A Little Halloween Treat

Happy Halloween!!!!

I have a few bits  and pieces of Doodlebug's Spook Town collection to give away.



If you are interested, please leave a comment here and I'll get a name out of a hat next Sunday.

And come back, as I'll have a very exciting giveaway soon ;-)

Looking for inspiration

 I am guilty on saving pages of magazines, bookmarking, pinteresting lots of inspirational ideas and not using them effectively.

To combat this, sometimes I am deliberately using a sketch, photo or a design as the starting point for a layout. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.


Michelle La Grue found this sketch by Becky Fleck:

I strayed from the sketch, but still you can see where I found the inspiration:

And this cute shoe (by JoyFolie) I found in Pinterest:

Source: joyfolieblog.com via Elisa on Pinterest

what the inspiration for this layout:

I used everything this time, the colour palette, the stripes, the orange and white round shapes.

A quick mini book

Last month I posted a flag book. The spine of the flag book is a concertina to which you attach paper strips and it got me thinking that I could make a mini book that way. I was almost sure that I had seen something like that before but couldn't find the source.

After I finished mine, I saw a beautiful one by Michelle La Grue, but you have to take my word for it, I took  a quick look and can't see it in her blog.

Summer last year I took the kids to the city centre to buy a tweed cap for my Dad (more of it later). Since we had the whole day, I decided to bring them to visit the National Gallery, the National History Museum, with a stop for lunch in the Kilkenny Design Centre and some fun in the ]Merrion Square playground.

Of course I took my camera  and I planned a mini album based on the trip. It was all the be designed digitally and printed in 6x4 photo paper. One thing about me though, it that I loose steam pretty quickly. If I don't finish something say a week or so, I get bored and start to do something else. Which is what happened.

Last month, I was sorting out my stuff when I came across the printed pages. Then I remembered the idea to make a concertina-based (must find out the proper name for it) mini book and it all came together quickly.

The cover is acetate - I stuck the title there. The spine is held together with Studio Calico fabrips and coloured bias tape (by Lily). The page that you can see through was done digitally; the photo, the border, the background and the sellotape are all digital elements put together in PSE.

And there some of the pages:

I can't resist a colourful wall. And colourful umbrellas.

 Mosaic floor in the National Gallery

 My son modelling the cap.

The journaling is too small to read and way too long also so I'll give you the short version:

My Dad asked me to buy him a tweed cap for him. I told him it was made of wool and unsuitable for where he lives (Brazil). He insisted it was made of cotton because he read it somewhere that it was cotton. No, he wouldn't trust his daughter who lives in Ireland nor his son-in-law who is Irish. So eventually I bought him a tweed cap knowing very well that it would never be used.

*Patterned Paper: scraps from Basic Grey, 7gypsies and October Afternoon among others.
*Digital elements: You are here by Paislee Press and Queen of Quirk,  among others.
*Other: Studio Calico Fabrips, bias tape

Digital layout

This is something I have meaning to do for ages, a photo collage. It's been in the back of my mind since I saw a digital template by Paislee Press a while ago. Then there was this amazing layout by Susan Weinroth.

Finally, after a few false starts, I decided to spend a couple of nights selecting the photos and then adding to the template. They are all photos of my two kiddies taken in 2010 and they are the opening for that year in my project 12 album.

Thank you Liz Tamanaha (a.k.a. Paislee Press). Without her freebie I don't think I would have ever finished this project. Can you imagine resizing and cutting 74 tiny photos?!

I printed the template 10x10 and stuck it into patterned paper but with hindsight I should have done all digitally, I love this zigzag paper which belongs to the same kit as the butterflies.

* Digital Template: Press Plate No. 25 by Paislee Press @ Oscraps.com
* Photoshop actions: Falling for b&w by My Four Hens 
* Background paper (resized), butterfly and word art:  Twenty Twenty by Karla Dudley @ Design House Digital
* Font: Century Gothic

A Flag Book

I've been meaning to try to make a flag book for ages - first I thought it was too difficult, until I read a tutorial and discovered that the making wasn't hard, it was more a matter of deciding what to put inside to make an impact. A bit like making a never ending card.

Finally I decided to bite the bullet and make a test one. I could have crafted it a little bit better but it didn't work out that bad, but definitely the image choice - a photo I took in Rio and photoshopped - lacked impact.

Since it was my brother's birthday yesterday and  I sent it to him last week instead of a proper birthday card, so it wasn't totally useless.

The cover - I am happy with it; it's a family photo that my husband took.

Inside, the flag book itself:

The back:

The "spine" of the book is a concertina to which you attach paper strips; when you open the book and pull the concertina, the paper strips overlap creating a moisac-like image with repeating patterns.

If you do try to make one, choose your image carefully, mine was pretty but boring with too much white space and lacking a strong focal point.

I am definitely going to have another go, but next time, instead of a photo, I'll use random bits of paper. 

Trying new food

While I haven't been completely idle as far as idle as craft is concerned, I haven't taken any photos of what I have managed so far. So I'll change the subject. To food.

Sometime ago I set a goal to try to make a new dish every week.

Why? Because I had fallen into the routine of cooking the same dozen or so dishes that everybody at home liked. Specially after my number two turned out to be a very fussy eater. Or else, cooking something for my husband and I and popping chicken nuggets and chips in the oven for the kids.

I have kept the goal - with a little bit of cheating - but I can't remember exactly what I made and when I made, so my next project is to have a folder with the recipes printed so I can go back to the ones that were sucessful.

The recipes I found in the internet I saved in Pinterest so I can list here, click on the link for a comment and a link the original post/recipe:

Source: skinnytaste.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Source: pink-parsley.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Source: skinnytaste.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Source: jamieoliver.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Source: blogs.babble.com via Elisa on Pinterest

Back from holidays

We had a great time in Brazil, we spent two weeks with my family and I managed squeeze a visit to a beautiful baby girl who was recently adopted by friends of ours. I haven't created much since we arrived on Saturday but I am going to share a couple of layouts I finished a while ago but haven't posted yet.


I had an idea of creating a background with the numbers stamps; it didn't quite work as I had envisaged, I might try it again.  I found a use for my Promarkers - to make borders around my layout. With a ruler and the thicker end of the markers it can be done easily.

And this is the may 2011 layout; this was one layout which wasn't going to have a birder. Until I discovered that I had previous cut a strip of the patterned paper for something else.  I was inspired by something I saw in  Living Etc for this layout.
Something was missing so I dig the "remember this moment" stamp and stamped twice diagonally. Somehow it made the whole thing look better.

I was totally surprised and honoured when Nicole Mullen asked me if I wanted to be featured in the 3rd issue of Crafting Ireland.  Thank you!