Adventure and Rain

Last month my daughter went camping for the first time. It was supposed to be a 4-day/3-night trip, and you can't believe how much stuff she had to pack for that. Look at the size of her backpack! It rained to hard on the second night that they had to cut the trip short. Her sleeping back and PJs were soaking wet when she came how. Still, she loved the experience!

*Patterned Paper: Pink Paislee, My Mind's Eye, Crate Paper

*Stamp: Studio Calico

*Stickers: American Crafts for SC (letters), Cosmo Criket (small, rhs)

*Mist: Studio Calico

*Embossing Powder: American Crafts

*Ink: Versamark

*Digital Images: Ya Yeah Designs @ Two Peas in  a Bucket

*Punch: Woodware

The Moody Miss Journal cards by Ya Yeah designs were perfect for the layout!

A quick card

I am doing an online class on stamping; Studio Calico's Summer Stamp Class. The first lesson covered stamping off, which is to stamp several times with same stamp without reinking in between. I have still to produce a good result but am having lots of fun!

* Stamps: Studio Calico

* Ink: Tsukineko (versafine, versamagic, versamark)

* Embossing Powder: American Crafts

*Other: Cardstock and button

I am not great at stamping so this is a way to work on my skills and also to try to use them in scrapbooking.

When I had a chance to get into a rubbers stamp shop in London I bought a couple of versafine inkpads and am converted to them. They really give a good impression and it is the only one which worked well for this technique.

Bubble Love

I have a childish love of soap bubbles - one of the easiest and cheapest toys you could ever imagine -  no matter how many times I see them, they still fascinate me.

* Patterned Papers:  My Mind's Eye (floral black and white/yellow stripes), Crate Paper (dark yellow)

* Twine:The Twinery

* Pen: Unibal Signo

* Punch: EK Success (label)

* Stapler: Tiny attacher; Tim Holtz

* Shape: Love in circle by Karla Dudley; Silhouette Store

* Digital Die Cutter: Silhouette Cameo

Most of the layouts I have done lately are from a Studio Calico kit; Brooklyn Flea. I had used most of the patterned papers and this one (floral black & white on one side, yellow stripes on the other) was the last one left. Altough I liked it, I was afraid the paper make the layout look too dark. It is a bit contradictory that I ended up using it with such an airy subject, but I loved how it turned out.

Colourful popcorn

Last time in Brazil, my children discovered coloured popcorn. I don't want to think how much artificial adictives there were there, but hopefully once in a while, it won't hurt.

* Patterned Papers: My Mindy's Eye (black floral, read), Crate Paper (dark yellow), 

Pink Paislee (circles, floral blue), Echo Park (yellow hexagons),

* Buttons: Crate Paper

* Fonts: Bebas Neue (title), Underwood Champion (journaling)

The title was printed in Paint Shop Pro. PSP has a nice feature where you can print only the outline of the any text. I printed the solid text with assorted colours and the outline in black with a slight offset.

Journaling:

"Since we go to Brazil every year, you and Lucy have already developed some “traditions”, that is, things that you like to do when we go there. One of them is to go to a feira. Feira is a street market, initially they used to sell vegetables, but bit by bit they developed and now you can get meat, household stuff, pirate DVDs, toys, plants, clothes, costume jewelry, herbal medicine, even ornamental fish. Whatever. You name it. But we go for the food. Specially pastéis. I am mad about pastel and now you are too. This year, in Prudente, we stopped in a feira after a busy day in the swimming pool. Of course we had pastéis and then went to explore the other delicacies of the feira. And we found this: colorful popcorn. Who knows, perhaps another tradition in the making?"

As I reread the journaling to post, I discovered that I wrote "two" instead of "too" in the layout. Tell me,,w many more spelling mistakes are still left? Or maybe, don't tell me, I'll get depressed.

Some layout and a birthday banner

I am trying to get the right balance between design and content in a layout. While I want to make things that are pleasing to the eye, what matters most is the content - the photos and the story. With that in mind, I am making an effort to add more journaling to my layouts. Or at least most of them. There's no harm in a fluffy, cute layout every now and them. Like having a calorie-full, vitamin-poor treat after a nourishing meal.

* Patterned Paper: Basic Grey (blue dots), My Mind's Eye (red and pink; red and white), Echo Park (yellow),  Pink Paislee (blue floral)

* Buttons: Crate Paper

* Fonts: Bebas Neue (title), Century Gothic (journaling)

* Tool: Silhouette Cameo

* Triangles shape: my own

This one is to be the cover page for 2011 project 12 (layout a month). The previous years' one was a labour of love, but 2011's is a quickie...

* Patterned Paper: Basic Grey

* Font: Bebas Neue
* Tool: Silhouette Cameo

 Inspired by this cool magazine illustration:

Source: houseind.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Two things I am using a lot: the Silhouette Cameo and the font Bebas Neue. Here's a birthday banner for my son, also using both of them:

*Fonts: Bebas Neue, Console Relay

*Tool: Silhouette Cameo

*Other: Cardstock, eyelets, twine

Not every exciting, but there are two things that might interest you if you have a Silhouette or Craft Robot. Notice the Happy Birthday on the first flag? If I had cut only the letters, I'd have to glue them one by one trying to keep everything aligned. I added a line above and below the letters, just touching them so the whole thing is in one piece. Very clever idea from Patricia Zapata - she has a freebie on her blog with the idea, but the format was not compatible with the Cameo so I made my own.

The other one is the Console Relay font - an interesting font and bit unusual.

New use for Promarkers

I am always trying to find new uses for my supplies. This was an unexpected one.

My son and his friends wanted to make some "arts & crafts". I thought some leaf printing could be something fun and not too messy. The idea is to gather some leaves, paint them and them press the leaves to paper so you are left with leaf imprint.

I just went and gathered some acrylic paint, got the boys to get some leaves in the back garden and happily they spent about 1/2 hour. So did I.

Later I noticed that my son's tracksuit top was covered in pink acrylic paint. I had the feeling it would not wash out that easily. And it didn't, all the paint was still there after a 40 degree wash.

I googled "remove acrylic paint" and the first hit was an entry in Claudine Hellmuth's blog. I was pleased, if anybody should know, it was her. She recommended rubbing alcohool. Which I didn't have. I went to the liquor cabinet and found vodka. (Yes, you can roll your eyes now). Until it hit me that I could try Promakers, as they are alcohool based. I had a blender promarker, which is colourless. As soon as I rubbed the marker on the dried paint, it became wet again. I scribbled over all the paint marks, put the tracksuit back in the wash and it came clean! Eureka!

Father's Day cards

Do your children make Father's Day card in school? I seem to remember that we always made either a card or an "arty thing" for Mother and Father's Day, but it doesn't seem to be the case in my children's school.

I particularly remember a necklace that we made for our mothers, it was made of pasta and beads which we varnished once finished. The (uncooked, of course) pasta shapes were those that we put in minestroni, little rings and stars and now I can imagine how the poor mothers had to wear these prickly necklaces for months to make us happy.

Usually I get the children to draw their own cards, but this year I had an idea of having them posing with handwritten speech bubbles and making a card out of it.

My son decided to write something a bit nonsensical "daddy call me maybe" (after the song), and when I argued that it didn't had anything to do with Father's Day, he completely lost interest and asked my daughter to write something for him. I regretted that I opened my mouth, as the point was having something with his own handwriting.

Here's my son's card, closed:

open:

My daughter's closed:

open:

 She came up with this:
"Every Dad needs a cheer.
That's why father's Day is here!"

Love it!

The font is Blackout, I tend to use typewriter like fonts and Century Gothic, but this one really made the cards!

The bubbles are part of the preset shapes in PSE, and I just added a coloured border to it. Here it is in case you want to download. Click to get the right size and then right click to save.

TFL!