, however, since I've had the Silhouette.  I downloaded some different script fonts from fontspace.com recently, and it occurred to me that some fun might be had with dingbat fonts.  On that one site alone, a search for the word "ding" comes up with 1,710 matches!

Here's two things I did with just one font: LogoSkate.

Idea 1: Dingbat font as patterned paper.

Couldn't be easier - I just filled a Word document with different characters to a size that roughly fitted the negative of the skateboarder shape!
This card also happens to be my card based on Michelle's sketch at her blog Scraposition for the Let's Scrap blog hop around the world. (I turned the sketch onto it's side and adjusted the elements a bit)

Idea 2: Dingbat as page accent.

For this page, I asked my son to pick 3 favourite skateboarding brands, printed them out at a largish font size (90 I think) with plenty of space around each one, then cut them out using a circle cutter!

PS What do you think of my banner? I've made a banner before with the Silhouette by cutting out a row of triangles, but then I thought of a quicker way . . . the strip at the top is of course hidden by the paper above it! If you've got a Silhouette, why don't you give it a go?