Coming Round the Mountain

I was recently asked by a colleague to make a birthday card for her fun-loving, mountain-loving, bike-loving sister. I thought about origami; I thought about watercolours; I thought about acrylics and paper piecing and stencils...but each time, it didn't feel right.

Then I thought about my Big Shot and those tiny little white sticky squares that add dimension... and came up with this:

I would definitely say that this card is fun. Did you clock the teeny bike going waaay up the mountain in the middle? :-) 

Surprise Lift

A great challenge at XOXO this month – be inspired by the team being inspired by each other! We got to do what all of you challengers do each month: lift! But it was more: a 'surprise lift each other' challenge – which was a great opportunity for me to finally make something in the style of one of my scrap idols – Michelle. She has a very arty, graphic, laissez-faire style and has a great eye for photos and telling a story on a layout. It was a no-brainer that she would be my surprise lift.

Here is her page (from 2011):

courtesy of Michelle @ myanaloglife.blogspot.com

And here is my lift:

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Heavily influenced, I know. Very similar, I know. But Ioved this page so much for so long and just wanted one of my own. Do you ever get that about someone else’s work? For me it was this one’s great colour scheme, uplifting message, and rock n roll elements like the wings – all in all, it was perfect.

I took specific elements from Michelle’s page and adapted them, sometimes not very much, and sometimes quite a lot, to achieve my own page. I found some cloud paper (remnants from Echo Park’s Sweet Summertime collection) and used my Sass cloud stamps to both stamp and just get a good cloud shape to cut out of patterned paper. I chose some herringbone patterns too – from Crate’s Paper Heart collection, and a Cuttlebug embossing folder. The wings were actually a pair of earrings that were joke-given to me by my mum for my hen party as a nod to me saying how I didn’t want to see halos or angel wings or anything like that (things like this, and L-plates and tiaras, are quite typical British humiliate-the-bride-to-be things and since I was not the typical bride I did not want the typical stuff). I bent the backs flush with the page with a pair of pliers. I used a balloon stamp (Kaisercraft – Up, Up & Away) and also a balloon mask (Prima). For the positioning I pretty much stuck to Michelle’s, but changed the size and the number of photos, and the colour of the title.

And yes, I love it. I wish I’d come up with it myself! Thanks, Michelle – keep on churning out those beauties!

If that's not quite enough for you, there's also a challenge this month to design something for the XOXO webpages: a new site needs a new header, so submit your designs!

Just for Me

It seems like I've been doing an awful lot of tasks for DTs lately, and not a lot just for the sake of scrapping. It's not that DT tasks are tiresome or unwanted; it's just that in moments of high motivation and creativity I feel the need to just...well, create.

stretching the Sass to the max

 So I started from scratch, drew a sketch, and made a layout just for me.

the engagement shoot photos finally get an airing

It's a whole fun, eclectic mess of bits and pieces and ideas, and I love it. The good news is, this period of high creativity hasn't stopped yet. I've got another layout up my sleeve waiting for a break in the clouds so it can be photographed, and one on paper and in my head that will probably come into fruition later today. Anyone else feeling super motivated at the moment? 

Just for the Record: I'm Lifting Again

Look at that. I'm getting good at this headline-creating business.

It's layout time. More specifically, it's gorgeous spring yellow, For the Record time.

A blogospherical friend of mine who is rather good at making layouts (not to mention dresses, and cards, and mini albums) made a page a while ago that I kept thinking about. In creating my most recent layout I managed to lift her and use masses of the amazing collection that is For the Record. It's so versatile, with so many different potential 'looks' - I can't stop praising it.

What I'm loving about this page, other than For the Record: clouds, journalling, masking tape and Versamark stars. Thanks to Sabr for the inspiration!

Poor Doggy

The other day I was playing around with a pile of paper scraps. Actually, I was trying to tidy up, and I dropped a handful onto a cunningly placed Basic Grey Basics sheet. I'm not going to pretend they all fell into place like this, but it certainly inspired me...

This is a page that I'm almost 100% happy with. I definitely like the direction this style is going in...

I Ain't Gonna Stop the Rain by Complainin'

Now that August is nearly over it's time to celebrate what an awesomely hot, sunny and bright month it was.

Huh?

That's what I'd like to be writing, but unfortunately, the opposite is true: it's time to document, instead, what a disappointingly wet, cold and thoroughly autumnal August it's been this year.

Now, I know I won't stop the rain by complaining. So why not just be practical about it? Make a record of what it's been like and how I've dealt with it. Turn it into a celebration of sorts. Exercise my creativity and make sure that inner summertime is still there somewhere.

I went with a mini-book, inspired by some paper I picked up recently (MME Quite Contrary Jack & Jill: Be Happy 'Gleeful Paper' and My Favourite Thing 'Colourful Umbrellas Paper').

I cut this shape from the two MME papers and also some white and brown cardstock, and some acetate. I used Sassafras Lass cloud stamps and Toga chipboard letters on the front page:

I printed a photo we took at the Belgian Day of Independence in July and inserted it at the beginning. It's the only photo I used - I think it did all the work required from photos, speaking volumes about the weather, about Brussels, about how to deal with the rain. It features a group of drama students arranging themselves into a representation of a thought that was once in Belgian painter René Magritte's head.

I wanted lots of layers, and lots of variety with as few different papers as possible. The MME papers are double-sided, so that meant I had four patterns and two base colours to play with.
Thickers helped raise the relief of the pages:

I incorporated lots of clouds (obviously!) and raindrops (I'm so glad I saved these teardrop gems!). The wellies I cut from foam and drew onto with a thick black pen:

For the acetate page I traced over the umbrellas and coloured them in, using a CD pen (it doesn't come off the acetate):

For one page I stamped around the edges and then painted over most of the page with a layer of acrylic paint (I've seen it around a few times so I wanted to try it myself):

On some leftover acetate I freehanded some swirls and dots with the CD pen, and added a little bit of accent white acrylic paint here and there before cutting around it and sticking it over a page of stamped clouds:
Finally, I couldn't resist including the words of one of my favourite poems, Thomas Hardy's 'A Thunderstorm in Town':
I am proud to say that I have achieved exactly what I wanted from this mini - catharsis, for sure, but it also really makes me smile now when I look at it. A few things I'm really happy with are the layering of the lettering:

Using Glossy Accents over a cut-out umbrella to make a strong, shiny coordinating embie:

And the free-hand acetate swirl:

I hope looking at these bright pictures can put a smile on your face too, even if it's bright and sunny where you are. Thanks for looking, and I'll be back on Tuesday with a little tip I recently came across, and the results of my giveaway.

I Had a Dream

The other night I had a really vividly coloured dream. As with a lot of dreams, the contents weren't exactly what you'd call normal. And as with a lot of dreams, it faded throughout the day, but the vividness of the colours stuck with me. I had to put it on canvas in acrylic:


I Decopatched the cloud with newspaper, added some pieces of ribbon, and drew the kite line with a CD marker.

We Went Ape!

Once, when we still lived in Norwich, my brother came to visit us and we went ape in the surrounding forest. It was so much fun - climbing and swinging and zipping down wires! I've finally made a page to commemorate the occasion, called 'If You Go Down To The Woods Today':


The paper I finally used was from Sassafras Lass, called 'Say Timber', and it was a real collage of tree and forest things. I made sure I cut around the little rabbit's ears a bit so they weren't obscured by the other pieces of paper.


I added to the mixy, messy, random design by backing the photos with numerous scraps of paper and adding a lot of embellishments. I made my own buttons, since for reasons I won't go into here I only have a few real ones: I did this by punching a circle from some card, punching two holes in the centre, and then covering it with Glossy.

Last of all I stamped some images - a swirl and some great clouds and birdie (that Sassafras Lass Head in the Clouds collection again) - and cut them out, using them in relief: