Paper Obsession

Right now, I am...

...basking in the glow of all the lovely comments I received yesterday (and today) during the Copy + Paste Halloween Blog Party - Thank you everyone! I so enjoyed the Blog Party and exploring everyone else's wonderful projects (and blogs!).

...getting excited about next week and the start of TWO fantastic online classes: Shimelle's 'Blogging for Scrapbookers' starts tomorrow, and Kirsty Neale & Julie Kirk's '12 Days' starts on Thursday 5th Nov (click on sidebar badges for more info). It promises to be a hectic but rewarding month!

...flitting from one project to another, completely failing to get anything finished - hence sitting down to blog and share my latest 12x12" layout.

I've had this layout in a state of 'almost finished' for a week or two. It was prompted by Shimelle's weekly 'Scrap Like You Mean It' challenge on UKScrappers but, well, the deadline came and went. I finally added a few tiny butterflies last night and decided that was ENOUGH!

Right now, I am...

Here is the layout in full:

It was a real challenge for me to do a layout about me - tha vast majority of my stuff centres on my boys. Maybe that's why I went to town on this one.. I really enjoyed the planning, using the gorgeous papers, ribbons, stamping and inking!

My supplies were:

Papers - My Mind's Eye 'Bloom'; BasicGrey 'Urban Prairie'; Doodlebug 'Bumblebee Stripe'; Rouge de Garance 'Soleil Levant No. 3'

Ribbons etc - Bazzill pompom ribbon; orange ricrac; white lace; green velvet ricrac; pink embroidery thread; orange and yellow tissue ribbon

Alphas - American Crafts Thickers black foam 'Daiquiri'

Stamps - Hero Arts: Designer Woodgrain S5208 (used on the heart shape); Raindrop Background S5101 (used on the cloud shape); Studio G Alphabet stamp set (used for journaling titles).

Cutting - Nestabilities Scalloped Circles; Do-crafts Butterfly punch

Thanks for looking! And have a great week.. I'll no doubt be back soon with lots to share.

Copy + Paste :: A Quick Quiz

I should be writing a list of instructions for my dear in-laws who are coming to look after the boys tomorrow while G and I go to a wedding... but then I had a quick peek at the 12 Days :: Copy + Paste Christmas blog, and before I knew it, I was doing a quiz. I just couldn't help myself.

Here's the blurb:

Try not to think about it but give your first, instinctive responses to each of the following options ... some of your answers might even surprise you!

And here's the quiz:

This OR That?

fabric OR paper

ink OR paint

grungy OR clean

cut with scissors OR tear with bare hands

measure OR just guess

careful OR haphazard

hoarder OR minimalist

Christmas OR Summer holidays

music OR talk radio

drive OR walk

gym OR beach

cook a meal OR buy take-away

fruit OR cake

ironing OR crafting

ironing OR vacuuming

my friends OR my own company

talk OR listen

you OR them

always OR never

half-full OR half-empty

yes OR no

And yes, some of the questions were surprisingly hard to answer.. some I wanted to say 'BOTH!' and some I wanted to explain, to qualify my answers..

Here's what I came up with (my answers highlighted):

This OR That?

fabric OR paper.... BOTH!!! but at a push, fabric

ink OR paint... I'm loving a bit of paint right now.. though I love ink too.. Both again?

grungy OR clean.. actually that's a tough one too..

cut with scissors OR tear with bare hands... I have to admit I'm more often a cutter

measure OR just guess... again, I do tend to measure though I'd like to say guess

careful OR haphazard... TRICKY one!! Sometimes both at once

hoarder OR minimalist... no problem with this ;o)

Christmas OR Summer holidays... tough but I'm in winter mode right now

music OR talk radio... Five Live is always on round here

drive OR walk... easy!!

gym OR beach... gym, are you kidding?!

cook a meal OR buy take-away

fruit OR cake... it's the shameful truth

ironing OR crafting... Hahaha!!!

ironing OR vacuuming.. it's good exercise

my friends OR my own company.. quite a tough one, this.. but friends do make me happy

talk OR listen... both really but if I have to choose

you OR them... what?!!!

always OR never... now I'm confused

half-full OR half-empty...

yes OR no... definitely YES!

I think on another day, my answers would be totally different. On the first few questions, I really think I have a split personality.. I can be fastidious about measuring and cutting, trying to get everything just perfect.. but then I LOVE the look of more apparently haphazard, carefree stuff - I just find it quite hard to BE like that. Maybe I need a glass of wine before crafting to release those inhibitions...

Thanks Julie and Kirsty.. this was fun.. and illuminating (sort of)!! And now I should get back to what I was meant to be doing ;o)

A busy month ahead!

Well I seem to have neglected this poor little blog for a few weeks, but that's about to change. I've signed up for not one but TWO fantastic online classes starting in November.. foolish, maybe - but I couldn't resist either class.

It wasn't a hard job convincing myself to join in with Shimelle's new class 'Blogging for Scrapbookers' - I'm certainly in need of a mojo-boost as far as blogging goes. I'm hoping this class will unravel some of the mysteries of blog-writing and help me to customise and improve Paper Obsession.

And then I spotted a new class on Julie Kirk and Kirsty Neale's wonderful Copy + Paste blog - it's called 12 Days: A Copy + Paste Christmas. It promises masses of projects, downloads and tutorials 'designed to help you make the most of your creative supplies in the run-up to Christmas'.. not only lots of ideas for Christmas gifts but the projects can be adapted for other times of the year. 

Meanwhile, I have rediscovered the joy of scrapping in 12x12 format, making plenty of cards and trying to catch up with various projects I've had on the go for ages. Here are my latest efforts...

This was in response to the Pencil Lines blog's Sketch 155, which I spotted on Shimelle's blog, here... Charlie and Harry just love playing 'peepo' in the shelters at Dulwich Park and looked so cute peeping through the windows.

I have used various ribbons and green sequin mesh on Bazzill brown and blue Dotted Swiss cardstock; the letters are Jillibean Soup's corrugated kraft alphas which I painted orange.

The bird was cut from orange felt using the Spellbinder Shapeabilities Bird set. I added a hand-cut wing and a blue button eye, then stuck it on an orange flower.

This next page shows the boys in the park on a sunny afternoon, running around and picking dandelion clocks. The low sunlight on the dandelions was beautiful, inspiring me to take loads of photos. The papers are from Cosmo Cricket's 'Earth Love' range. I made the photo collage in Picasa, Google's free photo-editing software.

Finally, here is a layout featuring the boys having a delicious grass salad in the garden last week. Harry would actually have eaten it, too, if I hadn't shouted 'Harry, no!!!' (after taking the photo, of course..). I stamped the orange cardstock with my new Hero Arts Designer Woodgrain stamp which I'm in LOVE with at the moment.

Here's a quick close-up to show the woodgrain:

And that's all for now.. I'll be back soon with more crafty bits and pieces to share. Sooner than last time, anyway, I promise!

Stash, stash and yet more stash

I have so many bits of news and pictures to share I don't quite know where to begin.. it would help if I got around to posting a bit more often I suppose. But here goes..

Saturday was my long-awaited day out to Alexandra Palace (Ally Pally) for the Big Stamp & Scrapbooking Show - I'd been resisting online stash-shopping for MONTHS (..ok, weeks..) to justify a little spending spree. It was also a chance to meet up with some of the ladies I'd 'met' on the forums in UKScrappers. It was pretty overwhelming in the big hall - hot and hectic - so it was good to slow down for a while to chat with Pat, Kate, Petra and Lee from UKS. I didn't manage to take any photos of the ladies or the stalls, despite dragging my camera round all day, but I did take some piccies of my stash haul when I got home.

Et voila:

The papers above are called 'Earth Love' by Cosmo Cricket and they are wonderful. They are double sided so I took two pictures, one of each side. I am REALLY looking forward to doing some 12x12 layouts with these soon.

And more stash news...

Way back in July you may recall I won a prize in the Hero Arts blog's weekly challenge for a scrapbook page I did ('Baby Face') using a monochromatic colour scheme. The prize was a $50 shopping spree in the Hero Arts online shop (oh, bliss!). It took me absolutely AGES to decide on my goodies but eventually I did, and they arrived VERY promptly on Monday.

Here they are:

The full list is:
Clear Design - Scalloped Borders
Clings - Antique Brocade
Clings - Striped Circle
Clings - Snowflake Circle
Designer Woodgrain
Midnight Black Accent Pearls

I've already had a play with the woodgrain and the scalloped borders - I'll show pictures in my next post, which will be a Learn Something New catch-up post.

Learn Something New Every Day!

Yippee! I've signed up for Shimelle's new class, starting 1st September, called Learn Something New Every Day. I love Shimelle's classes, there's always a real buzz surrounding them - on UKScrappers and especially on the class forum. At the moment everyone is getting prepared for the off, deciding on what supplies to use or anxiously waiting for kits to arrive from Shimelle's shop.

I have decided I really MUST use up some of my existing paper mountain rather than buying anything new. After much agonising I've decided to go with BasicGrey's Urban Prairie range, along with various bits and pieces from my stash that seem to coordinate. Here's my little bundle of stuff:

So far, I have cut some chipboard covers, 6.5 inches square, given them a coat of gesso and covered one of them with black paper. Not sure where to go from there, so I'm waiting for further inspiration to strike! I've also prettied up a little notebook which I'm going to use to write in my daily thoughts for the month of September.

So class starts on Tuesday.. and I can't wait to get started!

A riot of colour

I just completed a new layout for this week's Scrap Like You Mean It (SLYMI), a weekly challenge by Shimelle Laine on UKScrappers. The challenge is to... Scrap a square within a square – take a piece of cardstock or paper that is the same shape as you finished layout format but smaller. Scrap your layout onto that and then add it to your normal sized layout.

I decided to scrap some of my photos from our walk round Glenthorne Allotments back in June. I was amazed by the size of the place, it is HUGE and absolutely fascinating! I took loads of pictures of stunningly architectural plants such as Allium and Globe Artichoke, as well as the brightly painted sheds and other gardening bits n' bobs that added such startling splashes of colour to the landscape.

Here is the finished article: A riot of colour.



And here's a closer look:

SLYMI is definitely worth a look - Shimelle always has wonderful ideas for layouts, and I am finding online challenges such as this are fantastic for inspiring me to get scrapping.

Catching shrimps at low tide

We're just back from a wonderful week in Eastbourne staying with Gareth's parents. They live a stone's throw from the beach and the weather was much better than we had hoped, so we spent most afternoons building sandcastles and poking around the seaweed hunting for seashore treasures.

The pictures in this layout show the boys playing in the water with excited seagulls screaming and flapping about in the background.

Here's a close-up of the little bird detail:

Supplies:
White Bazzill cardstock, inked around the edges with blue and green inks
American Crafts Thickers - red felt 'Playroom'
Dymo embossing labeller
Dulux paint chip card
White Magic Mesh
Hero Arts stamp: B4751 Decorative Bird III
Banana Frog stamp: Take Note
Versamark ink pad
Silver Pearl embossing powder
Black watercolour pencil

I stamped the Bird twice on white card with Versamark ink and embossed with Silver Pearl embossing power. I then coloured the wings with black watercolour pencil, cut out the wing of one bird and stuck it on the other bird raised on foam squares.

The red squares were made by covering a red paint chip card with Magic Mesh and cutting out squares.

I have so many other pictures to scrap and can't wait to get going with them - a week is a long time with no scrapping!

Well, well.. I won something!

I am finally free! This morning I handed in the last of my City & Guilds Photography coursework - on time as well. What a relief.. although, on the whole I've really enjoyed doing this course - the learning, the friends I've made, the sense of accomplishment - this last term has been the least enjoyable of the three. Anyway, I managed to motivate myself to just get it done - and now I'm free to do what I like!

In between all this workbook-writing and portfolio-compiling, I managed to complete a scrapbook page for the Hero Arts blog's weekly challenge. This week the theme was Monochromatic colour schemes. I used a lovely photo of Harry, taken on the day he turnred 23 months, and a green colour scheme. Why green? I just found a few scraps of BasicGrey that I liked, along with some gorgeous Bazzill Dotted Swiss cardstock and some sequin mesh bought from a toy shop, and pieced it all together.

I only just managed to upload the LO to the Flickr group in time, but I'm SO glad I bothered.. I actually WON the scrapbooking prize! Or rather Harry did... I think it was his super-cute little face that swung it. Whatever it was, I haven't stopped grinning, I'm so thrilled to have won.

I think the prize is a gift certificate for the Hero Arts shop.. so I'll be able to add to my HA stamp collection and maybe give this overworked heart-winged butterfly a little rest.

Summer fun... a new mini-book project

I had this idea to make a quick and easy mini-book as a memento of happy times this summer. So far I've only done the cover and the first three pages but I'm pleased with how it's looking so far.

The format is A5 landscape and I'm making the base pages out of recycled cereal boxes covered with patterned paper. I'm sticking to a really simple layout for each double page spread with journaling hidden on tags behind the matted photos. I have raised the photos up on foam tape to make a little pocket for the tags.

Here's the cover:

The butterfly is the Heart-winged butterfly stamp by Hero Arts.

Here is the first page, featuring our recent holiday in Weymouth:

The papers are by American Crafts and Heidi Grace. I'm matting all the photos on Core'dinations cardstock and sanding the edges.

Here is page 2 (will go on the left):

and here's page 3:

Finally, here is the journaling tag:

I've used one of the Decorative Birds stamps from the Hero Arts set of four, plus 'The Facts' from the Banana Frog Journaling set. The papers are BasicGrey - Urban Prairie.

That's all I've done as yet. Hoping to do a few more very soon!

A new layout - and not a butterfly in sight

I've made a few ditched attempts to scrap this photo - and at last, this afternoon I managed it.
It's a photo of me, taken by Jo from my Landscape Photography class during a field trip to Cuckmere Haven and Beachy Head earlier this month.

I love the look of concentration etched in my face (I didn't even know I could wrinkle my forehead like that) as I was attempting to take a picture of a flower among the grasses.

The layout was pieced together with scraps of BasicGrey 'Perhaps' papers on top of white Bazzill Dotted Swiss cardstock. I made the flower by combining a Banana Frog 'Retro Snowflake' stamp with the stem from the 'Build-a-Bloom' set, stamping with Black Staz-on ink onto acetate then cutting round the shape. So pleased to have found a 'non-festive' use for the Retro Snowflake stamps!

[By the way, the picture I took of the flower was not worth a layout.. .]