Gold and Teal

I love this combination!

Seven

I try to make a layout for each birthday of my children. My son's birthday was back in June - I finally made it!

(removed for publication; to be published in March 2013

apologies for the inconvenience)

A layered card

I am doing a class in Studio Calico, Pop Off The Page, and it is all about layering.  That's something I am really bad at, so I signed for the course straight away.

It is great to make something a bit different from my normal style, but at the same it I struggle with chance, so I took a easy option and started with a card instead of a scrapbook page:

One page of my Summer mini album

At the beginning of the summer holidays, I asked my children to list the things they wanted to do. I told them that not everything would be accomplished (get a cat? no! spend €50 in Claire's? no!) but at least it would be something to aim for.

Last year we made the list, but I never made the mini album I meant to, this year I decided that I would work in the album and have it ready by the end of the school holidays.

School starts tomorrow, and I only have a couple of pages to finish, so i am quite proud of it. Hopefully I'll have it ready by tomorrow so we can look it together and see how much fun we had in the last two months.

I'll share the cover and some pages later this week - today I only have one page, our trip to Cascais, Portugal. The left page was inspired by a layout by supertoni, for a scraplift challenge in Studio Calico's forum.

Here's supertoni's original layout:

Thanks for the inspiration, Toni!

10 @ 10

In general I like big photos and designs that cover the whole page, however I also love seeing layouts like Allison Waken's and Anna-Maria Wolniak's, where small photos are enhanced by layered papers, painting, stamping and aparent random elements which are all combined together beautifully.

Inspired by them, I tried something a little bit different from my usual style.

I stamped, inked, used bits of post-it notes, washi tape and tracing papers.

I made a list of ten items and asked my daughtr to choose the favourite of each (movie, food, song, friend, etc).

Confessions of a paper hoarder - Part 1

We, crafters, are like magpies, attracted to shiny, beautiful things. The problem is when we start accumulating more beautiful things that we are able to use.

For the last couple of years, I haven't bought much - I cancelled my scrapbooking kit subscription and have been very economic with my purchases. But still, my pile of stuff doesn't seem to get any smaller, because I have a hoarder. I keep papers I don't like much (either I gone off them or it came in a kit), tiny paper scraps, letters stickers sheets when there's probably not enough letters to make a word out if it :-) the list is endless.

Ridiculous, I know.  I am trying to get my craft supplies to a manageable level by using what is usable and hopefully throwing away what is not.

I am hoping to have a regular "column" in my blog keeping track of the progress I am making in using or recycling my junk.  Like any addiction, it is a lifetime battle to keep the stash levels under control.

This month I started with my papers scraps. Paper scraps are great to make cards, because they are the right size and also because I can make cards much faster than scrapbook pages. (I am a slow scrapper).

What works for me is to make a kit, that is, put together a set of papers which goes together well and making cards using these papers. This is the kit I put together:

Yellow, orange and blues.

It is embarassing to show the size of scraps I keep...

Anyway, can I show you how many cards I made from these papers?

Paper candles - great way to use scraps!

For the candle body I rolled up a piece of paper around a pencil. The flame is a leaf punch which I inked or coloured with red. I think the inking looks best. The little framed buttons are the inspiration for my kit. Something i made for PaperPlay Challenges a while ago.

Then I got star struck:

Using paper strips in this one:

Even the Mami Doodles image was one I had printed ages ago and had half coloured it. So I finished it and used it.

By then I thought I was done, but there was this cute butterfly in the kit which deserved to be used so I made yet another one:

You probably can't see but I used the sewing machine in 4 or the cards, the stitching finished the cards really well.

Thanks for looking!

Portraits

Every week I decide that in the next one, I'll definitely take a photo a day. Then I get distracted and don't. It is very frustrating specially as it is completely under my control.
But as I sat down to look at last week's photos, I realised that at least I took some photos - and some of then are actually ok. Not perfect, but ok.

I like this spot in the kitchen, with a big window in front, but I noticed that the oposite side was dark so to remedy it I persuaded my son to hold a big white card to act as a reflector. Of course, being who he is, he wouldn't hold it right and it got in the photo and I had to edit it out.

Sigh. I have two children. One is cooperative and the other is not. Won't be the model and won't be the assistant either...