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Friday 31 July 2009

Challenge 120

This weeks guest is the very talented Jennifer Mcguire and we are really excited that she agreed to be part of Mojoholder this week. Jennifer is a Garden Girl at Two Pea's in a Bucket and is also a member of the Hero Arts Design Team. Jennifer's blog features lots of inspirational video tutorials and 'how to's', it can be viewed here.
Jennifer's delightful Layout:


Here is the sketch:



This week I picked a photo of my daughter, Emily from the photo shoot again, I have so many lovely pictures of this occasion to choose from. I printed one out A4 and trimmed it down to fit the page like Jennifer’s large picture. Then I printed lots of small contact prints of Emily in the same outfit, but different poses.

My Layout:

I used Basic Grey again this week, from the Scarlet’s letter line. I used both 12x12” and 6x6” papers. To create the film strip effect I used the Sizzlet extra long film strip die, and adjusted the sections to fit the photos! To embellish I used Prima’s Say it with Crystals in black. A custom made rubber stamp was used for the journalling block and punched the scalloped circle and the inner circle for the initial plate with Stampin’ Up punches. The title is made with Making Memories ‘Destination’ rubons and a white gel pen for ‘PHOTO’, and Me & My Big Ideas Monograms rubons for the word ‘SHOOT’. Be sure to check out the Mojo Holder Blog for more information and ideas from the rest of the team.

Fusion


I made this LO a few days ago, then went back to work and have had so little time to get it scanned and into place with the others in my Hollywood Album. I wanted to preserve all the little bits and pieces we brought back with us and I tried to capture the magic feeling of being part of the opening celebrations of Dance Excellence 2009. Well I don't think it's possible really, you had to be there, but I have had a good try. The theme for the week was 'Open your hearts. Open your minds', and each morning there was a little message slipped under the door or our room. These are all in the pocket behind the bottom right photo, together with my ID pass.

The photos show the dancers in the our Team representing Kent, England at the top. The middle photo shows the sea of dancer's legs in the grand ballroom after the opening celebrations, where they took part in a massive class all together. Just Amazing how they managed to get so many dancers from all over the world to work together so well, in a very short space of time! It was difficult to capture on camera. The third photo shows the welcoming talk.

With the dominance of red and purple together with lots of other colours, I went for Basic Grey Fusion papers for this LO.

Tagged

I have been tagged by Karen, (thanks Karen!) and as I'm new to this blogging lark and it's the first time I have been tagged here goes:

I have to:

1. Collect the book that is most handy.
2. Turn to page 161.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Cite the sentence on my blog
5. Pass the tag on to 5 other blogging friends. (and Karen has already picked five of them!)

The book that is nearest to me was recommended by my 17 year old children so I'm having a read of it too. It is called 'The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time" by Mark Haddon.


.... and the fifth sentence on the 161st page reads:

"And I decided I couldn't go and live with Uncle Terry because he lived in Sunderland and I didn't know how to get to Sunderland and I didn't like Uncle Terry because he smokes cigarettes and stroked my hair."

I'm going to tag :

1. Laura

2. Katie

3. Sy

4. Jillybeans

5. Scrapdolly

Sunday 26 July 2009

More New Basic Grey On The Way!

Just when you thought there couldn't be any more, the bring out several more new sets. I have been keeping up with Kelly Goree's blog and the details of the new Basic Grey lines that are due to reach us in the autumn. Looking forward to seeing these in real life!








Go To Press


This new workshop from Shimelle sounds great, and it starts on 3rd August. I would love to join in but you need a printer, and as I will be away on holiday with my laptop but no printer and limited scrapping supplies, I may have to give it a miss. I thought I would spread the word here anyway. If you decide to join in - have fun!

Friday 24 July 2009

Love to Love!

This is week 119 for the Mojo Holder Blog and the guest designer is dutch born Marjolein Bussink who now lives and scraps in Canada. Marjolein's blog can be seen here.
It's my fifth week on the design team, and I am really enjoying the challenge of coming up with a layout each week. Here is my LO followed by Marjolein's LO and the sketch:



I used a photo of my daughter, Catherine dressed for this Summer’s show ‘Disco Inferno’. One of the songs that has been going round and round in my brain since I saw the show at the end of June became the title for my page. Tina Charles "Oh I love to love but my baby just loves to dance”. Thing is, I remember when it was in the charts. Catherine doesn't even know who that is! I wanted a retro feel to go with the 70’s outfit, and was surprised to find just what I wanted in Basic Grey’s Bittersweet collection. I made a file folder and added a sticker from the Elements sheet for the date of the show. The flowers are cut from felt using the Big Shot. The shiny flower centers are stickers from Paperchase who have a lovely new range in silver, orange, turquoise, pink and purple. (I do hope they bring back the primary range too some time.) The small pink letter stickers are old ones from my stash made by Colorbök. The Puffy white letters are Thickers Chit Chat from American Crafts.

Please visit the Mojo Holder Blog for inspiration from the rest of the team. Have a go yourself and let us know on the blog.

Tuesday 21 July 2009

No Power

Image from Earth Hour Candles

Having great fun here as we keep loosing power, due to some vandals, who did some damage to local power cables. They managed to wipe out most or the local towns around here, it's back on for the moment, but is going to take several days to repair properly so each town is having to take it turns to have power for a few hours. Last time we had power was in the middle of the night and we missed it as we were asleep. The kids should have been at the dentist today, but that had to be cancelled and most of the local shops and businesses are closed. Was planning to do some more scrapping today, but not able to get the next picture I need off the web, and it is a bit dark to see what I'm doing now.

Update Thursday 23rd July:

We now have power restored since midnight. It makes you realise how much you take it for granted. We tried to drive to Lakeside yesterday, but with the traffic signals out the back log of traffic to the Dartford Tunnel was unbelievable, so we gave up. However all seems well now, and we have been advised that the power may go off for the odd 20 minute period while they are switching everything back to normal.

Hospital appointment today for my Trigeminal Neuralgia and Dr happy that the medication working and that I have been able to reduce the dose myself already. Just have to press on and see how it goes, reducing as I see fit. Will be followed up at the hospital in two months. Such a relief to be out of pain at last and to be getting over the side effects of the medication too.

Sorting Rubber Stamps

For some time I have been sorting and storing my rubber stamps, getting rid of all the wooden blocks. Most of the stamps I have purchased recently have been the clear sort or at least repositionable. I ended up with two large bags of wooden blocks, they are so difficult to store and take up so much room. I have placed the unmounted stamps in DVD cases and labelled them, now I can find them quickly when I want them.


The bags of wooden blocks above, and the filed stamps below, I just happen to have this wooden book case which was made for storing paperbacks.

About half of these stamps were unmounted and slipped easily into the cases. I still have some to sort out, mainly my alphabet and greeting stamps. I'm pleased with the results so far.

Monday 20 July 2009

Ice Cream Parfait


With some new stamps from Woodware and some old papers from Basic Grey, I came up with this set of summery birthday cards. The BG 'Two Scoops' papers are the ideal colour scheme and I used Letraset Pro-markers to add matching colour to the stamped images.



The Clear Stamps:











Saturday 18 July 2009

Daisy Bucket

The August Scrapaholix kit includes some pretty feminine yet nautical papers from Daisy Bucket Designs – The Nantucket Island line. In the kit you get 2 sheets of double sided patterned paper, four sheets of Bazzill Card stock -1 sheet dark blue, 1 sheet turquoise and 2 sheets white and 2 pieces foil.




My first lay out is called 'Beside the Seaside' and includes a postcard and two photos of Southwold, Suffolk taken in 1999. I used a very small amount of the 'Beach House' paper for this page. The title was stamped with Making Memories foam stamps and their turquoise paint. The smaller words were cut using the ‘Playground’ Sizzlet font.



My second page is titled 'Something Blue' and is part of a series of layouts to go in a wedding album, so needed little journalling. It shows my daughter, Catherine when she was a bridesmaid for her cousin Heather two years ago. This layout was made with the ‘Harbour View’ paper and lots of tearing and inking. The title was cut on the Robo with white card and coloured with chalk inks. The flower is made using the Sizzix 'Pansy' die. The butterflies are made with foil and the Cuttlebug butterfly die and embossing folder set.


I made a card with the left over papers and a Kadoodle Pirate Dan stamp, coloured with Letraset Pro-marker pens. the greeting was printed using LDPirate font.

Friday 17 July 2009

Bounce!



This weeks guest designer on the Mojo Holder blog is Kay Rogers.
Kay designs for Fancy Pants Designs, Sassafras Lass, Scrap Supply and Provo Craft.
To the left are Kay's original design and the sketch.


Above is my version showing all three of my children on a giant bouncy castle. The photos were taken at an open day at a Vauxhall Garage in Dartford back in 1999. I dug out some Basic Grey 'Colour Me Silly' papers as the colours were just right. I had first thought that the 'June Bug' or ' Lime Rickey' were going to work, but this was a better match. I uses Some swirls and a frame from a couple of different sets of Technique Tuesday
FUNdamental sets. These were inked with ColorBox chalk inks in cadmium yellow and lipstick red. The shiny dots are from a pack I purchased in Paperchase. The buttons are sparkly ones from Doodlebug Designs tied onto the paper with very narrow red ribbon. 'Your smiles make my heart' was printed straight onto the patterned paper. The large letters are from Making Memories. It was great fun making this layout and using such a great sketch. Please visit the Mojoholder blog to see the rest of the design teams scraplifts.

Tuesday 14 July 2009

Santa Monica

I have scrapped some photos of Santa Monica today. I used some old Chatterbox papers I had stored away. They are double sided and I was able to make full use of both sides of all three papers. The papers are Pool House - paisley / blue, dots / orange and stripe / sand. I applied a My Mind's Eye overlay over the main photo, from the Bohemia line. The letters for the title are cut using the Boxed Brush Sizzlets alphabet.




The LO started out as a Page Map form October 2008, but ended up quite different.

My jouraling reads: " Emily on Santa Monica Beach. Our first view of the Pacific Ocean! 3rd April 2009", and the quote reads: "We don't remember days.... we remember moments." by Cesare Pavese.

The main photograph shows Emily, I interrupted her photographic session to take a picture of her.

Dancing at Old Bexley

Another and the last dancing event before the summer holidays. It was threatening to rain all afternoon, but managed to hold off until after the dancing. This time following a quick rehearsal at the LBPAC, everyone walked round to Old Bexley C of E Primary School to do a selection of dances from Disco Inferno, and a few team dances. Catherine was involved in 'Music' and the Charleston this time. Dancing on grass not great!





Monday 13 July 2009

Danson Festival 2009

We all went to Danson Festival on Sunday 5th July, Alan was helping on the Erith Yacht Club Stand, Emily was with her Archery Club, Andrew and Sinade were with Bexley Fencing Club and Catherine had two jobs to do.




First of all she did three dances with the Liz Burville Performance Team on the Dance Stage, then she danced one of her AS pieces with another girl, Lauren from Trinity School on the Community stage. I was still having trouble with my tooth ache but managed to stay until the dances were finished before I had to go home.


The first two photos are the Charleston dance with Liz. I missed 'We will rock you' they started early as another team didn't show up! Then Alan used the camera to take video of the 'Music' dance, but we do have a lot of photos of Catherien doing that dance as it has been used many times in over a year. The second two are Catherine and Laura in the Community Tent.

Sunday 12 July 2009

Letting It All Hang Out!

The second Scrapaholix kit for July is My Mind's Eye Laundry Line - Letting it All Hang Out! Containing three sheets of patterned paper, four sheets of card stock, three paper blossoms and some ribbon. I have created one LO so far using only some of the kit. I used my own ribbon to lace up the holes punched to the left of the photograph as it took 45" and needed wider ribbon. I punched the leaves with a QuicKutz die and inked them with chalk inks from ColorBox. The lettering was also cut with QuicKutz and the 'Lucy' alphabet. I added stickles around the scalloped edges of the striped paper. For the flowers I layered extra smaller blossoms from my collection and self adhesive pearls. The butterfly was tinted with chalk ink.



Heather and Nicholas' Wedding September 2007, St Maws, Cornwall.

I have been in contact with the lovely Gabrielle Pollacco whose work I have admired for years and the above pinches a few of her ideas. I contacted her recently and was amazed by her lovely reply:

"Hi Lynn,
I meant to say this in the last email I sent you! I was looking at your blog spot and saw the little piece on BasicGrey and then I saw the 'secret garden' l/o......was that your l/o???!!! Oh my GOSH!! That was one of the first scraplifts I ever did when I was first learning about scrapbooking!! I saw that l/o and just had to try to make something like it! (see attachment) Your's of course is far more beautiful but how much fun is this, so many years later I'm talking to one of the scrappers who really influenced and inspired me as a scrapper!!
Thanks so much for sharing your beautiful work!
~Gabrielle Pollacco xx"

Here is my original LO followed by Gabrielle's scraplift, both using Basic Grey Urban Couture.







Friday 10 July 2009

Tonights Mojo Holder


For challenge 117 Pearl Liu is this weeks guest at Mojoholder. Pearl has designed for Di Hickman's Sketches and Etsy store Such Sweet Tierney. You can view more of Pearls work on her blog Pearl's Paperfections.

Here is my Layout, followed by Pearl's Layout and the sketch.





The photo shows the Liz Burville Performing Arts Team, dressed for part of their We Will Rock You Dance. This is one of the dances they performed in Hollywood as part of the Dance Excellence Competition in LA. I just knew this Basic Grey June Bug paper was what the photo needed! I also used some BG Obscure and Oh Baby papers.



Wednesday 8 July 2009

Scrapaholix July Kit

Here is what I have done with the July kit. Linda is starting a new Scrapaholix club in Crayford, and I am helping her with her new venture. I am making up my kit before the first session so people have more ideas of what can be done with the kit. Linda has already done her lay outs. The My Minds Eye papers are lovely, and the kit also contains a generous five sheets of card stock. I must admit I like to use more patterned papers and less card stock these days, and struggled with the colours of cardstock for the pictures I wanted to scrap. The cardstock supplied is Core'dinations, which is great stuff as it has a coloured core, so is great for samding and tearing. See the website for how to videos. Jill at Cardinal Colours has a great range of this cardstock, and Vanessa at Paper Maze stocks a good range of My Mind's Eye papers.


When designing the pages it was important to remember there will be mostly new scrappers attending the session, so I could not splash out adding embellishments they are unlikely to have accumulated into their stash - yet (once hooked - it's only a question of time as us scrappers all know!). For the titles I used Sizzlet alphabets which I can take along to the club, so the members can use the same if they want to and learn how to use the big shot too. I have inked everything (as Always!).

The technique was using the Pearl Ex mixing powder this month and I used it mixed with Ranger's Glossy Accents (available fro Jill and Vanessa - links as above) and painted it onto the cardstock, this achieved three things, the made the card shimmer and glossy, while also toning down the brightness of the red card. Inking and distressing with sandpaper also helped with this.

One LO is of my wedding, L to R Alan's Mum Rhoda (Sadly Alan's Dad died the year before the wedding), Alan, Me, My Dad Bob and my mum, Mary. There were three blossoms in the kit which I used by adding smaller flowers cut from the cardstock. the punches will also be available for people to use. I used a Stampinup.com, scalloped edge punch on the cut off strip of the patterned papers to edge my photo. The only thing I added from my stash was three red brads!



The other LO is an old photo from my mother's side of the family, and shows three generations of women. Susan Dunn Humm is my great grandmother (2nd from left), Winifred Humm Holder is my grandmother (1st on left), Gladys Humm Coppin is Winifred's sister and Susan's daughter, my great aunt (3rd from left). the children are Mary Holder Banks, my mother, Winifred's daughter, Susan's grand daughter, and Patricia Coppin Smith, Mary's cousin, Gladys' daughter and Susan's grand daughter - Phew!! this was inspired by a LO in the latest issue of Scrapbook Trends (August 2009), by Lynn Ghahary called Amazing Me. Here I used distressing with sand paper, and inking. Then two more Stampin' up punches for the scalloped circle and the circle.



For the card I used up scraps left over from the LO's, I always try to make a few cards with whats left from a LO, otherwise I sore the bits and they never get used, they just clutter the place up and take up valuable storage space. I used a Cuttlebug die (from Vanessa) between the Stampin' Up circle and the scalloped circle running a ribbon through the loops on the sides. The greeting is a Stampin' Up stamp.

Tuesday 7 July 2009

Wow, it's here!


The new Basic Grey is finally in my hands! Had a great day a Jillybeans Crop (Cardinal Colours), where my collection packs were waiting for me! I think the June Bug is so much nicer than I expected. The first two pictures show the June Bug collection, as its double sided, it needed two photos to show it off!).


Love the Lemonade too, and can't wait to make a start with it all. I was still on the pain killers on Saturday so Linda kindly drove us to Jill's although it was my turn really (Thanks so much Linda x). I didn't achieve much scrapping but it was lovely to get together with my scrapping friends for a few hours. It was also great to see Ali, who I have not seen since the Scrapaholix trip to Florida in 2005.

The next picture is the lovely Lemonade Collection.
The Basic Grey newsletter dropped into my e mail box on Saturday too.

I won the raffle at Jill's and this is my prize which I am looking forward to making a start with. As soon as I feel a bit better I plan to do some scrapping.


This is a double LO I made at Jill's crop on Saturday. It shows the two Limos we used while in LA, 18 of us travelled in the first one to Santa Monica and back. The second one was able to take all 27 of us to Universal Studios on the first Saturday we were there. Then as we had time to spare on the second Saturday, so we hired it again for a round trip to Venice Beach, Beverley Hills, Hollywood and back to the hotel in time to get a coach to the airport. They were both amazing and the girls and us mums had a wonderful time.

I used Bazzill Cardstock from Jill's wonderful wide range and a selection of Sassafralass from Vanessa at Paper Maze, Serendipity 'Robotics' line. I worked from a Page Map for the LHS and then reversed the look for the RHS. The LHS has a pocket at the bottom left which holds several more photographs of our outings. The black velvet lettering is from Making Memories. I don't know where the brown letter stickers came from other than my sticker drawer!