Formal Elephant Bottoms

Can you have too much going on when making a card for a special occasion?

It's not a trick question: of course you can!  I suspect I may be slightly over the line of what is completely coherent with the wedding card below, but there are no apologies from me - I love it! (even if I do say so myself)

This was a wedding card for a friend of mine, for whom I made wedding invitations.  I incorporated the same blue (Soft Sky) that I used for the invitations, and contrasted it with the darker Dapper Denim.  The background is a piece of handmade (yes, by me!) felt, and the elephants were included because they were narrowly rejected for the actual invitations - but how cute are they?!

So, it's a bit busy, but hopefully it meant something to the recipient, and I enjoyed myself making it.

Happy Crafting!

Magic Colours

I am loving this techniqe!  So much so, in fact, that I'm thinking of including it in a class in July..?

What I really love, though, is the vibrancy of the colours.  I'm well known for my love of rainbows, and they are never far away from my thought processes when I'm making and designing.  But so often we restrict ourselves to colours that "go together": all pinks, or carefully thought out combinations of neutral tones with one brighter accent.  We want our work to stand out (don't we?) but we also seem to stick to more unobtrusive combinations most of the time.

So, here's a challenge!  Pick some colours at random: just grab four from the drawer or the rack or wherever you keep them; pick a letter and use just colours that start with that letter; scroll through Pintrest and pick the first three colours you see mentioned.  However you get your colours, use them, all together.  I will share my results below: will you?

Happy Crafting!

Scrapping Away

I love my scrapbooking, but it's one of those things I tend to do in fits and starts.  Sometimes I get all efficient and get to the bottom of my "to be scrapbooked" pile, but then other times I realise the pile has reached epic proportions.  This means I haven't done much for a while, and then I feel sad 😔 But then I try to set some time aside to get on top of it all, and I have a whale of a time!

As you can see, I didn't have too far back to go this time.  My first page of the weekend was Easter.  This pic was printed as a collage, but I struggled to fit it with any other pictures, so in the end decided to give it a page of its own.  I love finding different uses for stamps, and the streaky background was created with one of the watercolour streak stamps from the Waterfront set.  The paper is from the Colour Theory DSP stack (SO gutted that one is retiring), and the cross is from "Hold on to Hope".

Next, another couple of collaged pics and an ever-so-slightly silly one of me!  I doodled the background on this one using the Old Olive Stampin'Write marker, then making the flowers with the spot stamp (again from Waterfront - it's so versatile!) and finishing them off with a little fingerprint in Mango Melody.  Who says I'm too old for finger painting?!

I order photos every month through Freeprints, and it's a great way of getting a really good selection of every-day shots as well as recording special events.  It can sometimes be hard to find a home for the every-day pics, though.  Special occasions are great: several pics go nicely together on one page, perhaps with a few little mementos or some well-chosen Memories & More cards to bring it all together.  Everyday shots, however, are usually more individual, which is why I love this idea of making four mini-pages (6"x6") and putting them all together.

And finally, this is the reason I scrapbook:

Not only do I enjoy it, and enjoy looking back on the finished pages, but the Badger Cub also loves looking through them.  He often requests to look at them in leiu of bedtime stories, which I think is ever so sweet (although may be more to do with the fact that it generally takes longer... hm...), so I know it's a worthwhile hobby which we will all get pleasure from for years to come.





Happy Crafting!

Pattern Play

Sometimes the simplest things can be the most effective, and yet it's easy to dismiss them or to forget about them entirely.  How striking is this simple triangle pattern?  I started doing this just to get all my Blends colours in one place, but liked it so much that I turned it into two card toppers.  Now I'm itching to try the same with some more simple patterns!

All Friends Together

So, you know that Stampin'Up! sells products, right?  But did you know that it's also one of the most amazingly supportive, encouraging and loving companies around?  They don't have a mission statement, as many companies do: instead they have a Statement of the Heart, which asks us:

"To love what we do and share what we love, 

as we help others enjoy creativity 

and worthwhile accomplishments.

In this we make a difference."

In Stampin'Up! we are all one big team, but of course we have smaller teams too.  Here are some little goodies I made for my team recently, to get us all used to the new colours - it took ages, but was oddly therapeutic!  And they were very well received, which made it all worthwhile.  I am so lucky to have such wonderful ladies around me in work that I love - if you'd like to join us, just drop me a line to find out more!

Making It Work For You

I have a little scrapbooking club, attended by a marvellous group of young ladies.  Most of them are relatively new to scrapbooking, but have taken to it in a big way!  I have posted page layouts on this blog before, but I thought I'd talk about something a little bit different today: planning ahead for scrapbooking.

One of the major frustrations of scrapbooking is that the photo you reeeeally want to use in a particular spot simply isn't the right size or shape.  Ever been there?  I know I have!  So, here are a few tips and tricks that I've picked up over the last few years.

1) When taking photos, always take two of the same thing: one landscape, one portrait.  In the age of digital cameras we don't lose anything by doing this, and it can save a lot of frustration further down the line.  Remembering to do it doesn't always come easy (I'm still a bit rubbish at it), but if you can remember this step then half the battle is won.

2) Make use of collages.  Most smartphones and some cameras come with this fuction, but there are also apps that give you a lot more options in terms of layout, backgrounds, etc.  There are loads out there, but I use PicCollage - I paid for the full version, and love that I can download new sets of backgrounds and digital stickers when I need them for a very small cost.  But it's the collage function itself that is most useful for scrapbooking:

  

This is not meant as a finished piece - it just means that when I get my photos printed I will get four small photos on one 6x4 print, which will make them much easier to incorporate into their various scrapbook pages.  Putting two photos on one 6x4 print will fit the smaller pockets of the Memories & More pages perfectly.

3) Don't be afraid of leaving "gaps" - a Memories & More card or a nice piece of your favourite DSP will fill it in, and sometimes breaking up the pictures a bit can help to highlight the ones that are there.  In some of the page layouts I know exactly which pockets will have cards in them, because personally I don't like having too many photos all in a row.

Well, that's it - my top scrapbooking tips!  Hope you've found them useful, and Happy Crafting!

Sorry to See You Go

It's sad when favourites retire.  When I joined Stampin'Up! almost three years ago I was baffled by the concept of retiring products: I'd just bought them!  I also stockpiled things ahead of them retiring, only to still have them three years later!

Now, I've changed my mind.  Of course, there are a few things I hoard (glitter unicorn papers, ahem!), and a few "keeper" sets, but I'm confident enough now to know that Stampin'Up! will be replacing the retiring products with new, better ones, sets that will refresh our makes and our classes, and build on what skills we and our customers already have.  New products are a fantastic opportunity, because they increase our teaching resources as well as giving us and our customers new products to drool over!

That in mind, here is my make: a New Home card.  I have used an already-retired embossing folder for the roof, and one that is - sob! - retiring this time for the brickwork.

The windows and door are all made with the Home Sweet Home thinlets, and this set is definitely a keeper for me.  It's so versatile, and has so many pieces that are perfectly sized for cards as well as 3D makes, so I urge you to invest if you haven't already before it's gone for good!  The trees don't have thinlets - they were handcut.

I used fine-tip glue to "colour in" the windows, to give them a glassy look.  I'm not sure how noticable that is, but it makes me pleased with myself 😁

And it even folds flat to put in an envelope!  Go me!

I'm now trying to decide if I need to paint my own front door yellow...?

We've got an awesome hop going on today, so do click through and see what's going on with some of the other Jems! Hope to see you soon!

What's In A Name?

Well, quite a bit. really!  One of my best ever Stampin'Up! purchases was the Large Letter Thinlets - I use them all the time, and they can be used for literally any type of card (and I don't use the word "literally" lightly!).  I've had the joy of needing a new baby card and a first birthday card recently, and wanted to personalise them to make them extra special.  What better way to do that than to incorporate the respective recipients' names?

 

I have to say, I'm going to miss the reduced number of blue inks with the colour refresh, but I love the new In Colours so much I'll probably live ;o)