Twice in one month??!!?

Goodness! I'm back!

Twice in one month!

You best sit down as your legs are bound to be weak with the shock.

I guess the Scrap Around The World challenge so appealed to me, I had to do another layout :)

Here's a link to the June Mood Board over there at SATW

This time I took my inspiration from the LOVE image. But the yellow also features again.

I should really tell you what products I used, but I did my back in this morning, so I am exiled from my craft room. It will have to remain a mystery.

Till next time :)

Scrap Around The World (again)

It is the challenges that bring me back to my blog. I wish I had time to post here all the time. To tell you hilarious stories of my riotous family. All the weird and wonderful things I get up to. (Or rather our mundane humdrum life?)

But sadly, no. Not time for fun like that.

That said, I gave myself a few hours off tonight and decided to participate in this months Scrap Around the World challenge.

I normally HATE yellow, but as fate would have it my daughter has just gotten the present of a black and yellow dress and had her photo taken on Saturday in front of a black and yellow garden at this years Bloom in the Phoenix Park. I felt the scrappyverse was trying to tell me something.

So, here we are - the mood board - 

 

And my take on it - 

I hope you like it :)

See you next month I imagine!

In The Mood (Board)

This is my first post of 2014. 

The 8th of April. Hard to believe. 

But I haven't been crafting. Not that I didn't want to, but I've been writing a book. It's a bucket list sorta thing. Maybe this book will bring me fame and riches, or maybe it'll sit in a drawer gathering dust forever more, I don't know. But I'm glad I'm doing it. The only downside is not having as much time for my other interests. 

I made a decision this week to step back a little from character formations and plot arcs and just do a bit of scrapping. I've been following the Scrap Around The World blog on Facebook and each month I've wanted to take part in their challenge. This month, I decide to just do it.

 

Here is the mood board they created this month from which we challengers are to draw inspiration. And as the blog isn't a specifically colour challenge blog, you can take your inspiration from any part of the board. As it turned out though, the colours happen to be complete faves of mine, so my layout ended up taking that as its inspiration.

I was in a mixed media mood when I sat down to put the layout together. I used to worry about what would happen if the scrapbooking industry declined to such an extent that we couldn't get our lovely patterned papers anymore (I know, over-dramatic much?!?) But for the last 12 months or so, at least half my layouts - like this one - are patterned paper free. I just messed about with my paints and pastes and inks.

So, here it is in all its glory :)

There you go. I am very happy with my page and I'm looking forward to next months mood board... or you know, I may even do another from this month's.

See you next time :)

Bookmark

So, I was in a challenging kind of mood.

In the mood for a challenge!

I found just what I was looking for over at the Crafting Ireland blog. 

The task, make a bookmark, using at least one kind of paint and an image from a magazine.

Here's the specific post... sponsored by the lovely people over at Mixed Media Place.

 Step one - I painted a piece of kraft card with DecoArt 'warm White' acrylic paint.

Step Two - I thought I'd use some multi-medium to create a bit of a resist effect. So, I smeared a bit of it through a lovely Studio Calico stencil I have.

Resist closeup

Step Three - I then sprayed it all with some Dylusions spray.

Then used a babywipe to take off a lot of the spray.

Step Four - Annoyingly we tend to recycle our magazines about a nanosecond after we finished them, so I didn't have a lot of choice when it came to finding something to incorporate. I decided to cut out the word 'Home' from this flyer.

Step Five - Distressed the word and also painted a little chipboard bird.

Step Six - I stamped 'Home Bird' all over the bookmark. I also smeared a little texture paste (which had blue paint added to it) randomly about.

I finished the bookmark up with some bird stamps from Dyan Reavely and some bakers twine/ribbon through a punched hole in the top.

                               

I'm quite happy with it I'll boastfully admit - but to be honest I realised afterwards I shouldn't have added the chipboard bird - it's too dimensional for a bookmark! I'll be leaving dents in my pages!

There you go! Hope you like it :)

Gelli Prints and DecoArt Fun :)

The universe has been listening. It heard that my gelliplate has become most most favouritest thing in the whole world.

In fairness it would  have been quite hard for the Universe to have missed this fact. In fact, I suspect the Universe has been banging on it's ceiling with a brush handle, yelling at me to keep it down.

But, holding no grudges, she - the Universe is a woman, right? - sent me a wonderful surprise a month or so ago.

I got an email from the lovely people at DecoArt paints, asking me to do a little design team work for them with their fab acrylic paints and my beloved Gelli plate. I.Was. Delighted. Delighted :)

But I got a little bit of performance anxiety. I didn't want to disappoint. Such lovely, lovely paints and now (after a trip to the Hobbycraft fair in Birmingham) also a new GIANT Gelliplate. It was nearly overwhelming.

But, telling myself to cop on, I eventually dived in...

Here are the current results. I hope you like them :)

I grabbed a few fallen leaves from the Acer tree in the back garden and this is what I got :)

My Dad saw keyholes and I saw trees. I think he's right though.

Broke out a few of my old favourite hand-cut stencils for this one. Loving the pink palette.

The first of two Poppies studies. Love poppies. And the colour teal. This print has it all!

Those poppies again. But more multicolored. I love colour. Loads of it. I guess I'm just  not a subtle person :)

So, there you go. I'm hoping to try producing some videos of my process soon. I tried before but my camera kept falling over. Any and all tips on making videos very happily received!

See you next time :)

Gelli Madness

So I just dropped off the face of the earth, didn't I?

My cyber disappearance coincided with a trip my husband took to Texas.

There had been a travel freeze in his company for three years, so he'd been going nowhere. But, back in June, that all changed. And off he went to Austin, Texas. And he didn't just bring a change of clothes with him. He brought a crafty shopping list as long as your arm with him!

Oh the things I ordered.

From Jo-Ann's!

From Michaels!

From Hobby Lobby!

The haul!

It was glorious! Only next to actually being able to go there myself and browse the shelves myself, it was the best crafty thing to ever happen to me :)

Well, that is until he came home. And one of the things I had him buy me, well, it's changed my crafting world!

That's a pretty big statement, isn't it?

But it's true.

So, what was this thing he bought me?

A Gelli plate.

Maybe that doesn't sound like much - what's so great about a synthetic gelatin monoprinting plate I hear you cry! Well, maybe you just got to try it to understand...

Here's a link to the official Gelli Arts website -

http://www.gelliarts.com/

Watch a few videos. You'll be hook on the idea in no time :)

So, basically, that's all I've been doing for the last six months. I'm not actually kidding. My scrapbooking has fallen very far behind :( I still love it so very much, but the whole gelli printing has kinda got out of hand! Y'see, I made so many prints I decided recently to open my very own Etsy Shop. (RublilyArt) And boy, that takes time. And I've been doing a few craft fairs too. Busy, busy busy! But I'll be back to my scrapping soon :)

Anyway, here are a few of my prints! This is what the fuss is all about :)

Some of them I painted on top of an initial gelli print, some I used my own hand-drawn and cut stencils.  And some had brushwork, stencils and then stamping! And some were just layer after layer of the prints themselves. The possibilities are endless :)



I will be posting more scrapping layouts soon. But there's going to be a lot of Gelliprinting too! Brace yourselves!

Journaling Journey

I haven't been posting much this month as I haven't created many new layouts. This isn't because I've not been crafting, nope - it's because I am in my bi-annual phase of filing layouts, finishing journaling, and all general boring scrapping admin that I usually put off until my scrap room is about to explode.

And, as usual, as I filed my layouts, I got distracted looking over old pages, reading the journaling and generally tripping down memory lane...

But I spotted a problem.

A big problem.

Obviously I have a goldfish brain. Because, there were multiple layouts where the journaling began - "There's no particular story behind this picture...." Disaster! Once or twice, sure, not the end of the world, but three or four layouts in, not good! It was so prevelant that I was considering creating a new three letter acronym of NPS - 'no particular story' for my pages!

So, there was only one thing for it - I had to redo the layouts!

Handily enough this journaling disaster has coincided with another scrapping development. I've taken to listening to the Paperclipping Roundtable podcast. I'm new to this podcast, so I have practically the entire past three years of shows to binge on. And it's wonderful! In a country where there are about three and half scrapbookers (and so therefore so few people you can obsessed about scrapping with) it is bliss to get to listen to an hour show where all they talk about is the minutia of the hobby.

Anyway one little gem I took away from the show was about journaling. Someone said always journal what you will want to remember in years to come. Now, you know, this might sound obvious to everyone else but me. And it does sound obvious when I look at it here. But, my journaling tends to be a bit ropey. Sure, when there is an obvious story to tell, I'm grand. But if it's subtler, I tend to be a bit lost. I end up sounding like a Hallmark employee. Will I really want to read in twenty years time 'Oh darling you look so cute in this picture!' a few hundred times? I doubt it. Between 'gee, you look cute' and 'no particular story' it was all a bit of a mess. And to think my other interest is writing! And I've been paid for it repeatedly! (shakes head in dismay.)

So, what I did...

I redid the layouts. And I looked again at the pictures and thought about what I would really like to read in the future. And suddenly the photos went from cute but storyless to gateways to my thoughts and feelings and a record I will be delighted to have written down in twenty years and a record I will be delighted for my children to read when they are grown.

Phew!

So, here are a couple of the layouts I redid. Unforutntely I only thought to do a 'before' and 'after' when I got to the second one. So, with the first layout, imagine it with pointless journaling and lots of different paper that had to be ripped out to get rid of the stoopid platitudes.

This is the layout without the 'before'.

I am so happy now with the above layout - the journaling (all about how I was the only girl, and wish I had a sister and how delighted that they have each other) replaced pointless whittering which no-one would have been interesting in reading, even myself.


The second layout....


Before - 

 After -

The journaling here - which was completely absent before - is now a record of nine things she was doing at nine months. Lots of little annecdotes and memories that I would have otherwise forgotten. Am thrilled.



And just before I go - on a totally unrelated note, a link for Terri! (You know who you are :)

The Poetry Divas

I first speak at the third verse - the one that begins 'My squashy cushions'! Lol!



Bye for now!