Guess Who

I haven't done a double layout for a long time and I'm going to have to do more because they're really fun to do.    Don't forget to click on the pictures to see increased sizes.

These photos are of my 2 sisters and were taken on the morning of my brother's wedding while we were sitting around our accommodation on Bribie Island.  I'd just finished cleaning the camera and was playing with the AV (aperature)  mode and got some great morning faces.  By the way, it's amazing how early the sun comes up in Brisbane compared to where we are near Mareeba.  The sun was getting up somewhere between 5.30 and 6 at home and down there it was broad daylight at 5.

I used Stampin' Up cardstock as the base and the paper is from Fancy Pants.  I tore strips from 3 different papers for the layering on the left and used a bit torn from a 4th paper for the journalling. 

I did go a bit overboard on the tearing with this layout, but it's so much fun (except when it doesn't tear how you want it).  The centre piece is a sheet of core'dinations that has been torn around the edges and then scrunched up and sanded to reveal the core. 

The flower on the left is from Buzz and Bloom and has been painited with Making Memories paints and I used Kindy Glitz on the flower to add a bit of glitz.

The title and the arrows have been painted with Tim Holtz Ranger Crackle Paints.  The title was then distressed with Ranger Distress Ink while I left the arrows un-distressed.

The crackle paints are the best investment I've made to date.  I just love the look. 

I finished the layout off with a few green tara flowers, basic grey buttons and the 2 birdie charms.

Blog Candy Winner!

and the winner is........KARENB.....congratulations! 

Sorry everyone else, but I'll be running more blog candy in the future so keep checking back.  Thanks everyone for supporting my new blog and hope to see you back again soon.

For interest, all names were were put into a glass which was shaken (not stirred!) madly and the name pulled out.  I was surprised to see it went to a fellow Aussie as I've had entrants from the US and Ukraine and Russia (I think) and I was sure I'd be posting it overseas.

Look back again in a couple of days as I've suddenly been inspired to scrap and am very excited about the layout of  my sisters that I've been working on this week. 

Twiddleybitz Advent House

I have had an extremely busy week, inbetween work, running our nursery and the usual household stuff, making this Twiddleybitz Advent House.    As I have found out the hard way, it's not a project for the faint hearted!  I hope you like it.

The Advent House came as a kit which has been painted in Kaiser Olive paint and then assembled.  This wasn't too hard, but there was a fair bit of gluing involved and heaps of pieces to slot together only to discover I'd painted the wrong side of the roof! Oh well, practice makes perfect!  The hardest part was that each of the 24 boxes had to be cut out of card using the Twiddleybitz box template.  It wasn't so hard, but it definitely took quite a few hours tracing each of those boxes, cutting them out, scoring the folds and assembling them.  Let's say I watched the new Harry Potter movie twice as well as a few Doctor Who episodes while doing it!

Each of the boxes has been decorated individually.  Most have been covered with Kaiser "Belle" paper.  I decided to use a mixture of numbering styles so I've used Kaiser Rub-ons, Twiddley Bitz and Heidi Swapp Chipboard as well as stamps.  Some of the chipboards have been painted with Making Memories paints while others were painted with Ranger Crackle Paints.

I added embellishments to each of the boxes - either Christmas charms, Christmas embellishments, ribbons, Kaiser rhinestones and rub-ons.  A couple of the boxes, e.g. "12" have been painted with Ranger Rock Candy Crackle - it gives a gorgeous effect!

The roof top has been painted with Picket Fence crackle and then I've glued "snow" AKA Flowersoft Polar White along the edges and in patches over the roof.  I know we don't have snow in Australia for Christmas and never where I live, but I couldn't resist for this house.  The front of the roof has been painted over with Making Memories Red Glitter Glaze and the filigree has been painted with Ranger Pewter Crackle Paint.  I really love the crackle paint.  It's so easy to use and cracks beautifully!

The santa and sleigh are also from Twiddleybitz and have been painted with Making Memories paint and the Santa himself has been painted with Ranger Fired Brick Crackle Paint.  This has been mounted with doublesided foam tape to lift it from the edge a bit.  The Christmas Tree has been heat embossed with Christmas Tree embossing glitter and the Angel has been heat embossed with gold embossing powder.  For the first time I used Ranger Embossing Stamp Pad to adhere the embossing powders to the images and I'm really impressed with how good it is.  It stays really moist and sticky for ages after you've put it on so you don't have to rush to get the embossing powder on.

I will add that this has been the messiest project I have ever made!  I had EVERYTHING out and all over my table - paints, rubons, chipboard, paper, embellishments, ribbon, etc. - and the flowersoft went all over the place.  It absolutely refused to land on my mat and although I have a large Stampin' Up Embossing Tray, the house was too large for it.  Overall it was fantastic to make, but I'm glad it's now done.  I'm looking forward to doing something easier next week!

REMINDER:  BLOG CANDY ends Tuesday 1st December (Australia Time)  Don't forget to spread the word or leave a comment at the post below to be in the running!

There's a FAIRY in my garden!

Ok, so it's not a real fairy, but she's still pretty cute.  This is Sprite (again!) playing dress-ups as a fairy.  Sprite LOVES to play dress-ups, although she wasn't too keen on the wings flapping about, which is why she's the star of my scrapbooking pages.

I made this with Core'dinations cardstock, which has been sanded around the edges, Kaisercraft "Airy Fairy" papers and heaps of Kindyglitz.  The chipboard wings and the rubons are from Paper Inklings.  The chipboard has been painted with Kaiser paint and then had Kindyglitz and Doodlebug Sugar Glitter sprinkled strategically before the Kindyglitz has dried.

I had heaps of fun making this layout.  I don't usually have the opportunity to use such girly colours and papers and it was way out of my usual style.  I definitely overdosed on the glitter!

I finished the layout with a journalling stamp and squiggles of Kindyglitz around the edges of the 3 photos at the bottom of the page.

Blog Candy - Reminder!

Reminder - don't forget blog candy closes next Tuesday (1st)!   You've gotta be in it to win it.  Leave a comment against the blog candy post down below and you could win the goodies on offer.

Ideas Book!

I was in Officeworks the other day (actually, I was there 3 times this week because I kept forgetting stuff!) and browsing through the stationery section when I found this little hardcover notebook perfect for keeping in my handbag so that I could jot things down as I think of them instead of having to keep ideas in my leaky brain or email myself only to ignore it.  Anyway, inspired by my friend Amy from Stampin' Stuff who is always decorating books, I thought I'd try and cover it.  This is how it looks:

I've been dying to try Tim Holtz's ink splatter technique.  Basically it's just like being back in Kindy again!  It's so easy and fun and it doesn't really matter if you stuff it up.  It's not supposed to look perfect.  So to do this you need a couple of colours of alcohol ink, a can of Pressurised Air (hence one of the visits to Officeworks) and glossy cardstock (MUST be glossy or the ink'll just soak in).  Drop a couple of drops of one ink colour randomly on the card.  Quickly, before it dries, give each ink dot a quick blast from your pressurised air can.  The ink should spread.  Repeat with the other colours until the majority of the card has been filled.  Try for some overlaps of colours to see the different effects.  This was really very quick to do and I've got a unique background card.  This is the back of the book:

To finish off the book I stamped a title using Stampin' Up alphabet stamps.  I also found a sentiment stamp that fitted the "ideas" theme of the notebook and backed it with Stampin' Up creamy caramel card.  The finishing touch was a strip of grosgrain ribbon to decorate across the front and back and I attached another length of the same ribbon to the inside back cover of the book to help me keep my place. 

This is the first ever book I've covered, however now I know how much fun it is I'm looking around for other things to do too!

Have a nice Sunday everyone.

Hangin' Out!

Who doesn't just enjoy hangin' out on a weekend?  Personally I don't get a lot of time to hang about, but whenever I do I'm always shadowed by one of the furry members of our family. 

This is Sprite and she's special because one of our first boxers, Rebo, is her dad and he was the best dog you could ever have.  He was as soft as a sponge and just adored his teddies.  He always had to have something in his mouth to show to you as he wiggled around on his tippy toes.  If you have boxers you'll know what I mean!  Sprite has a lot of his personality traits.  She loves to carry things around and she wiggles everywhere, but it's always been disappointing that she doesn't do his special wiggle and she doesn't smile like he did too.  His smile is hard to describe.  He would move his head from side to side in a bit of a circular motion at the same time his lips would be drawn back into a bit of a grin while he slaps his tongue around like he's trying to lick imaginary objects.  He was such a handsome boy and I miss him every day.

Anyway, to the layout.  For this I used Core'dinations cardstock for the base and I have distressed the edges to expose the core and sanded roughly around the outside inch to 2 inches.  Just to grunge it all up.

The next layer is my newest favourite thing which is the Ranger Tim Holtz alcohol inks.  This has 3 colours of alcohol ink plus silver mixative which have been squeezed onto a Ranger Alcohol Ink Applicator.  Using glossy cardstock (must be glossy or it won't work!), tap the applicator over the sheet until it is totally covered.  You can go over areas several times to deepen the colours.  Then apply a good squirt of Ranger Alcohol Blending Solution to the ink applicator and go over the sheet again until you are happy with the colours.  The blending solution softens the colours and makes them blend into each other.  The finished effect is amazing.  You can do this with clear fragments or buttons as well.  Trust me this is gorgeous, but being so shiny with the silver through it's extremely difficult to photograph!

The flowers were originally white and I mixed Ranger Dried Marigold distress ink with water in a mini mister and then added Ranger Interference Red Perfect Pearls.  Give it all a good shake and spray on the flowers.  They have a slight shimmer to them, but I could probably have added more pearls to make them even shinier. 

The title "Hangin' out" is using Grungeboard alphabets - these are so amazingly tough and flexible.  I painted them with Ranger Spiced Marmalade Distress Crackle paint (another of my favourites - hmm, maybe I should just list my favourite things which seems to be almost everything!).  I then rubbed Ranger Dusty Concord Distress Ink into the cracks and then wiped off with a damp sponge so that the orange stayed orange and the cracks are now a deep purple like the cardstock.

But wait!  That's not all!!! The "i" in Hangin' is dotted with a Stampin' Up flower brad and to finish off the flowers I added Kaiser Rhinestones to the small ones and Stampin' Up buttons to the big ones.  The final touch is the 3 fragments which have been covered in Stampin' Up pattern paper.  I'm not 100% happy with the fragments, which makes a change for me, but the silver cord took forever to get to stay where I wanted it and now I haven't the heart to change them.

If you want more details on using any of the Ranger products check out Tim Holtz' website.  Link is on this page.  The products are available at Stampin' Stuff.  The link is also available at the side.

Who would like some BLOG CANDY?

 To celebrate starting this blog I am offering some blog candy.  I am including the following items:

• 1 pack of Blue Bumblebee Craft Flowers
• round gold brads
• small round blue brads
• selection of buttons
• selection of dog brads
• pink & red heart brads
• circle clips
• approx. 1 metre each copper and silver cord
• approx. 1 metre 5/8" red grosgrain ribbon
• approx 1 metre 3/16" moss green gingham ribbon
• Kaisercraft Basics Rubons - Fancy Florals

If you would like to win this candy all you need to do is leave a comment against this post.  If you put a link on your blog to my blog and leave a comment letting me know you have done so, you'll get 2 entries. 

The candy will be drawn on the 1st December.

Enjoy!

The winner is KarenB - congratulations!

Say....cheese!

I've recently formed a new love....or should I say, SEVERAL new loves, but they all centre around Tim Holtz products. Every time I try something new from his range it instantly becomes my new favourite thing to do. This layout "say....cheese!" covers a couple of them. I think my friends are now sick of me raving about Tim Holtz so I'll have to rave online instead.

This layout features our last litter of boxer pups when they were about 6 weeks old. The photo was taken October 2008, but I only scrapped this recently. Aren't they adorable?

The cardstock is textured pale green and I laid out the "cheese" using Heidi Swapp "Newsprint" mask. Unfortunately I ran out of room to have the full title, but made do (don't we always "make do" in scrapping?) Using Tim Holtz (Ranger) Distress Inks (Tea, Dye, Peeled Paint & Scattered Straw) with a Ranger Ink Blending Tool I rubbed in ink around the edges of the card. I admit I went a little crazy here because it was so much fun. If you've never tried this before I recommend watching the tutorials on Tim Holtz's site as it is quick and easy to do and as I said....soooo much fun! The papers used are from Kaiser's "Country Grove" range. I love Kaiser, but admit to being disappointed we only get releases once a quarter now! I cut out a flower from the paper for the top right corner and anchored it with a Stampin' Up! silver flower brad. The other flowers are from Green Tara and I've embellished the centres with Kaiser Rhinestones. To finish the title I used Stampin' Up alphabet stamps with "Really Rust" ink.

As a finishing touch I used one of my other new favourites which is the Tim Holtz idea-ology Fragments. These fragments are FANTASTIC. You can cover them with paper, like I've done here, stamp on them, use alcohol inks on them and even emboss on them! They're really versatile and you can make them look different on every page so it doesn't matter how many times you use them.

If you're looking for the Tim Holtz products you can get them at http://www.stampinstuff.com.au/ a great new online store.

Welcome to my first ever blog! As an introduction I'll tell you a bit about myself. As you can see from my profile I share my life with a variety of animals who are the inspiration for a lot of my work. However, I refuse to restrict myself to boring ol' doggie brads and doggie papers. I try to use whatever I think is pretty or suitable.

I have been scrapping for approximatly 2 1/2 years and in that time I've discovered it's just another way of accumulating heaps of stuff and spending heaps of money keeping up with all the amazing new papers, inks, tools, etc. It's extremely addictive and I LOVE IT!




This is a box to hold Making Memories Paints. The box has been painted with Kaiser paints - Sea Breeze with splashes of White around the edges. The title are Bella chipboard alphas which have been painted with different colours and mediums including crackle paint, pearl glaze and glitter paint. The box was finished by decorating the handle with raffia and tying raffia around the whole box. The final touch is a white Green Tara flower with a blue button. I agonised for about a week over the decoration of this box as it didn't seem to be doing what I had wanted, but a few mistakes and coverups later and much changing of the original plan I am very happy with it. The only problem.....it holds 15 paints and the box is now full!