Always

There is a lovely, romantic new Papermaze Kit for February, available from the store now. I have created four kits using this kit and the first two ar published on the Papermaze blog today. Here is the first of those layouts with an official photo from my daughter's wedding at Cooling Caslte in Kent.

Please see the blog for details of how the layout was made.

From the Kit I used:
 
Simple Stories - Simple Vintage Love Story collection - 2x2/4x4 Elements
Bazzill Walnut Cream
wooden hearts
water droplet unicorn hearts
exclusive acrylic word

From my stash I used:
Distress Oxide Inks
Cling foam alphabet stamps from Tim Holtz (Idea-ology Type Lower)
49 and Market - Gabi's Stitches Clear Stamp Set
Onyx Black Versafine ink
Gems and water droplets
 

That's all for today. back with more tomorrow.
Thanks for looking.
Lynn x

The Wedding of Bert and Bertha

Another Twilight Crafts Summer Cyber Crop layout and challenge #13 - Tic Tac Toe - I chose PAint and Texture Paste, Inks and Flowers.
The photo is from 1938 and shows my great Uncle Bert marrying Bertha.    

I used:
Prima - Aquarelle Dreams - Bloom and Blossom
Gabriella Polloco Stencil
Texture Paste
White Acrylic Paint
Distress Inks
Purple cardstock
Doilies
Fabric flowers
Flat backed pearls
Gems
Cricut title
LDRS Creative - One Fine Day - puffy letter stickers

Thanks for looking
Lynn x

Explore - Tunstall Forest

Another layout created for the May Peartree Cutfile Peardrop Challenge. Marie's challenge was to use a stencilling.

Here are Hannah and Lucy exploring Tunstall Forest.

I used :
Mini Winged Exploration Stencil by Gabrielle Polloco
Cosmo Cricket papers and stickers
Distress Oxide

Here is the cutfile:

Thanks for looking,
Lynn x

Turkish Delight

We had our annual scrapbooking weekend away at Easthampstead Park a couple of weeks ago. A great time with friends who love crafting, some I see regularly, others only get to meet up once a year. Great fun was had with all these lovely ladies, as we crafted while being looked after by the staff.

Another great thing about these weekends and crafting in like-minded company means you always have others to offer suggestions and ideas when you are stuck. One area I often seek ideas for - is titles for my scrapbook pages and this page was no exception (Thanks Linda x).

This is a photo of my daughter Catherine, her boyfriend George, and their friends Lucy and Louie, on holiday in Turkey last year. Catherine had arranged these colourful cocktails which they enjoyed on arrival. 

The things I used (some of which are old and from my stash):

The layout is quite sparkly (difficult to capture) due to the use of Stampendous Frantage Embossing Enamel - Shabby White used on the Dusty Attic Chipboard Pieces after painting with White Acrylic Paint.
Papers - Maja Design - Coffee in the Arbour Collection - Lemon Meringue Pie & Homemade Lemon Curd.

49 & Market Stamps

Layering Stencil

Martha Stewart Border Punch
Sizzix Butterfly Thinlits Die
Art Ingredients Glass Beads

American Crafts Twine
Cheesecloth
Blossoms
We R Memory Keepers Letter Stickers
Texture Paste
Scattered Straw Distress Ink Pad

Based on ideas gathered from the work of Gabrielle Polloco

Happy holidays

Thanks for looking

Lynn x

Garden Girl

This layout shows my daughter Emily dressed for a dance show.

 Over on scrapology this month we are scraplifting Gabrielle Polloco and challenging you to use YARN on your layout. Here is Gabrielle's original layout using Bo Bunny's Country Garden papers ...

 .. and our sketch

I also used Bo Bunny papers and selected seeds, stripe and cut outs.

Here is what I did:

Cut green garden stripe paper, to leave a 1” border frame, distress and ink the outer edges.

I used Seeds paper cut down to 11.5” x 11.5” by taking some off more than two sides to keep the parts of design I wanted. I didn't worry about cutting off stitches as I planned to add them back in later. Distress and ink the edges. Stick blue paper to green border centrally, giving a border of 0.25” all round.

Decorate with some brown machine stitches.

Distress and ink the edges of photo and mount onto green paper leaving a very thin border. Machine stitch in white round the photo edges, starting and beginning at the bottom as this will be hidden. Distress and ink the edges of green paper.

Cut stripe paper vertically as wide as you can and approx. 6” long. Distress, ink and stitch around three sides. Select two panels from ‘Cut Out sheet and treat as stripe. Stick stripe piece lightly on layout about 3” down from top and 1.75” in from the left.

Draw a 6.8” circle very lightly in pencil, and zig-zag stitch around the lines (start and stop where the stitches won’t show). If pencil lines show, carefully rub away. Stick other panels into place.

POTTED PLANT - Cut flower pot in Kraft Bazzill using QuicKutz die. Shade with chalk inks. Add top to pot with 3D foam pads. Cut ‘stick’ from brown Bazzill using Cricut and 'Doodlecharms' cartridge at 3” and add to pot.

Use pink coloured section of spare patterend papers and punch out lots of petals with Martha Stewart ‘Hydranga’ punch. Ink in pink and layer up on stick to make potted hydrangea. Decorate the centres with stickles, perfect pearls or flat backed pearls. Stick plan to left of layout.

BRANCH - Cut 2” branch and leaves from brown and green Bazzill using ‘Straight from the Nest’ Cricut Cartridge. Add to top left of page and add blossoms cut and prepared in the same way as the Hydrangea.

BANNER - Cut ‘Believe in Yourself’ banner from ‘cut out ‘ sheet, ink the edges and add over banner on layout wit 3D foam pads.

FLOWER BED / FENCE - Cut flower bed from brown Bazzill using template provided. Stick along base of photo. Cut two fence panels at 1.5” using white Bazzill and Paper Dolls Dress Up Cartridge for Cricut. Ink, overlap and stick together to make one longer fence. Stick with 3D foam pads towards bas of flower bed.

Make 9  mini seed packs using QK die and Kraft Bazzill. Draw some tiny seed pack images. Cut out and stick images to packets. Cut some spare Brown Bazzill into thin strips to make sticks to add to seed packets. Arrange in flower bed, slightly behind fence so the peep over the top.
Add garden twine to fence twisting and looping along the way.

I drew the little seed packet images and coloured them with my Promarkers. Because Linda and I make up kits which we sell via Cradinal Colours I made these images available in black and white as well as colour for the kits. I am aslo happy to send your the images to anyone who wants them - just drop me an email.

Cut butterflies from patterned paper and arrange on layout.

Add some blossoms and flat backed pearls for centres.

Use Cricut and ‘George and Basic Shapes’ cartridge cut a title 1” high with shadow using brown and green Bazzill. Add title to top right of layout.

Write journalling on one of the panels beside the photo.

And it's finished!

Thanks for looking. Please pop over to scrapology for more details of the challenge and prize.

Miss Nightingale

At our Debden weekend I made this layout with a photo of my daughter Emily.

She was dressed for school Victorian Day.

I was very inspired by a beautiful layout by Gabrielle Polloco.

I used Basic Grey Porcelain paper collection.

I did a fair bit of distressing, inking and machine stitching.

I made the little flower pot by cutting some paper into shape and inking to shade.

The branches were cut using the cricut.

The blossoms for the hydranger we cut using Linda's Martha Stewart punch. I inked each one and layerd the with 3D foam pads.

Flat backed pearls were added to the centre of the flowers.

I cut the cage and bird using the Sizzix, Th bird is cut from patterend papers.

The cage is brown cardstock, dry brushed with white paint and sprayed with shimmer mists.

I added large eyelets to the holes at the bottom of the cage.

I also used the butterfly punch (Martha Stewart).

American Craft Sticker letters.

Gems, stickles and some ribbon.

I had great fun creating this page, thanks for looking.

Lynn x

Belle of the Ball

Here is my layout for the May Scrapology Challenge.

The photo is my daughter Catherine ready for her school prom back in 2008.

This is the sketch we used....

based on this layout by Liberty Chance.

I selected three double sided papers from the Prima Marketing Sparkling Spring Collection. All available from Vanessa at Paper Maze.

Rosebud

Pink Apron

Berry Fresh

I took a sheet of plain white 12"x12"paper and cut two strips from the plaid side of the 'Pink Apron' paper. One 3" for the top of the page and the other 3 1/2" for the bottom of the page.

Here is how I made the vine. I took inspiration from Gabrielle Pollacco and a short tutorial video I found on her blog.

Finished vine

I used 2 pearl and gold bead sprays, 4 rose leaves, 2 each of three different sizes of paper roses (these items are all wired), florist's tape, ribbon. All these pieces are available at Hobbycraft.

Start off by taking a bead spray and start winding the tape around the wire stem, where the beads end and the wire starts. This tape binds to itself and is easy to manipulate int shape. Keep twisting your vine as you work your way down adding in flowers and leaves as you go.

Every so often I took the end of a wire from a flower or leaf and pulled it away from the vine so it is not covered by tape. I return to these later.

At the end return to these short wires and wrap round a pencil to make a spiral, then bend into place where you want the tendril to be.

I used a tool handle to spiral the bead sprays.

At the end of the vine twist the tape round on itself so it covers the ends and tear off.

I added a hint of pink to my paper roses with chalk ink and sparkle with Stickles.  The vine can be stitched or glued to the layout.

Pop over to the Scrapology blog for details of the challenge and to enter for your chance of winning the prize generously donated by Jill of Cardinal Colours, to be announced later in the month.

Vanessa of Paper Maze will be offering some blog candy on the Scrapology blog some time this month. So keep a look out for that too.

Venice

Here is my design team page for the March SCRAPOLOGY challenge.

The photo is my daughter Catherine in Venice shopping. She was fascinated by the masks chose a small one to bring home as a souvenir.

The challenge this month is to scraplift this layout by Gabrielle Pollacco.

Here is the sketch.

I used three sheets of Basic Grey Curio, from Cardinal Colours those flowers go a very long way! - I ended up with some over, so will make a card, or use them on another layout.

 I used curio cotton (pink for background), ...

... Ophelia for scraps behind background and flowers, ...

... and then Camellia for more flowers and to cut the circle.

I used some bazzill (dark chocolate) as a base for my layout and gutted it to give me some over for mounting my photo later. Then trimmed my cotton patterned paper down to roughly 11x11" with tattered torn edges. I then tore further into the paper in a couple of places. The edges were all inked before placing onto the bazzill. I tore a couple of pieces from the Ophelia paper and tucked these into the spaces, so the turquoise flower base pattern shows through the tears in the plain pink.

I cut a circle from the pink geometric side of the Camellia paper. I mounted my photo on some bazzill and cut round with some scalloped scissors. I arranged these onto the layout, but before sticking down edged the circle in lace (only where the lace will show, it would be too bulky to have the lace under the photo). I used less than half a yard of antique style lace.

Then came the cutting and layering of the flowers. The print is exactly the same on both sheets, the background is simply a different colour. I cut lots of flowers and arranged the first layer onto the place flat. For the next two layers I curved the flowers with my scissor blade, and added them with 3D Sticky Fixer foam pads to add dimension. Further dimension was added by painting the finished flowers with Glossy Accents.
Here are some close up shots of the layering and glossed flowers.

I used Stickles - 'Tiara' to dot around on the big circle and 'Distress - Frayed Burlap' for stamen, and Liquid Pearls 'Perfect Pink' for dots on photo mat. All these are by Ranger inks and available from Cardinal Colours.

The torn text is from a tatty secondhand poetry book, I distressed it further with some chalk inks.

The title was cut from the bazzill scraps using the Storybook Cartridge for the Cricut.

Thanks for looking and don't forget to join in with the March challenge on SCRAPOLOGY