Embellishing your Chistmas!

If you're as unorganised as me, it's that time of year when any spare cash is being plunged into (starting!!) your Christmas shopping, and the odd festive scrapbooking treat for yourself may well be pushed to the back burner. With that in mind, I decided this month to choose just a few brand new select seasonal embellishments that I could easily mix in with paper and other bits already in my stash, so as not to break my budget and to help me feel good with a bit of stash busting.

I plumped for the gorgeous Sleigh Ride vellum embellishments from Crate, a star mask and some tin badges from Studio Calico....and then, as you can see from the picture below, ever a slave to my patterned paper addiction, I crumbled when I saw the sweet "Rudolph" paper in the Crate collection!

The first page I made with my goodies records a recent "Santa Jog" my fiance and I took part in for the British Heart Foundation. I started my love-hate relationship with running earlier this year when I embarked on the C25k programme, and although I still can't profess to being able to run 5k yet, I really have developed by running ability more than I thought I ever would and it has helped me to loose 24lbs so far. My commitment to the programme does dip when I find it challenging - so my "darling" other half entered my into the Santa Jog without me knowing as a way to step up training efforts!

Click on the picture for a larger image

I began by using the rear of the Rudolph paper as my base - I loved the geometric tree pattern in pale ice blue. Wanting to get those cute deers in on the action - I popped a slice along the bottom of my page. I love that scrapping in A4 allows me to use a patterned paper as my base sheet and still have some left over - especially when they are gorgeous double sided designs like this.

I layered lots of the vellum tags on top of each other to create an area where my title would go - I loved that their translucent nature allowed the patterns to still subtly show through. The map tag was a must for my running themed page! For my title itself, I used some of the lovely letter stickers from the Echo Park Photo Freedom sticker sheet I used last month (read the blog post here). I created the date using a December sticker from the same sheet, and the one of the vellum numbers that are in the pack from Crate. 

You may notice a little silver star peeping out from behind the photo. I had a go at using the star mask and sweeping some Liquid Pearls through it. It was a little hit and miss; if you pulled the mask of too soon the pearls would pool into a blob, and if you left it on too long, the pearls would pull away with the mask and take a little of the paper with it too. But it was fun to try something a little different. I simply taped the mask into place, squeezed a little Liquid Pearls through each hole, and then swiped over it with an old store card.

 I topped each up as needed until the Liquid Pearls was flush with the top of the mask.

Underneath my picture I popped a row of punched hearts to represent the charity that organised the event. I punched them from some Kraft, but felt they needed something a little extra. So I took a scrap of card, and covered it with some washi tape. I added the strips at an angle as I wanted the striped to be reminiscent of candy canes.

After trimming the rough edge so it would fit, I popped it through the same heart punch.

This gave me a strip of candy-cane striped hearts. I cut a few free from the chain with a small scissorsand added them at random to my original strip of Kraft hearts.

 

The final touch to the page was adding some more of the badges to the corner of the page. I used some of the vellum numbers as decorative frames for them - they were the perfect size for the job!

For my second page, I managed to avoid patterned paper completely - a rare thing for me! I decided to use a piece of the delicious new dark Kraft for my base, and the star mask with some white Mister Hueys to create a background. I absolutely love filling the house with candles at this time of year, and wanted to record some of those little pockets of glowing light.

With this in mind, and looking at the "fading" pattern on the mask, where there is a heavy concentration of stars at the bottom and then fading away towards the top; I decided that I would pivot the mask around a point at the centre of the page, to create a pattern that appeared to be "glowing" right from the middle:

I wasn't too concerned about the overlapping marks you can see in the middle - I had three photos and I knew I was going to put them in a triangle formation (like a Christmas tree!) right in the middle so this would be covered. The important thing for me was to create an effect of the stars radiating towards the four corners.

Similarly, I wasn't worried about the untidy misting at edges where the mask hadn't covered (or the punched "nibble" out of the top left corner!), I always have a border to my pages and knew I could cover this up with that. However, this time, rather than mounting my page onto a sheet of card stock for this, I decided to make a border with some lovely wide washi tape. I created neat mitred edges by folding back the tape as you can see in the picture below, making a firm crease as a cutting guide, and then trimming the excess away with a scissors.

With my base completed, I was ready to start on the pretty bits! Here's my finished page:

 For my title, I altered the "Let it Snow"vellum tag to "Glow" using some of the stickers on the second Echo Park Photo Freedom stickers sheet I used in November. I kept the embellishment simple, allowing the photos and the misted background to be the focal point.

A few dotted pearls and wooden stars added a small, festive finishing touch.

Finally, for a very quick make, I whipped up a tag for a special friend:

I misted a scrap of kraft card using the star mask. The concentrated band of colour at the bottom of the tag was card below the edge of the mask that wasn't covered - I loved the contrast between the block of colour and the star pattern so decided to include it when I cut my tag shape, rather than trim it away. A quick strip of washi tape, a tin badge and wooden stars, and hey presto - a hand made tag in minutes.

 

As mentioned by Jen in her post, we can't at present share direct product links with you like we usually do due to the exciting happenings over at the shop! If you haven't already checked out the brand new and totally revamped website at its temporary address - go now!!!

That just leaves me to wish you a very merry Christmas from me, and a happy New Year!

See you in January 2013 xxx

Scrapping without Patterned Paper...

Who doesn't love patterned paper?  It's one of the things that drew me to scrapbooking: all of those pretty patterns!  When I was at university, one of my housemates was obsessed with wrapping paper and had a collection of her favourite designs and patterns.  At the time I never thought that I would have a house full of sheets of pretty paper!  As much as I love patterned paper though, I find that I don't use an awful lot of it.  I may use a sheet as a background or cut strips and bits from it to add to my page.  So, after seeing all of the stickers, die cuts and tape in the new releases from My Mind's Eye, I challenged myself to create a set of layouts without using any patterned papers, relying on other embellishments and coming up with some techniques to add colour to my pages.  Each page was made on a neutral card background; either white, kraft or my new favourite staple, dark kraft.

Layout 1: Fun in the Sun.

We recently spent a week camping in South Wales and I wanted to record my favourite day of the holiday which was spent at Rhossili Bay.  I used strips of washi tape to create borders on my page, drawing the eye towards the photo in the middle.  I trimmed down one of the card die-cuts before adding a strip of the yellow tape to form a base for the title.  The title was made using some of the tiny word stickers which are an absolute bargain for the amount of words that you get on a sheet for only 89p. 

To add some more interest to the bottom border strip, I used my small heart punch to make three holes through the it.  I then took another strip of the pink tape, stuck it to a piece of white card and attached it behind the background sheet so that the hearts became pink through the holes.  Not one for waste, I added the extra white hearts around the page.

More colour was added to the page through the stitched sunburst design.  I pierced holes 0.5cm apart marking out along a ruler and chose some coordinating threads to sew with.

Layout 2:Sun, sea and sand.

The design for this page began with me placing the photo collage onto the page and playing around with the 'happy' banner-shaped journaling card.  Once, I was happy with it laying underneath the photo, I added the yellow aticker and made a couple of washi tape banners to balance the strip.  If you fold the tape back on itself it makes a really flexible and non sticky material to work with which I then cut the banner shape from before stapling to the page.

I went back to using tape as a page border but decided to add the yellow tape around the whole page.  To make a neat join at the corners, I stuck the two strip on top of each before peeling back from the cardstock and cutting a mitred corner diagonally from the outside tip to the inside join.  As the tape is so easy to use and peel off, I could take away the excess tape to leave a neat join which I smoothed back down to the page.

My typed journaling strips were glued on top of this area, going all around the edge of the page.

Another way that I used the tapes was again to fold it back on itself.  I realised that by doing so I could then easily punch out shapes from it.  The little tape hearts that I made were added to the page as embellishments.

Layout 3: The best of Friends

My daughter has a very special relationship with our friends' son.  They hadn't seen each other for two years until we went away with them on holiday during August but it was as though they had never been apart.  

I again used the white lace tape as a page border but, after realising that the pattern isn't particularly clear when placed on a kraft background, I stuck it to some white card first: this really shows off the pretty pattern on the tape.

After playing with the punched washi tape hearts on the previous layout, I decided to create an area on this page that would be filled with these shapes.  I firstly stuck down a chipboard heart with some temporary adhesive and then pierced holes all around the edge which left me with an outline ready to sew around.

To fill the shape, I covered the area in mod podge and scattered some of the hearts on.  I then added some more glue to ares where there were gaps and laid more of the shapes on, thinking about where different colours were needed as well to make it look even.

Another embellishment that I made was this little tag.  Toby wrote Evie a little love note which I wanted to record but it was too big to actually fit onto the page.  So instead, I scanned it, resized and printed it onto some kraft card which I then cut into a tag shape.  The effect is quite subtle on the kraft card.

The title quote, which I found on Pinterest, reads: True friendship is not being inseparable, it's being separated and nothing changes.  I typed and printed this onto some white card which I then trimmed down to size and used a border punch to edge it which had a similar lacy pattern to the white washi tape.

Layout 4: One Year in Year One

Somehow, Evie has managed to complete another year at school: where does the time go?!  My starting point for this page was knowing that I wanted to cut out the title using my Craft Robo and create a filled effect by backing the negative space with washi tape strips.  I chose yellow, grey and blue accents for this layout to match her school uniform colours.  To the white background I added some splats of black mist/ink to tie in with the school theme and then I began to build the page.

Evie added her own jounaling which details who her teacher was, her friend's names and her favourite part of Year One.  Using Nat's recent blog post idea, I dressed a little girl wood veneer shape using tape, again in her school uniform colours.

I picked out some of the MME word stickers to place along the bottom of the photograph using words which describe her attitude and feelings towards learning and school.

If you look closely at the bottom left of the page you will see that I used a date stamp to add the beginning and end of the school year.  However, after happily checking and setting the dates and stamping onto the background, I realised that I'd put Septemeber 2012 instead of 2011.  One of the tiny tab stickers was the perfect size to cover up this mistake and the surface even took the distress ink without smudging.

Layout 5: Playtime

This page was put together very quickly using mainly the stickers from the larger MME sheets and some bits of tape and a Studio Calico die cut of children playing with a ball.  The small photo was placed behind a polaroid-shaped sticker from one of the sheets which also contains a selection of phrases written along the bottom of it.  I doodled a border around the page and kept it journaling-free as the phrases on the stickers pretty much sum up my thoughts about this photgraph of my 3 children playing out together.

(Edited to add this final layout which I'd forgotten that I'd done!)

6. All About Me

I wanted to focus of this layout to again be the photo.   So after placing the picture on the card with the 'all about me' die cut next to it, I played around with building a grid using stickers and tape.  Because of the amount of white space left on the page, I machine stitched around the edge to create a frame. 

As it was the summer holidays, I had plenty of scrapping time and got a little carried away with making pages for this post but I what I hope to have shown you is just how versatile tape and stickers can be and given you some ideas for making layouts without using any patterned paper at all for those occasions when you can't find the right papers or for when you just fancy doing something different.

  

My supplies:

Jubilee Mad!

Hi everyone, Vanessa here with my first project in a while and I've gone all patriotic as the Olympics and the Jubilee are coming up very soon!  I've seen a all sorts of versions of the Union Jack out and about in the shops etc, which inspired me to show how you can get all patriotic using any kind of paper or design.  For this project I have used papers from the Cosmo Cricket Evangeline range.

The main products I have used are :-

Cosmo Cricket Evangeline - Dandelion
Cosmo Cricket Evangeline - Rose
Cosmo Cricket Washi Tape
American Crafts Microbeads (Rouge)
American Crafts DIY Thickers (Poolside)
MME Follow Your Heart, Be Amazing Twine

First up is my layout "Bat It".  For the background I've used an old rose and script stamp on some American Crafts Kraft style card and Ranger tea stain ink and I've machine stitched around the edge of the card. 

 I covered the DIY thickers with the washi tape, inked the edges and used glossy accents on the top.

The bunting is hand cut and the Union Jack stripes are hand drawn with a brown journalling pen.  I then machine stitched the bunting to the page and drew over the Union Jack lines with glossy accents.

I used another piece of washi tape on the bottom right corner, pleated, and then machine stitched over the top.

Next up is a card made up in the style of the Union Jack.  I hand stitched the twine in the shape of the cross, using a WRMK Sew Easy.
 

I cut out butterflies and roses from the paper, layered the rose and used drops of glossy accents on the top.

My next layout is a simple and straight forward page, Girl Explorer, which again has some stitching, this time freehand using the twine, along the bottom.  For the title, I covererd the DIY letters with the micro beads, which gives a lovely spongy look and feel.  I used the washi tape for the main cross on the Union Jack patch.

The small butterlies are cut from a small woodware punch.

For my last project, I decided to jazz up a 39p notebook from Tesco.

Again, it was a simple case of cutting out the strips and layering them, however, for the main cross, this time I used two strips of double sided sticky tape and sprinkled the micro beads over the top.  I wasn't too sure it would work well on a notebook, but it worked really well.

  

 Thanks, hope you enjoy! :) x

It's hip to be Square!

With a constant flow of irresistible new stash  and tools continually arriving in the shop (and our craft spaces) it's easy to forget about some of the long standing basics we have all had in our stash since the dawn of scrapbooking time.

It's my aim in this post is to help you rediscover one such item and use it with your latest pretty paper purchases to create some of the current popular trends in scrapbooking.

May I reintroduce you to your very humble, long neglected.......

Square Punch!!

I'm going to show you how you can use a square punch to create quick and easy banners, bunting and chevrons to adorn your pages.

First up, banners.....

Simply take a strip of patterned paper, and slip it into your punch so that a triangle shape of the paper is visible on one corner of the square-punching area, as in the picture below. For obvious reasons, I find it easiest to work with the punch upside down for this so you can see the actual punching mechanism and line your paper up easily.

Give the paper a punch, and on removing it you should be left with a nice "tail" shape to your new banner strip! I've turned mine here in this photo to help you visualise how exactly the square punch has chopped the shape into the strip.

You could create a tail in one end of your banner, or in both ends. For this page, using the gorgeous SEI Vanilla Sunshine line, you can see I layered a few banners together as a mount for my title, helping to draw attention to it:

Here's the completed page (click on it to see it more closely):

I wanted to create the effect of a shower trickling down the page in the top left corner, so began by spritzing the area with some Mister huey in Clay. I also swiped some along the top edge of the paper with a brush to create a cloud effect. I then cut a cluster of circles from the Raindrop Corner paper and added them to the top,

before adding some hand cut umbrellas from the Sunny Showers paper below: I further added to the raindrop theme by cutting glittery circles from the same sheet and popping them onto the page, interspersed with adhesive rhinestones and shimmery dots of silver liquid pearls

A little embellishment cluster was made using the cloud flag from the October Afternoon Little Flyers (which again I added some of the hand cut glittery circles to), some twine a My Minds Eye pin and a button.

For my journalling, I spritzed some grey cardstock with the Clay Mister Huey to give it a mottled, water-marked showery effect, before running it through my printer and cutting it into strips. A bit of white acrylic paint swiped across the page not only created the perfect background to allow my journalling to shine, but also resembled a cloud!!

Next up, bunting. This trend has been around for quite some time now, but it doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Manufacturers are still releasing bunting-themed papers, chipboard elements, stamps and papers - but there's nothing more satisfying than creating your own from pretty papers in patterns of your choice - and it's a great way of making a dent in your scraps pile!

Each square that you punch will give you two little bunting flags, and it's as easy as this....

Start by turning your punched square 45 degrees so that it looks like a diamond:

Cut it in half (from the top point of the diamond to the bottom point).

Move your two halves apart, rotating the bottoms outwards slightly so that each has a long point facing downwards, as pictured here:

Now, by snipping across the tops of your shapes, you will be left with two little bunting triangles. The red lines in this photo indicate where you should be cutting across:

 Hey presto - cute little bunting flags:

The final technique using your square punch that I want to show you is creating a mosaic chevron effect.

You need two punched squares for every "v shape" you want to create along your chevron.
Begin by cutting one of your pair of squares in half diagonally:

 Take the bottom half of your square, and place it above the top one, as pictured below:

 Repeat for your second square - cutting it in half diagonally,

 and then placing the bottom half above the top one:

 Here you can see how the shapes make the "V" wave of the chevron pattern when assembled together:

Rather than adding them straight to my pages, I prefer to create my chevron pattern on a piece of scrap card. This makes it easier to rearrange on my page when I'm designing it - I'm an indecisive scrapper and spend ages moving my elements around until I'm happy!

 Continue building your chevrons until your pattern/panel is at your desired size:

 I cut away the excess card between the chevrons with a scissors, and trim the sides with my trimmer to give a neat finish, and my chevron pattern is then ready to add to my page:

Here's how both of these techniques look in action on a page:

I "mounted" my bunting on to a couple of tags I made using some of the Vanilla Sunshine paper to create a little embellishment cluster at the top of my page:

I wanted to include the pretty diamante "30" pin that was on my birthday cake as a memento of the occasion, and the chevron mosaic provided a perfect background for it. I teamed it with some of the little flags from the Little Flyers to make a trio of stick embellishments:

Thank you as always for popping by the Sarah's Cards blog - I hope you feel inspired to dust off your old square punch and use it in new ways.

Pop back over the next few days to find out the details of this month's challenge!

My supplies for these projects included:

InLinkz.com