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 ;-)