Friday 27 January 2012

Bold cursive fonts

One of the reasons I wanted the Silhouette was to cut titles for my scrapbook pages. I compiled a selection of beautiful bold cursive fonts. Apparently cursive does not imply necessary joined up, but that's what I mean by cursive here.

Tuesday 24 January 2012

December Summary

I mentioned that I had made two "kits" from my existing supplies. The second kit is inspired by this artwork by Michael Kosmicki:


What I like about it is that it as a lot of impact. I tend to avoid pastel colours, but this shows how pastel blue can pack a punch.


This is something else which I like using the same colours:

Noticed the justaposition of drawing and shapes? Plus cream over white?

So here's my kit:

It looks a lot brighter in the photo, but in real life the only strong colours comes from the SEI ticket sheet on the right hand side.

That's my first layout with kit 2:


*Patterned Paper: My Mind's Eye - Lost and Found 2 (dots), Crate Paper - Portrait Collection (green), Studio Calico note (blue and white chain)
*Letter Stickers: Basic Grey - Micro Mono Alpha
*Gems: Kaiser Scrapbook
*other: snowflake die cut, velum, Advantus tiny attacher, foam adhesive

I am happy with this one, but probably only works because of the giant snowflake which I pinched from a Christmas card we got.

Wednesday 18 January 2012

Clearing the backlog

This was half-finished for weeks, while i was trying to figure out what was missing.

* Digital Elements: Karla Dudley (paper, page protector), Shimelle Laine (November word art), Ali Edwards(quote)
* Mists: Studio Calico
* Pattterned Paper: October Afternoon (yellow), My Mind's Eye(blue)
* Rub-ons:
*Ticket stub: SEI

Finally I decided to add the embellishment of the moment: confetti! But the paper punch was upstair and I was too lazy to get it - I used a much bigger circle punch instead. Also added some faux stitching. The stitching is a old rub-on, love when I find uses for old stash!

The photos are in a digital page protector, when I saw this in Karla Dudley's blog I couldn't resist - I usually don't like digital elements which emulate real-life stuff, but this is very cool!

Saturday 14 January 2012

Trying to grow

Maybe I am not trying enough, maybe I am trying to make too many things but lately I hadn't made things that I LOVED. I made things that were OK, that were reasonably happy with but nothing that make my heart sing.

Then I read this in Kelly Purkey's blog:

"In May of this year something went off in my head. Or I should say, was lit under my booty.  I sat down at my desk and decided I was sick of making layouts just to get them done.  I wanted to push myself create work that would be something that I was really proud of.  Not intentionally make layouts that people would love, but make something that I was personally proud of for putting time and energy into.  Projects that I felt I was giving my best creative engery to. Do you know what I mean?"

That's it, making things that makes me proud. That's what I want to do this year. I am not claiming I have figured it out how  - or that I'll be proud of everything I'll do. But that's what I am aiming for.

I really want to do this using what I have at home instead buying more and more. I looked through copies of inspirational photos, crafts and colour schemes that I had saved (lately I've been using Pinterest for that) and I pulled two that I liked.

Based on them I went through my stash and made two kits.

Kit #1 is based on this photo of an old Crewcut catalog:


Brights against a background of neutrals (black & white). Which is something that always gets my attention. I added a bit of green to the mix, so that I could use it for my Christmas layouts - and I had kit #1.

And that kick started my resolution - I made this layout which made me proud for the first time in a while. It is very simple, no patterned paper, only a few bits from the kit itself. But it is a layout that I like now and I know I'll always like because it is simple and it has something that matters to me (the white paper is a copy of my daughter's letter to Santa - i added the buttons so it can be pulled from the "envelope").



* Cardstock: Bazzill
* Letter Stickers: American Crafts
* Twine: Studio Calico
* Font: Underwood Champion
* Other: Buttons

 And you, what you do want to do in creative terms in 2012?

Thursday 12 January 2012

October 2011

I seem to have gone through a scrapbooking dry phase, when I hardly scrapped and less still photo photos of my layouts. Hopefully I'll be more prolific this month, this is one I finished a while ago.


* Patterned Paper: Crate Paper
*Stamps/Mist: Studio Calico
*Ink: Stazon




The patterned paper was an old one which I thought it would be suitable for this layout, but it turned out to be a bit too "loud". I managed to subdue it a bit by misting it with white mist.

Wednesday 11 January 2012

A new toy

My husband got me an eletronic cutting tool; the Silhouette Cameo.


I am still struggling with it as depending on the thickness of the material it needs to be set differently, and I've had occasions where the same settings didn't work for the exactly the same paper.

But when it works it is lots of fun. My first idea is based on Lisa Andersson's card shown here. After a few trial and errors I got the shape more or less right and combined with a snowflake shape which came with the machine to make this card:


TFL!

Sunday 8 January 2012

70 days of Project 365

I am so happy that today I have completed 70 days  of the Project 365 (photo a day for a year).

Actually I am hoping to do 428 days since in the 1st of January I started the Photo A Day class in Studio Calico. It is great to have a community which supports each other as you can imagine sometimes it is hard to keep it going.

Nicole Samuels, who is teaching the class, introduced us to shuttercal.com and I have uploaded all my pics in the site.  I also am uploading in Flickr and am planning to have an album printed at the end of the year, but the beauty of shuttercal is that it is in calendar format.

I haven't posted my album pages for a while and won't bore you with pages and pages - I'll only post this week's compilation.



They're snapshots, not portraits, but it is a start. One of the photos didn't go at all with the others, so I decided not to have it here.

Next week I am shooting food!

Have a nice week, TFL.