Scrap the Boys - June

I printed this photo up as a 5x7 and had it half scrapped for around 6 months. I love this pic of Ben and my mum laughing in the background. For some reason I was never able to finish this page. I think I was over thinking it and was never happy. The current challenge (yeah, I know it's a bit last minute on my end) was to use a photo larger than the standard 6x4 so this page came out for another run. I ended up pulling the original to bits and went with this simple format. I'm glad I've finished it and now it will be displayed on my wall until my next favourite layout comes along.

This is the first layout I've done in some time where I haven't used any Heidi Swapp products. I'm kind of obsessed with HS at the moment. She has released so many gorgeous products.

Here's a recent HS heavy layout about my daughters 13th birthday cake.

Jot - March Mood Board

I'm a huge fan of Kim Jeffress and was thrilled to see that she had chosen this months mood board for Jot. I like her style and I love her use of colour.

I'm currently going through my stash and trying to get rid of stuff I haven't used in a while but some things I just can't part with even though I have no idea where I'll use it. These rub ons are one example. I bought these years ago (in a sale) and have only partially used them. I have never considered/tried using an entire pack of rub ons on one layout (I always think you should spread the cost out over several layouts) but with the mood board showing that great text wall and me with an almost unused packet of rub ons I figured well why the hell not and I went for it. Once again I've surprised myself and I love it. You know the saying use it or lose it well that's what I'm going for. Considering how much I have spent on my stash in the past why not use it.
Thanks for stopping by.
Here's hoping for some cooler weather.

Stuck Sketches Feb 15

Yay, another challenge completed.
I'm so happy with this layout. My mum and I are not big fans of the camera and this cute photo was taken by my husband on his phone. You know when you get older it's a matter of take the best of what you have and go with it. I can't remember the last time we had a photo together so I'm cherishing this moment.
Sorry that the actual photo has that reflection in it but the overlay was very shiny and I took the photo outside. I think you get the gist of it though.
This background to my layout came about because I have been cleaning out my stash. I found all sorts of stuff that I haven't used in years. I was just about to get rid of all my chipboard butterflies too when an idea struck me. I remembered last year or so when people started to use left over alphas to create a background for their layout and blended them by painting over the top. I thought well if you can do this with letters why not butterflies. Although I was clearing out I still am a little bit of a hoarder.
So that's how this layout began. I also found a lot of white cardstock in my stash so I thought it wouldn't be such a great loss if I played with the chipboard and used a little cardstock to make a fun background...lucky for me I'm very happy with the result.
After gluing down the butterflies I painted the entire background white. After another coat of white I got out my Heidi Swapp love heart stencil and painted with pale gold. That didn't quite work so I repainted the entire thing white again and wiped away the paint from some of the love hearts. Good thing it's so hot here in Perth at the moment as it didn't take too long for the paint to dry.
I just wanted to mention the acetate banners on this layout. I got these from Spotlight yesterday (gotta keep my stash replenished) and they are Project Life designer dividers by Becky Higgins. They were on sale yesterday (50% off all PL) and I got two packets from $5 each. The two on this layout are from the Midnight Edition. You get 14 dividers in a pack. I also bought the Honey Edition which features clouds, stars, cameras and lots of other bright patterns.
I loved the Hambly acetate that was out a few years ago but it was expensive and I didn't have much. So this is a great boost for my stash and I'm sure it will be well used over the next few months.
Wow, that's more than enough from me.

Stuck Sketches Feb 1st

This is my layout for Stuck Feb 1st.
We recently went on holiday to Denmark which is in southern WA, approx. 500km from Perth. I printed this photo because it's not very often we get a reasonable family photo - dog included of course.
When searching through my stash of patterned papers I came across this awesome paper that totally resonated with me because on this holiday we did a lot of driving in the bush and looked at lots of beautiful and huge trees. The paper is by My Minds Eye, Abbey Road.
Thanks for looking.

Anna's Craft Cupboard - January Sketch Challenge

Yay, another challenge completed. I snapped this pic of Sophie just after she won yet another toy from one of those claw machines. Sophie has been very lucky with these machines over the last couple of years having won at least three other big toys. I always used to say NO to giving the kids money for those machines but really both have been quite lucky winning on them.

 

 

I thought this quote was very appropriate for this topic. LOL

 

 

Stuck Sketches 1 Jan

Hey there, here's my take on the Jan 1st Stuck Sketches challenge. I love this sketch and felt it was perfect for my not so perfect phone photos. The kids and I had such a great time at the Show (which we had never attended before) and I really wanted to document it. I have hidden journaling behind the photos, don't want to bore anyone with that though.
I have used some mist (Heidi Swapp colour shine)  on my layout (as required) on the huge (yeah, got totally carried away) banner.

Peg Christmas Ornament Tutorial

 

 

I made this pretty Christmas ornament after seeing something similar hanging on display at a local craft store earlier this week. I didn't have my phone/camera with me that day so I tried to recreate what I saw, from memory. The reason I liked this ornament so much was that it was cute (always good) and also because we just happen to have over 200 wooden pegs sitting in a draw in my sons room. Why so many pegs you ask. Well Ben, my 10 year old, wanted to make something he saw on the internet and needed a few pegs. Dad took him shopping for pegs and thought buying 200 would work out a lot cheaper than buying a smaller packet and surely Ben would find a use for them. Well he didn't but I sure did.

It takes 26 pegs to make this ornament - well the way I made it anyway. I have seen similar peg ornaments on Pinterest but they are made using much fewer pegs and they are a lot more sparse. Turns out that the ornament I spied at the craft shop was the sparse type but to be honest I prefer mine - it's much more festive. Because I was going from what I remembered I figured this was the way to do it but in actual fact you are meant to glue the pegs at the rounded/fat end using far fewer.

In addition to using a whole lot more pegs I also decided that this ornament needed sparkle. I bought myself a heat gun and a whole lot of embossing powder sometime last year and I love to emboss things. So using silver glitter I embossed the whole thing. Of course if you don't have that available to you then a plain wooden ornament would be fine or you could paint the edges any colours you like. Gold or silver is nice but then you could do alternating colours of green and red or candy cane colours. The sky is the limit I guess.
Now this ornament is pretty big so it can be used in place of a wreath on the front door or added to the centre of the wreath. It can also be used to hang on the tree as a central focus.
 

 

Here's how to get started. Simply take your peg in your hands and twist the two sides in opposite directions and the metal clasp/spring will simply pop off. You can throw this away.

 

If you are going to emboss like I did or paint then now is the time to do it. I have

to say that after heat embossing 26 pegs my fingers were getting pretty warm so

you might like to alternate between embossing a few and gluing for a few.

 

 

 

I glued the two pieces of the peg like this. OK, to be truthful I got Ben to do it

for me and he loved being helpful and part of my crafting.

 

Once you have a few or all 26 pairs glued together it's time to glue them to

one another to form a circle.

 

Because I did this tutorial after I actually completed the ornament I am using

the left over pegs (the ones that weren't well embossed) to show how it's done.

 

 

Here is the back view. I found the circle to be fairly solid but just to keep

things extra well stuck together I did hot glue a circle of cardstock to the back.

 

 

 

Once all the pegs were glued together I made a banner from white cardstock, heat embossed in silver, and then hot glued that to the front.