The Handmade Wedding

You've all seen by now all the handmade things the wedding brought along - now it's time to scrap about it all!

The sketch this week at Scrapbook Challenges made me so happy about sketches and scrapbooking. It was one of those moments when you've been waiting to scrap a certain idea or certain photos for a long time, and one day the answer just pops up.

The sketch looks like this:

And after I put my page together it looked like this:

Scrapbook Challenges sketch #285

What I used for this page: Doodlebug Love Potion patterned paper, Echo Park Style Essentials Upscale Black Quatrefoil and Grey Dots & Stripes patterned paper, Echo Park Happy Days patterned papers & alpha stickers, Rayher wooden hearts and bobbins, Toga chipboard alphas.

Quite to my surprise, I'm building up our wedding album pretty quickly. And it's looking pretty sweet.

Get over to Scrapbook Challenges for this sketch, and all of the March Madness going on this month. As ever, you could win something for your participation!

The Wedding of Awesomeness: Part 2

It feels really weird to write this, but there were more than two hearts at our wedding.

What you saw when you looked up

Those hanging paper hearts are, and have been, all over the internet and especially Etsy for some time. But I still had to have them. I made them back in February, and I was damned if I wasn't going to use them! Cherry paper and everything!

The magical bunting was a labour of starchy love. My mum made over 50 metres of it, having chosen a whole range of fabrics that would match with the outfits and colours and styles of the wedding. I don't have the precise data, but I think it took a good couple of days to starch all of those triangles.

And the nautical stars - well... I made those a couple of weeks before the wedding, deciding one day that there was not enough nautical star in the whole picture. After the little star on the invitations, there had to be more!

These little ones were fiddly to put together

The hanging stars are 3D. I can tell you how I made them, if you like. It's quite easy.

1. I printed a large star template, and added tabs onto each outer line in pen. Then I used the template to cut out two stars from a piece of card, complete with tabs. I drew all the inner lines on in pencil with a ruler, including the ones separating the tabs from the main body of the star, and then scored along all the lines.

2. I manipulated each star so that the long lines coming from the centre to the points were mountain folds, and the shorter ones coming from the centre to the dips were valley folds. I folded all the tabs inwards.

3. This is where you decorate the star as you wish. I used the folds and lines to measure and cut out contrasting half-points to give it that nautical look.

4. Then I used PVA glue to stick the tabs of each star to each other. This was quite slow, as I needed to pinch and hold each part so that it adhered fully and began to dry before I could move onto the next part.

5. Once dry, the star - if you've made it, like I did, from thick card - is very sturdy, and holds up to more manipulation. Squash it down a bit, to make the folds and valleys really pop and dip.

6. Finally, hammer an eyelet through the top point and string it up.

They're equally good for Christmas... and that's just around the corner!

I'll leave you with a picture of me and my family.

Stylish, no?

Heartstrings and Other Things

After the mammoth delivery of quality custom handmade wedding decor from my mum, the pressure is off me somewhat as I realise there's not too much for me to do.

The legendary bunting

I have had some decorations knocking about for a while, and now seems as good a time as any to share them.

I had to have hearts on a string:

I also had to have a sprinkling of tiny spheres:
 

There's more to do, but I'm not so stressed about it all.

*gulp*

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.

Summertime Blues

As it is pouring with rain here, and has done at some point every day this month, I am trying to find some inner summertime. I still have lots of Echo Park Sweet Summertime paper left... that's the thing about 12x12 paper - when you cut it up and use it for bits and pieces it seems to go much further. And there's this photo that I took a few years ago when we visited a Beach Near Us. I've wanted to scrap it for a long time, but have been so obsessed by the fact that I should've
done a much better job at the photographing stage that I have never planned anything for it.

Until now. Desperation for the sun has set in, and I look to paper for a bright, sunny day. This is my creation - very simple, using lots of Sweet Summertime paper and LOTS of the stickers that come with the set. I flicked paint over a cloud-shaped mask in the top right, and used Sassafras stamps above the lettering.


And I feel - momentarily - much sunnier. The photo I'm talking about is the one of the beach huts - they're beautiful, but my camera skills then were minimal, and I'm still disappointed by it. I hope the page instead does them justice!

Also, don't forget about my giveaway, coming soon!

I Love Bunting

I love bunting. I want bunting everywhere, all the time. Today I'm posting some bunting I made last December for my fiance's birthday, which somehow I didn't get an photos of at the time.

I made one set in our favourite colours - red, black and white, that said 'Adam is 30'...

And another set in green that said 'Happy Birthday'. This one was really long (lots of letters!):



I kept it quite simple and let the colours speak:

I guess we can use the green one again, but unless I change the number every year, the red one is consigned to the Decorations Box, never to emerge again!

Easter Fun

It goes without saying that Easter is an opportunity for crafting. I'm working on the essentials of an Easter egg hunt at the moment, but as a taster I'm uploading the card I have made for my husband-to-be. His ideas about tattoos, designs, logos and artwork have inspired me to use the negative space of an egg shape to act as a frame for my stamp-tastic display (thanks to the Sassafras Lass Head in the Clouds collection).

I love these stamps - I carried on stamping on the envelope:

Fill the House with Flowers

To regain a balance of the masculine and feminine aspects in our household, I am making flowers to put around the house. The latest addition is a flower garland strung up in the WC, which I put in in front of the mirrors so its effect is doubled. I cut the flower shapes in various sizes from an unwanted leaflet, and fixed them together with thread and fishing wire.

Special Guest Appearance

I would like to claim them as my own, but in fact my mum made these amazing additions to our Halloween Housewarming. The pumpkins are so cute, and the bunting read 'Happy Halloween', of course.

Leo Party

So, every year my fiancé's family host a Leo Party for the many, many Leos that they know...thus I was welcomed into the fold, attending my first Leo Party at only the second occasion of meeting the parents. This year I'm in Brussels for the 2009 Party, so I may as well contribute to the decorations.