Scrapbooking

Last year my scrapbooking mojo pretty much deserted me, so it’s been a while since I’ve played along with any sort of online challenge. However, when I saw the sketch at Let’s Get Sketchy for the first week of February I had to have a go.

Here’s the sketch.

I’ve flipped it and added a second photo, but you can still see the inspiration of the sketch.

We went to Germany a few years ago now so that Gorgeous Man could present a paper at a conference. Since we were in the country we made sure to stop at Neuschwanstein Castle, Gorgeous Man has wanted to visit this place for as long as I have known him.

I hand lettered the title. It’s a very simple page, but hopefully it’s enough to kick start my scrapping mojo again.

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Yellow

I have to admit that yellow is not a colour I usually work with in any of my crafts, but when I saw the mood board at Berry71Bleu I was charmed. I did this page at the beginning of August, but then internet woes (as in non-functioning internet) and a short trip to Australia to take care of some things got in the way of earlier posting.

Here’s my take on the challenge.

I didn’t have very much yellow in the stash, so I coloured some white flowers with my water colour crayons

and edged the page with watercolour and ink. It would be nice to be able to run to the local store to pick up supplies for a challenge, but I can’t deny that living in a place with no scrapbooking stores is good for using up the stash. It’s been a long time between scrapbook pages, but I’m kind of happy with how this one turned out.

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A scrapbook page

It’s been a long time since I did any scrapbooking, but I couldn’t pass up the sketch on Let’s Get Sketchy this week.

Here’s the inspiration sketch.

Here’s my take on it.

This is an old photo, I’m trying to scrapbook myself more and shift some of the back log of photos. At the  beginning of 2006 we packed up our belongings and moved to South Africa for 6 years. We had a stop-over in Singapore along the way and this picture was taken in the orchid garden.

I used a stencil to draw the guidelines for the title and journalling and then hand lettered them. I also added some stenciled flowers and just the tiniest bit of bling.

The butterflies were black and left over from another project. The black was too startk and so I gave them a dab of white paint to soften them up a little  bit.

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Scrapbooking

This page has been finished for a while, but we are having internet issues and so I haven’t shown it until now.

Slowly doing up some of the old photos. I’m getting stricter with myself about putting stuff in photo albums and not having to scrap every single photo.

The blue background page and the green are from a paper stack I bought in South Africa when I first started scrapbooking. I’m slowly using it all up. Background pink paper is from Stampin’ Up. Letters are from a kit I received from SMIL for Christmas. The large flower is a Stampin’ Up stamp inked with water soluble wax crayon.

Gorgeous Girl also did some scrapping and insisted I post the page on the blog.

Love that she’s starting to add more journalling on her page. Not so sure why there are birthday wishes for the falls though…

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Crafting

I’m currently plying two braids of this lovely goodness I got for Christmas.

I’m pretty wrecked after getting home each day and the spinning is a good way to decompress.

Since I’ve been reunited with the scrapbooking stash there has also been a little bit of scrapbooking.

I used some techniques I learned in my art journalling class. The white flower is a stencil I picked up while in Australia. I used acrylic paint.

I also took advantage of my extended stay in Australia to order some Stampin’ Up stamps from my friend Kerin. I used water soluble wax crayons to colour the image and then sprayed the stamp with water and stamped it off. Not the clearest image, but it works.

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Misleading

So, I have to confess that this scrapbook page is misleading.

Gorgeous Girl does not like visiting Santa/Father Christmas. She has to be cajoled into it by me, because I really like having a photo each year to see how much she has grown. There are a few years missing because she refused to participate at all. Last year she agreed to see Santa, but refused to get closer than this. 🙂

I dyed the chipboard using DIY mist (food colouring and water) and my new watercolour wax crayons.

I made a card as well.

I’ve been wanting a large woven basket for a while. Gorgeous Man found one at the market today.

It’s certainly large.

It’s now housing Gorgeous Girl’s collection of soft toys.

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Fishing

I used the November Week 2 sketch at Let’s Get Sketchy as my inspiration for this layout.

Here is the sketch provided.

My photos were a little larger than the ones in the sketch and I wanted to add journalling, so I modified it a little, but I think it still follows the sketch’s original intention. Once again I’m scrapping the backlog.

Please excuse the afternoon sun’s reflection on the photos.

On my trip to Hong Kong I found a little stationery store selling lots of cute things from Japan. I picked up this little alphabet set and I can see that it’s going to be put to use a lot in my pages. I try to stock up with things that have multiple uses. I can see myself getting a cutting system one day – but not while I live in a place where metal rusts if you look sideways at it 😀

I used distress ink to age some of the embellishments.

Thanks for looking.

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Under instruction

Gorgeous Girl had a “teacher only” day at school today. Since I refused to let her watch TV all morning she’s done some scrapbooking and gave me strict instructions to blog about it.

Here’s her page:

She took the photo herself. I love seeing her creativity develop.

One thing I enjoy most about soft toy making is seeing the personality of the piece appear. Yesterday I sent over 40 000 words to my thesis supervisor to review and comment on and to celebrate I gave myself the evening off and sat down to put this little girl together.

Gorgeous Girl giggled with glee when she saw him – pity he’s not for her…

He still needs legs, a tail and facial features but I’m really pleased with how he’s turned out. Hopefully the recipient will like him. (Christmas making)…

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More scrapbooking

I managed to scrape out a little time to play with paper and ink recently. I’m very lucky to have copies of the professional photos which were taken of the wedding which Gorgeous Girl was part of last year. When I saw the sketch at Stuck?! I thought it would be perfect for a couple of them.

Here’s my take on it.

I misted the background with some DIY mist made using my new water colour crayons. The string is recycled, it was part of the wrapping on my birthday art journal. Striped paper is from Stampin’ Up. Purple paper in the foreground (banner) is from DCWV Stack 7 (Which is no longer available. I bought this stack on a visit to the USA in 2010 and I’m about 60% of the way through it) the purple card behind the photos is a DCWV solids stack.

Living in a place without craft stores, stacks work well for me as they allow me to have a variety of papers on hand for different projects and are cost effective. Butterflies and the shaped paper comes from a Kaisercraft 6 1/2″ Paper Pad Violet Crush. I got this for my birthday last month and have used it a lot!

A close-up. Gorgeous Girl is the flower girl facing the camera.

Thanks for looking.

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Can I ride?

I’m entering this layout in the Stuck?! Sketches October 15th Sketch Challenge.

Here is the sketch we were given to follow.

I pulled out my hexagon quilting template and went to town.

Gosh it’s hard to get purples to photograph accurately. Unusually for me 90% of the paper on this page came from a single line of paper: Kaisercraft Violet Crush.

Photo was taken at the second wedding that Gorgeous Girl was in last year. She was very taken with the vintage car and was most disappointed that the only the Bride and the Bride’s father got to ride in it to the church and not the flower girls as well.

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