STUDIO CALICO OCTOBER 2014

"SCRAPLIFT THE PERSON ABOVE YOU"

MONDAY, 17TH NOVEMBER 2014
 

If you've visited my blog before you'll know that I am a regular over at Studio Calico.

 

In the past I haven't been one to partake often in scrapping challenges but as of late I can see that participating in these challenges can help you work outside your creative comfort zone.

I just happened to be on the SC message board when someone was posting a thread about the October 2014 Edition - "Scraplift the Person Above You" so I jumped in feet first! Actually it was scrap paper first, but that doesn't sound as good.

Basically each person will chime in, posting that they are up for the challenge and as they do so, they simply just need to look at who commented before them on the message board and pick a layout from their gallery to scraplift. It's kinda fun and definitely challenging!

I was lucky enough to comment just after AndreaHoneyFire (not sure if that is her real name or her screen name) who is a very talented scrapper with a gallery full of wonderful layouts.

Upon seeing her gallery I had hoped she had a blog to follow so I could keep track of her crafty goodness but alas she did not. If you'd like to view her work, you can find her here.

I tried to pick something from her gallery that would most definitely give me a challenge! I chose the following layout titled Pumpkin found here: http://www.studiocalico.com/galleries/143264-pumpkin.

As I typically scrap horizontally I liked her layout as it had a vertical element to it.  As well I found the sentiment behind it very cute and wanted to try working with something where the layout was grouped in one area of the page.

I think my take on her layout was a fair representation. When I was done with my layout I thought to myself it might be a bit garish, that I may have gone overboard with all the bright colours, even for me! But I did enjoy the challenge and playing along!

 

SUPPLIES | Background paper is from an SC kit, believe it was the Two Scoops. The green polka dot paper is by Simple Stories. The pink polka dot paper was a scrap so not sure who it is by but I think it might be Bella Blvd. The glittery pink foam stars, which I never thought I would use are by Freckled Fawn. The green alphas are by Simple Stories (Typeset) and the polka dot chipboard alphas are by American Crafts. The flair is from a kit by American Crafts and the pink sticker at the bottom is by Simple Stories.

 

OCTOBER - FALL IS HERE

THURSDAY, 13TH  NOVEMBER 2014

Now that I have my laptop back in my hot little hands I have been scrapping away like a mad person to catch up! 

I have been printing off my October pictures and holding a steadfast position at my scrap table. 

This is my title page for October. I have always liked this style of photograph - (including a bit of your feet and inserting the month in text on the photo.)

To be honest I think I have done quite well so far as I am nearly done with October at this point.

This is the back of my title page - script with some Octobery words.

FALL IS HERE

Until moving to the UK, being a California girl, I never really got a chance to experience Fall or Autumn in an LA suburb, therefore I do really enjoy the turn of the season here.

It's the dreaded season that comes after it that I don't like so much!

I like seeing the colours of the trees change and then the leaves slowly flit and float to the ground over the upcoming weeks.

I took this picture whilst I was walking Rupert at Braywick Park.
 

SUPPLIES| This is simply a 5 x 7 photo on Chatterbox cardstock along with alphas by AC called Patchwork. Added a few leaves punched out of a paintchip card & the leaf in the lower left hand corner is an old Jolee's product.

BAKING

This page documents an unexpected day, sometimes the memories I cherish the most! 

As Simon works outdoors, when the weather is poor he unfortunately cannot go to work. On this particular Monday he was rained off work by mid morning. 

He came home and we spent the afternoon baking chocolate chip cookies and catching up on The Blacklist. An afternoon well spent!

SUPPLIES| Background paper is by K&CO from a Cut N Paste designer paper pad that I picked up at Target, of all places, years ago. The alphas are AC Patchwork and the (2) little die cut 1950's style stickers are by Melissa Frances called Kitschy Kitchen.

INSTA-PAGES

SUNDAY NIGHT DINNER & GOOD DOG

When I ordered my last Simple Stories Snap album I also ordered some of the new Instapages page protectors. 

I thought I would try this style as I have been taking a lot of Instagram pictures lately as well as using another app called Photofy and wanted to use these photos in my albums. 

I am really pleased with how these pages have turned out and as well it was fun to create such small detailed elements.

 Close up of the top half

Close up of the bottom half 

You may have noticed that I have played around with the blog and changed the format a bit. Thought I would try something new.

That's it for now.

See you next time!

Life Without You - Studio Calico LOAW Challenge

Hello All!

 

I am a regular over on the Studio Calico website and enjoy the inspiration that I find there as well as the camaraderie amongst the community.  Last week as I was scrolling through the message board I came across a post about a SC challenge, presented by Tara Elias. She is very talented and I enjoy following her on SC, seeing what her latest project or layout is, so was interested to see what the challenge was. (You can check her out here).  

 

She was responsible for the month of October for the L.O.A.W. (Layout a Week) challenge.  This particular challenge (L.O.A.W #3) was to create a layout but not use any embellishments.  I just happened to comment on the message thread as I happened to be on the message board when they were posting some comments.

 

 

Basically my comment was such that I would find it really difficult to create a page without embellishments, that I thought it would look so plain.  Tara responded back saying, funnily enough, "well therein lies the challenge".  Normally I probably would have just gone on with visiting the rest of the message boards that evening and then logged off.  But for some reason I thought no, I am going to take this challenge.  Rare for me.  Yes, if you know me personally I am the type of person who will accept a dare or challenge, in person, but not typically something online, whether it be on a forum or those annoying status posts on something like FB that you get strong armed or emotionally blackmailed, if you will, into posting as your status.  I'm sure you all know what I mean!

 

 

I didn't want to create just a plain page with a photo and text but I did want to try to find a way that I could get the look of an embellishment onto the page. So I decided to try a bit of masking as it's "all the rage" at the moment and "all the kids are doing it".  

 

 

I have played around with paints before but this was my first attempt using this technique and I was pleased with how it turned out.

 

I do have to say that I did find this challenge just that, very challenging!  There were more than a handful of times that in the midst of creating the page that I started to reach for different embellishments and then remembered that I wasn't allowed to use any.  I did think there for a while that I would not finish the page as it just sat on the side of my desk for about a week, not making any progress. I also debated about whether I would finish it in its entirety and thought to myself, its just causing me too much frustration, maybe I should leave it.  Nevertheless, I vowed it wasn't going to get the better of me and just decided to sit down and be done with it.

 

What you see below is the finished page.

 

 

In addition to the masking I also put my hand to trying that new script lettering that again "all the kids are trying".  I'm not sure if this is the right style or the way it is done but this was my take on it.

 

In the end I am glad that I took the challenge and that I finished the page, that I could rise to the occasion and complete what I set out to do.

 

Thanks for having a look!

Christine

Seaside - Budleigh Salterton

As mentioned in my previous post from a week or so ago,  I am without a laptop so I've had to find other ways to occupy my creative mind until said laptop is repaired and returned to me. 

So for now I have pulled out some old unfinished projects and have been working on them.  Come on, we all know you're not a true crafter unless you have a couple of unfinished projects kicking about in your craft cupboard! 

This project already had all the pictures for it printed out so my laptop was not needed, thankfully.  To be honest it was about 70% complete already, I just needed to add a few more pages along with the pictures, punch holes in the pages for the eyelets, then add the binder rings, a few small embellishments and some ribbon.

This album is proper old school.  I started with 8 x 8 plain chipboard that I then took the arduous task of covering with patterned paper.  

In hindsight I probably should have punched the holes for the eyelets at this point rather than after I had completed the pages but hey, lesson learned! Not too much of the design of the page was lost in the process.

This album documents a long weekend trip we took to the British seaside one summer. We chose a small seaside village near Exeter called Budleigh Salterton. Although Simon had had many typical British seaside holidays whilst growing up, I had yet to experience the joy of a British simple seaside holiday.

I absolutely loved these little colourful sheds on the beach, they were so typically British.  I thought the bright striped paper would work well with these pictures.  Seemingly makes the seaside very fun looking and not to mention oh so colourful! 

We rented a cottage by the beach and then drove down on the Friday morning, taking Rupert with us, staying through till Monday.  It was his first trip to the beach and luckily the place we picked had a dog friendly beach only a short distance away. 

This is the view of the bay at Budleigh Salterton.  It was absolutely breathtaking! We enjoyed an afternoon walk by the seaside and then along the cliffs, stopping for an ice cream to share together.  

Rupert's first view of the sun, sea and sand. He was mesmerized!

One afternoon we stopped at The Cosy Teapot on the high street for a cream tea!  It was scrump-dilly-umptious!

The boardwalk adjacent to the dog friendly beach.  There was also a small fun faire along the seafront. It  made for a lovely afternoon.  

Time for lots of walks along the beach, afternoon naps and warm fires!

Would love to go back again! 

Thanks for having a look. 

Now as this was an old project I am not certain as to all the supplies that were used.  However I do know that I used Graphic 45 Boardwalk Collection, as well as Bazzill cardstock, along with journaling cards by October Afternoon. As well as a lot of the paper was from my old stash I expect there was definitely some K&Co. paper in there.  For the front cover I do know that the chipboard button is by Webster's Pages from the Chipboard Sticker Buttons & Twine line called Color Yacht Club. The letters spelling out Seaside are vintage wood alphabets by Lil' Davis Designs and most of the seaside related stickers, like the individual words, are by October Afternoon from the Seaside collection. 

Teal Simple Stories Album

Hello!

I have been waiting for my new Simple Stories Sn@p album to come in the post the past few days, since the weekend really. I have been laying in wait for the postman pretty much daily. He's probably starting to think I'm either a mad woman or have some kind of dippy crush on him. I only say this because, to be honest, I've never really seen the postman before this week so I can only imagine what he must now think when every day this week as he pulls into our drive the curtain in the front hall window starts twitching and then there I appear in the doorway before he's even come to a complete stop.

Suffice it to say, it came today and I was more than pleased! Mainly I was looking for something creative to occupy me until my laptop comes back, as mentioned in a previous post. I already knew before the album arrived what paper I wanted to use on the front cover - the blue and white chevron paper from the Simple Stories DIY Boutique 12x12 simple basics kit.
 

After I tore into the shrink wrap and cut my paper for the cover I started pulling out all the embellishments that I thought I'd want to use.
 

 

Since the album is about our life I thought it would be apt to use the script lettering "Our Life " die cut I had made. I wanted the cover to be quite simple, include a title, the year and a few embellishments.

 

This picture is where I am laying out the title and paper on the album cover to see if I like how it looks. I do have to say that the inspiration for the style of the title came from a layout by Mel Blackburn over at Studio Calico here.

 I added some American Crafts Thickers for the date and my embellishments - a Simple Stories brad, a DIY Boutique love-heart sticker, a Mambi Sticks puffy sticker and a Studio Calico chipboard arrow banner.

 

The end result

Was happy to have something crafty to keep me occupied. However, its meant to be another week before I get the laptop back so not sure how I will spend that time.

Thanks for stopping by to have a look!

(Blogging is a whole new concept when you have to create your entries via smartphone so apologies for any mistakes or wonky bits.)

Summer is Here! (or it WAS here)

(I thought I had already posted this entry but realised today that I still had it sitting in my drafts folder.)

Today I am catching up on some of my pages from June.  As the summers here in the UK are typically short and sometimes non-existent I decided to dedicate a page to the onset of Summer when it arrived, and was it glorious!  As I mentioned sometimes the summers here can be non-existent, like last year when we had a solid month of rain for the month of June.  This year however it has been quite good, not only unusually warm but for more than a week or two!  Pretty much still going strong as I post this now.  

With this layout I wanted it to be representative of the feel of summer so chose to use really bright colours and accents.  The picture was taken at Pinkney's Green and it was a glorious day. Pretty much picture perfect!

The background paper was from a Studio Calico kit and I wanted it to carry through the top and bottom pocket to appear as if one complete page. I also included a screenshot from my phone of the weather for the day. 

The 06 June sticker is from The Daily Grind line by Simple Stories.  I mounted the title "Summer" onto a bingo card by Simple Stories. The colourful chipboard letters are by American Crafts.  The lettering spelling out "is here" is by Simple Stories as is the "breath of fresh air" sticker below that. The green stars are by October Afternoon.  On the bottom pocket the green bliss Dymo style sticker is Marcella by Kay. The "hooray for today" sticker is Simple Stories and the bright yellow "summer" metal tag is an old embellishment I've had for some time by American Crafts. 

Thanks for having a look! 

Now is a Good Time as Any

Well, as I am without a laptop, which means not being able to print out any pictures or do any proper crafting, I guess now is as a good time as any to do a massive clear-out and a bit of organising. I expect there will also be some purging along the way in the interest of simplifying what I have and getting ùber organised.

The dreaded chaos that needs to be corralled and contained.

To be honest I was probably long over due for such a task anyway. It will help me to de-clutter, get rid of things I haven't used in ages, sort of streamline and simplify what I have and hopefully make my overall scrapping process a bit more efficient, rather than continuing to  spend my time looking for or through my supplies than actually scrapping.

At this point, (yes a day later) as you can see I have made a bit of progress, clearing off my work surface, organising the supply boxes in my cart and surprisingly throwing quite a few things in a give-away or get rid of box.  

Only thing is I won't know what to do with the stuff that I no longer wish to keep. We kinda live in the middle of nowhere, so no local craft shop or even non-local craft shop that I could leave them at for a craft group. We don't have kids so no school to donate them to and don't want to go wandering onto a school campus like some weirdo. I don't have a group of crafty friends nearby that could use them so that's not an option either.  I've tried posting stuff on FB groups for stash overload or SS hoarders before but never had much success so not sure where it will end up. I suppose as long as its transitioned off my desk and no longer contributing to the clutter,  that's a good start!

Looking a bit tidier now! I think realistically I need more space though as I am one of those scrappers who likes to spread out. I have great admiration for those scrappers out there who can scrap from like one portable box and a breakfast tray while still managing to be neat  and tidy about the whole process. I could probably learn more than a thing or two from them!

I'm not sure what I will do for the next two weeks or so while my laptop is being repaired or how I won't descend into scrap withdrawal madness but I guess I will just have to wait and see.  

Maybe the next time you visit I will be posting my blog from the arts and crafts room at the local sanitarium!

Thanks for stopping by! 

(PS-also thankful for smart phones, which is how I did this post, but let me tell you it wasn't the easiest thing nor short in the process, so apologies for any blatant errors or wonky bits!)