A Litte Misty-Eyed

Last week I mentioned Revlie's class and how great it was to be in that freedom-to-create-without-boundaries environment... I also mentioned how I was a long way off finishing either of the projects...

...yep, OK, you guessed what's coming - I finished one of them!

love is... embracing the new

This mini album was made with a focus on Tattered Angels products in mind.

I don't know how many layers

I am so very, very happy with this project and I want to tell you why:

• During the class, Birgit did some demos for us and then we'd go away and recreate a page with her techniques. It was so useful to actually see first hand how layers can be built up. (What was also very sweet was that some of the ladies were translating into my ear as we crowded around to watch Birgit... who was speaking Dutch, of course, since we were in the Netherlands.)

yep - it's punchinella making another appearance!

• Having the free run of the whole product selection was a joy - but more importantly, it made me realise the gulf in quality between these mists and the ones I currently own (Cosmic Shimmer Mists). Tattered Angels' mists still clog sometimes, but the fineness of the glitter, the smoothness of the spray and the blendability of the colours is far, far better than anything I've used before. (Interestingly, I've just ordered some Dylusions, so we'll see how they compare. In fact, I am going to go and buy a Tattered Angels pack from the art shop down the road once I get paid, so maybe I can do a product comparison video...)

I really have fallen in love with these products

• I was so happy during the class just to be creating, with no pressure from anywhere. One attempt that I wasn't happy with even got redone (my attention span is such that I am hardly ever (read: never until now) able to redo creations).
• It has opened my mind to lots of other products, to techniques, to different canvases and to the option of using colours and motifs that I usually avoid.

pink AND a butterfly, on the same page? Who are you and what have you done with Cheryl?

• It made me realise that it is actually pretty comfy outside of my comfort zone.

in for a penny...

Basically we did our work on a sheet of paper, and once it had dried, we stuck it onto a sheet of cardboard (cut from a box), and then punched holes and fixed the pages together into a book.

So what did Birgit teach me?

• I learned how to employ screens with spray, ink and sponge, gesso and credit card, Glimmer Glam and Glimmer Glaze.

the swallow is a screen that was painted with Glimmer Glaze, stamped onto the page and then left to dry before misting over. It acts as a resist and comes in a large range of shades.

• I learned how to use gesso and Glimmer Mists together.
• I learned how Chalkboard Mists and I are a match made in heaven.
• I learned that all of that mist and glaze and ink is pretty hard to clean off hands and nails.
• I learned how to forget about patterend paper.
• I learned how to start thinking properly about mixed media art.
• And, most important of all, I (re-)learned how to have fun. I've been putting too much pressure on myself lately, and now I know I have to sit back and have fun sometimes.

Watch this space for news on the Tattered Angels vs Dylusions face off. If anyone wants to throw in some Mr Hueys too, feel free!

Guest Creative Scrapper

And so for the exciting news!

Kristine at Creative Scrappers contacted me last year to see if I wanted to be a guest on their blog... and of course I said yes. Why would I say no when the blog is just about my favourite source of sketch and layout inspiration?

You can read my guest post on the Creative Scrappers blog but I'll show you what I made with sketch #192 here:

Creative Scrappers sketch #192

Our first engagement photoshoot was uncomfortable for me. I am not great at posing and really needed to be directed more strongly. Out of 500 photos there were about 50 I liked, and about 30 made it into the final collection. Which all makes me more happy that we got this one - full of attitude, looking totally comfortable and acting quite the poseurs.

rockabilly say yes!

The page is a memory of our discussion about props: he had his hat, I had my handbag... and then at the last minute I said 'Bring your guitar!'.

me and him, in object form

Echo Park collections make up the majority of this layout - I seem to have kept scraps from Life is Good and For the Record which match well with Happy Days. You'll also find some Lily Bee, Crate and Jenni Bowlin in there. Credit also has to go to Basic Grey for their postal stamp... don't you just love the black on black of the heat embossed postmark?

I'll be using this technique again

A big thanks to Kristine for asking me to be part of the Creative Scrappers scene! If you haven't heard of them already, you should go check them out now. They are really very, very good.

Boxes... and Skulls... Again

While I'm working on something very exciting and waiting on something else very exciting (I'll share this very soon), I've got a very tiny thing to show you today.

Like I did here, I've gone and made another skull box. 

lots of skulls....yeah!

(Sharing time: I have a possibly unhealthy obsession with boxes. Boxes, tins, and the like. I like to collect them. Even if they may not have any future potential use. I like to stack them inside each other. I like to find the precise right one to store things in. (Boy do I love to store things.) I like to decorate them as giftboxes. I like to incorporate them into scrapping projects. I like to make myself them and...etc)

I used a heat embossing technique and Inkadinkado stamps borrowed from my mum to get this super smart look:

love how oily and grungy it looks

Did I mention I like boxes? This one was used to house a gift voucher at Christmas - and now it holds cufflinks. The gift voucher wasn't for cufflinks, but cunning box reuse is evidently one of my husband's traits too.

Caddy Love

Lily Bee Designs are starting to offer sketches for inspiration - and they're good.

I joined in with the first one by creating the second ever page of my wedding album. This was the sketch:

For over two years we had known which car we wanted for our wedding. And for over a year it had been booked. It was a 1956 Cadillac Sedan de Ville... this 1956 Sedan de Ville:

*sigh*

Why the sigh? Because at midday on the day of our wedding, I received a phone call from the car company, saying that the Sedan de Ville wouldn't start.

look! look how calm I am!

I went into Seriouser than Serious mode. The company offered me, instead, a Rolls Royce in silver or a Jaguar in British racing green. There was no way I was letting this slip away from me - the car was a big part of our vision, and my underlying desire was always only for everything to be coherent - so of course, I simply said that no, neither of those options were any good. That's when the company told me that they might have another Cadillac... it was from 1960, just about on the edge of what would work for me. It was also from the higher price range, but they would provide it at no extra cost. Naturally, I said. Then I heard the word 'tailfins' in my ear, and I was sold. Relieved, too.

Less than an hour later, the Caddy turned up. It was only at this point - while I am having my hair painstakingly put in place - that we discovered it had no roof. Now, I can look back and laugh at how I've always liked the windswept look. But on that day, at that moment, the journey to the Town Hall (we were running late, and there was an annual Beer Festival taking place which meant road blocks and diversions on top of that) was the most stressful of my life* because the wind in your hair is nice and all, but not what you want on your wedding day.

Anyway, back to the layout. I wanted to stitch on my page. I've cleared the way to the sewing machine again so I can stitch on my pages once more. But for me, to stitch the circles would've been too obvious. So I brushed on some acrylic paint, didn't like the look of it, and smudged it with a cotton wool pad. And then I was happy.

see them circles and stars again...

I used some paper and stickers from Lily Bee's Picket Fence collection, and combined them with Echo Park Happy Days bits and pieces, with some sparkly Thickers thrown in and Tim Holtz stamps.

still loving those nautical stars I made for the invitations

I didn't win the sketch competition, but the sketch was a great starting point for a layout that I'm happy with. 

The official photos have arrived now so I'm planning, planning, planning... how many pages can you fit into a post-bound album?

*coming in a close second is the one on which we transported my fish in their bowl from Norwich to Brussels by car. They learned about tidal pull that day; not to mention a little surfing. One of them was so traumatised it jumped right out of the bowl that evening after we'd arrived and went to fishy heaven (which was either somewhere under the sofa or in the doggie's stomach).

 

Gifts from the Heart

My fiance's best man (well, one of them) - in fact, the one who was the first person we told face-to-face that we'd gotten engaged - had a 'saw this and thought of you' moment recently. He sent me this present:

It's a collection of hand-carved wooden stamps in paisley designs. I can't wait to use them!

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!

Thoughts on Trees

Trees are pretty incredible, if you stop to think about them. I rarely have time to pause and appreciate their beauty, strength and resilience, let alone their place in time and in the cultural history of humanity. Even less so their calming, quieting effect. But here I find a brief moment of tranquillity, as we begin a new month, to wonder and to be awed by them.

At the weekend we went to the forest again - a favourite place for us and for our dog. It's actually an arboretum, so we get to admire trees from all over the world as we hike around. It's the place we've always been able to wedding plan without the stress or distractions of external factors. At the weekend we needed to get away from these stresses and distractions a little more than usual. A few hours later, we were back home for lunch with lightened hearts and a solution.

So my postcard this week was a built from this - a little collage of a tree made from a leaflet that was advertising a wedding show.

An addendum: even though the arboretum is impressive, the most breathtaking tree that I've seen lately lives in a park just down the road from us.

Each time I see it I'm struck by its massiveness. How old it must be! This one really is an incontrovertible symbol of life. And just to put it into perspective:

It's got me to thinking how we'd both love to incorporate The Tree as a symbol into our wedding. Watch this space...

Tester Page

OK - this is a tester page. It's a layout using many different techniques and styles - a horrible mish-mash of things. I don't like it, but I wanted to try a lot of different approaches and I'd rather have one whole page I'm not happy with than seven pages which I mostly like but contain little bits I'm not happy with.

Some thingsI tried were mixing (if not matching) paper patterns, masking/misting, covering doilies with Cosmic Shimmer Mist, making flags with ribbon and sticks...

 ... heavy embossing on white-backed paper...

 ... lots of paper layering...

... building up layers on nice bought chipboard shapes (these ones from the Restoration collection)...

.... and painting and stamping on plain chipboard...

This page was a result of me editing a long document for many hours (days, in fact) and every now and then remembering this thing I once did called scrapbooking... and pining for a chance to stick and cut and stamp and paint, and then going totally overboard once I finished working on the document. Like a kid in a candy shop, you might say. So, I'm not happy with it (I didn't even give it a title), but I'm sharing it to show how important to me planning and spending time thinking about a page is. I actually made another layout straight afterwards, but it was one that had been brewing for a few weeks, and I'm infinitely happier with it. I'll share it in a fortnight or so, when the XOXO March challenge is up and running.

Postcard a Week + Sneak Peek

Well. Another week has rolled around, and although it was a week spent mostly on wedding planning, my postcard only reflects the new stamp set I got from America.

My first Tim Holtz products: Bitty Grunge it is, and I love it. Nothing much else features apart from the great stamps. But that's OK - I've been kinda busy!

While I've got your attention, I'd like to share a cheeky sneak at my February Lipstick Chick challenge. What with all the wedding planning and Valentine's Day around the corner, love is definitely in the air. I happened to be playing with paper and made a 3D card, which I'll show you in full next week:

I Already Went Postal Once, Didn't I?

Ooops... I almost used the same post title as I did back here. (Hmmm... mini-challenge: come up with 52 different postcard-related blog post titles...)

This past week I've mostly had dancing on the brain. After a 3-week break, our lessons began again and although we could've been rusty and stressed, we did really well. The worst exchange, caused by me stopping every time we made a wrong move instead of trying to recover and carry on, ended with him giving me some advice: 'It's dog eat dog out there in the ballroom. Move, or get off the dance floor!'

So my postcard this week used bits from our teachers' flyer. I am liking paint rings at the moment, too:

 

Ooh, and just a quick note to say that I was given honourable mention for my submission to the Play Date Cafe's competition last week, meaning I get to sport this badge on my blog:

Tree Inspiration

Today I have a little tutorial to share with you, but it's not my own - it's my mum's.

Last year she made me a tree decoration - a wooden cutout tree, painted or sprayed with Cosmic Shimmer Mist, and then stamped and heat embossed.

This year I gave it a go myself.

After spraying with my Cosmic Shimmer Mist (Peacock Green, which is actually quite tree-y), I stamped some swirls in a copper colour.

I sprinkled holographic white embossing powder over the copper ink and heat treated the trees. Next I stamped some snowflakes on in white, but just left the ink to dry - I didn't heat emboss with powder.

I then stamped on some different snowflakes, but this time I did sprinkle white embossing powder and heat embossed it.

I finished off by tying some twine through the whole in the top of the tree so that it could be hung on our Christmas tree, which is in fact a Christmas branch:

Thanks Mum for leading the way here!

A Snowstorm before Christmas

With all the snow outside there's every excuse to hole up and make, make, make! I've been quite busy with my cards these past two weeks.

First of all, I'm LOVING using kraft card for Christmas this year - it gives that homey, warm feeling of being around a tree and a fire, surrounded by presents and family.

 

I love the gingham fabric stars too - they're lightly padded, which really gives the cards dimension.

Next, I was asked by a friend to make her a few cards for her family, which would feature her daughter. She sent me a cute christmassy photo, and I immediately knew I wanted to put little Rosie in a bauble...

 

 

 

I used a big rectangle mask to make a snowflake border, and - as always with Christmas cards - stamped a few images on the envelopes.

Then, I made some simple gift tags:

 

After that, I turned away from the traditional colours and used the gorgeous Christmas scene stamp from LaBlanche, which I talked about in Tuesday's post.

 

Again, I used a big circle mask to get the snowflake border. Also, I highlighted the snowy parts of the stamp with Stickles (although you can't really see that in the photos). BIG disappointment though - the two products didn't combine well. The ink was Memento (Tuxedo Black) and the Stickles were Ranger (Frosted Lace). I'm not sure which one to blame, but after applying the Stickles to the inked parts, the (black) ink seeped out and into the (white) Stickles, resulting in a pink-tinted snow. I'm really disappointed as the ink is supposed to be fast. And I did let it dry before applying the Stickles. Any recommendations for better inks, anyone?