Stop

The whole title should be Stop It! It is about my son's somewhat "destructive" tendencies.  Not done in malice, more like an irresistible impulse to poke, pull and push anything that is pokable, pullable or pushable if you get my meaning.

To be honest, his latest destruction - our TV -  is not typical, it was an  accident while playing the Wii, but coming after some other damages, like this laptop of mine that is missing the "esc" key, made me list some of his latest damages.

*Patterned Paper: Studio Calico (green) American Crafts(orange)
*Chipboard letters: Basic Grey
*Punch: Fiskars
*Font: Franklin Gothic Book
*Other: Buttons

Of course, the photo has nothing to do with it. I am usually somewhere when these things happen.  I need to install a cctv at home...

Fota

We went to Fota Wildlife Park while we were in Cork, and we really enjoyed being able to get close to the animals there. Weird to see Brazilian capiravas wandering in the fields in Ireland. Sadly some children (not  mine) chased them away before I could take a photo of them.

I love Shimelle's Ornate Frames and was wondering how to use them again when I got this idea of colouring them white. With a bit of drop shadow, they almost look like transparencies.

*Digital Papers: A Retro Summer by Leiko Beck Designs (plain), You are Here by Paislee Press and The Queen of Quirk (patterned)
*Digital Frames: Ornate Frames by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
*Alphas: Pink Polka Alphabet by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
*Thread: Yarn Swirls #3 by Katie Pertiet @ Designer Digitals (Scrapbook Inspirations Freebie)
*Font: 2Peas Sailboat @ Two Peas in a Bucket

Do you have an iPhone?

I don't, and I don't need one, since I am the most basic mobile phone user, I hardly ever use it to take photos.

But if I had an iPhone and the Hipstamatic app, I would use the camera all the time. There was an article (about bikes) in Martha Stewart's Living where all the photos were taken with it and I wasn't the only one that loved it, isn't this gorgeous?

   (source)

Talking about layering...

Here's another attempt. I like this one better - one mistake I can see in my previous layout is that I didn't varied much the size of the elements, here I have used 3 flowers in different sizes and texture, but matching in colour. Works better. I think.

I have a box of photos are repeats or else, that never made into the album nor the scrapbook pages. This was one of them. My daughter when she was a toddler, she always loved bathtime.

The background paper is special to me. It is part of a block of papers that I won in a scrapbook competition in Cara Craft Supplies, back in 2005. I spent a whole month working on the layout. It stayed in my dining room table and every evening I'd take a look at it, shift a few elements add another one, until I was happy with it. I am  faster now. Not much, but a little bit more :-)

The doily was coloured with watered down mist, another technique from Celine's class, she used fabric but I didn't have anything suitable so I used paper. I still have one layout to finish from her classes.

*Paper: Papers of the World, Claire Fontaine
*Flowers: Scarlet Lime (fabric flower), Prima (green flower), Studio Calico (pink rose and leaves)
*Letter Stickers: October Afternoon
*Chipboard: Heidi Grace Designs
*Mist: Cosmic Shimmer
*Butterfly: LittleSnippets @ Etsy
*Others: lacy ribbon, jute, button, doily, mist

May 2010

In general I like flat layouts, but sometimes I feel that I am constrained by my inability to layer and cluster elements together. I decided to practice a bit. This is my first not very sucessful attempt, I'll post my next one soon.

The background paper is a digital paper that I "distressed" using brushes and printed on white Bazzil.

*Digital Paper and Tag: A New Leaf by Paislee Press and Audacious Designs @ Oscraps
*Brushes: T9 Dirty Sprays from www.tutorial9.net
*Flowes: Prima
*Flower Centres: SEI
Other: Organza Ribbon, Foam Letters

Howth

Last weekend we got a call from a friend - would the kids like to go for  a boat trip around Howth harbour? They said yes - my intention was to stay inland and take some photos, but I was told I could get much better photos from the boat. He was right.

 

On the way back, in the car, my husband stopped so that I could take some more photos, there was a light mist, giving the whole scene a washed out watercolour-like feel.  I played with some of the Pioneer Woman's actions for PSE, to make it look like an old photo.

The Girls

In July I went with the children to a friend's place in Portugal - two mums and 4 children - the poor dads stayed back in Ireland working, though I claim that spending a week without children is a sort of holiday even if you have to go to the office 9-5 :-)

I made a quick digital layout, using Shimelle's newest kit, with a photo of one of the boys took of us:

*Digital Template: Instant Pretty Page Template by Shimelle Laine @ Two Peas in a Bucket
*Digital Papers and Embellishments: Bazinga! by Shimelle Laine@ Two Peas in a Bucket (damask paper), Delovely by Paislee Press @ Oscraps (everything else)
*Title: Wynken, Blynken and Nod by Katie Pertiet @ Designer Digitals

A butterfly card

One of the beauties of digital kits is that you can change colours to suit your mood. The original butterfly in the Bazinga kit was blue, and I changed it to black and coloured it. The paper is also from the same kit - I love Bazinga.

The word art is from Nini, she has gorgeous word art kit downloadable from her blog. Thank you Nini!

*Paper and Butterfly: Bazinga! by Shimelle Laine at Two Peas in  a Bucket
*Word Art: Bits of Life by Suddenly Artistic
*Punch: XCut
*Also: clear gems.

Finally a card

I have been slow to craft and even slower to post since the summer holidays started.

Here's a layout I've done a few weeks ago. The layout is based on this layout/sketch from the Studio Calico blog.

* Letters: K&Co (wordgrain), Making Memories (small, black)
*Chipboard buttons:Jenni Bowlin
*Font: VT Portable Remington
*Roller Stamp: Glitz Designs

I am the sort of person who finds almost impossible to throw stuff out. It is mostly a curse, but sometimes it pays off - after I stuck the photo, title and buttons I felt something was missing in the background, but what could I do without having to rip the whole layout apart? Then I found this roller stamp which came in a kit, perfect to add a little more interest in this mostly white layout.

Celine used image transfer in one of her classes, which used a image printed with a laser printer. Since my printers are both inkjet, I had to adapt the technique. I printed the image in photo paper, applied a medium gel and transferred the pic to Bazzil cardstock. As you can see, it didn't work that well, there's a few annoying missing bits on my son's face. Later, Carrie explained to me where I went wrong. In fact she has a tutorial in her blog, so next time I'll know how to do it properly, thanks Carrie.

By the way, do you know to find something in a site using google? That's what I typed in google:

site:http://madebycaroline.blogspot.com/ image transfer tutorial

The "site:" directive makes google look for the keywords only in the site you specified ;-)