Craft Stamper - project peek

I mentioned in my previous post that I'd had a project accepted by Craft Stamper and the magazine arrived yesterday with my "Stamping for Scrapbookers" project. I wasn't expecting it so soon - time is really flying by this year (how can it be June tomorrow already?)

I'm so happy with this scrapbook page (it's very me, as it's a little bit painty and a little bit stitchy!) and here's a tiny peek at it.

Works in progress

I seem to have been a bit quiet on here over the past couple of weeks when I've been doing lots and lots of crafting. The photo above is a sneaky peek at an art quilt I'm working on for my little's boys room. I'm so pleased with the painting part of it and now I've just got to finish the sewing part. I've shown him the finished painting and he points at it and says "Choo choo" - can you guess what it is yet!?

I've spent the past few days working on a wedding scrapbook and we may be seeing the bride and groom this weekend and so pictures will follow next week. I like the recipients of a present to see it first before I upload it to the rest of the world.

I've also been working on a couple of projects for a couple of issues of The Scrapbook Magazine. I have just completed my first project for Craft Stamper too. They really liked it and have asked me to write some more projects for them in the future - yay!

Just to top things off, I've signed up to another online class called "She Had Three Hearts" about art journalling with Christy Tomlinson. I signed up as I feel my work is moving toward a more multi media approach and the class looked perfect. Christy has uploaded 28 videos in the first week! I have no idea when I'm going to find time to watch all those, let alone play with paints. The class looks amazing and I'm hoping to devote some time to it in a few weeks.

So I guess - watch this space for the results from all these projects!

Picture Inspiration

Here's an update on some photos from the Picture Inspiration class I'm taking part in at Big Picture. We are given weekly assignments and here's the results from the past three weeks.

The way this class works is great as I can mange one photo a week quite easily and it challenges me to take different photos. The photos I'm taking are proving to be a real inspiration for my other crafting whether it's scrapbooking or painting or just sparking off my new ideas entirely.

The photo above was for the assignment about taking a landscape photo with detail in the distance. Thanks to Picnik it has a lovely straight horizon, rather than one suitable for water skiing (as my Dad's jokes about sloping sea pictures)

The photo below was for the assignment about finding a mystery (in nature). I really love all the textures inside this poppy. You can see the black dots on the petals too as these are the "ladybird poppies" we grow in our garden.

This week's assignment was to shoot from the ground up. I got muddy too taking this picture of my daughter making mud pies!

Scrapbook stitching

This weekend I had a little time to myself and I decided I wanted to do some scrapbooking. I have so many crafty ideas at the moment and a huge list pinned up next to my desk that my head is a bit confused and looking at an enormous pile of unscrapped photos didn't help much either. I've learnt that I like to follow a challenge at times like these. Just a little suggestion to get me pointed in the right direction. I really enjoyed the challenges Shimelle set for International Scrapbooking day and so I had a go at her sketch for this week too.

The large photo is printed onto linen from Crafty Computer Paper and I made the photo a little paler before printing too. I couldn't resist a bit of free-motion stitching again and you'll see on the close-ups that I did it twice as I tried it in white but it was too subtle and could barely be seen so I did it again in blue.

I saw a tutorial at the Maya Road Design Team blog about microbeads on chipboard, so I had a go at that too. I took photos of the layout to put on here and when I looked back at the pictures, the red bucket seemed to jump off the page. The colour ties up nicely with the bucket and spade in the photos but it looked too much. I added the blue starfish to the top (which echoed the colour of the shorts in the photos) and created the triangle of colours. I think it all works together much better now.

A page with a story

This is one page that definitely needs journalling to explain the weird and wonderful world of my daughter! The question was how to create a page about something only in her imagaination? She loves to make up creatures. She tells us their names and what they look like and uses them as a way of name calling, (but in a nice way) - "you snuffer", "a punkiskunkunk is small and looks like an ant and a tree".

I tried to capture at bit of her at this age by using her fingerprints to help tell the story...

I used the Monstorosity collection by Sassafras Lass on this page. Shimelle set a challenge to create a page with a story behind the photo. I really pleased with how I've told this story.

Reading together

I've been inspired to think about scrapbooking materials in a different way by Jenni Bowlin over at Big Picture Classes with her "Re-purpose, Re-think-Re-invent" class. It's got me looking in the vintage and collectable sections on Ebay to see what I could find. I found a great book which is an almanac from the 1890s which part of me found very hard to tear pages out of, but the crafter in me won and there's a page used on here.

We were sent a package of materials to use on challenges which included these little labels.

I also found a fantastic bag of buckles which included all sorts of metal and plastic buckles, including this button shaped buckle, which in turn inspired me to use red buttons on the layout to match.

Shimelle set a challenge to make a page using a patterned paper background, so in my continuing effort of doing two things at once, I think this has enough pattern on it!

Splashed by penguins

I've been meaning to do this age for months and the photos have been sitting in a bag with the penguin papers by Three Bugs in a Rug. I was inspired to get it finished by Shimelle's challenge to create a triangle of embellishments. My triangle is made up of the two penguins and the corner of sparkles. This page is based on a sketch from the March Pagemaps.

I had to get some stitching on the page too...