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:

dimensional flower punch

This month I have been having fun with the gerber daisy dimensional flower punch from EK Success. These punches are so versatile and fun to use!
 On my first layout I wanted to keep the colours quite subtle to match the photos of my grandson and so I opted for My Mind's Eye, On The bright Side.
I punched 3 x 6" borders which I layered and stitched in place, extending the stitching into rows to use as as base for my journalling. After punching out all those strips I was left with a lot of punched out 'waste',  never one to waste anything I decided to make these into flowers and the rest I layered up to make a border which, again, I stitched in place.

For the second layout I wanted something more funky.

I punched several strips in black, orange and blue to match the colours of my son's basketball, still using papers from On the bright side

I then chopped the coloured ones in half to layer on top of the black to make ovals

Again I put my trusty sewing machine to good use to sew them to my page.

For the last layout I dipped back in to my My Minds Eye On the Bright Side papers, but this time I used the punch to create a circle border, this is easily done by cutting slits along the base so it can be manipulated into a round. To give it more interest I did it twice using contrasting papers

So, with just one punch you can achieve so much, and of course they make the most gorgeous flowers too!! I would love to see how you use your punches, why not leave a link to your work in the comments box so I can come and have a look?
 I used the following products:
EK success dimensional flower punch
My Mind's eye On the Bright Side paper pad
Lily Bee alphabet stickers

Post-Christmas Scrapping

I love reading all the "Christmas Scrapping" inspiration in the run up to the big event in December, but if you're anything like me, it is only now that you have the stash, edited pictures and most importantly time to actually document any of the festive season! So I hope you are not all fed up of seasonal pictures and posts, as here I am with my take on recording Christmas! Grab the left over chocolates and sit back and relax.....

Another thing which sometimes makes me hesitant to scrap my Christmas pictures is that I feel that I *should* use festive, themed papers......it's not that I dislike them in anyway, but they somehow serve to get me incredibly stressed about getting my annual Christmas pages *just right*.......totally ridiculous but very true. Thankfully, as many of the design team showcased last month, that really needn't be the case, and like many of them I enjoy the challenge of using "ordinary" stash to create my own, individual seasonal theme, without my self-induced "must get this right first time" pressure that for some bizarre reason themed paper brings out in me!

I chose to use the absolutely gorgeous My Minds Eye Kraft Funday ranges - these were hugely popular at the November retreat, but if you have yet to check them out, have a look at them here, or follow the links at the end of my post.  The gorgeous colour-printed kraft designs reminded me of my favourite type of wrapping paper, so felt like a natural choice for my Christmas photos.

My First page is Wonderful Day:

please click on any photo 

to see a larger version

We had a fantastic day back in November when my niece was chosen to be Santa's helper for the day and, following a special breakfast and lots of treats, open his grotto - complete with the local paparazzi there to record the moment!

I used the star-spangled reverse of the Lollipop Dots paper as the base for my page, with a spritz of white mist for a frosty feel. I matted my photos on several different layers of paper, and wanted to create the effect of it all being bundled up together like a parcel. So using bakers twine, I attached long lengths behind the paper and brought them to the front, passing them through a single point with a needle so that they would give a "tied together" look when I had finished:

To make the bow on top, I punched several bows shapes from different patterned paper, folded them to give them dimension and stacked them on top of each other using a good dollop of ultra tacky glue.....

and added a sparkly rhinestone to the centre.....I LOVE the iridescent sparkle of the aurora borealis rhinestones - it doesn't photograph well but they give so much more colour and sparkle than plain clear ones!

I used a pre-made, printed chipboard embellishment for my title; you don't have to create your own with alphas every time - printed journalling cards and stickers can some times do the hard work for you. To customise the chipboard I gave it a blast of pink mist,

before matting it on some paper, and a strip of mix tape that I stamped some bunting on top of:

And of course, a bit of added bling to bring the sparkle and magic of the day to life!

A little cluster of stamped images and sentiments and embellishments finished my page:

I adore the little Amy Tangerine camera stamp, and sincerely believe everyone should own it!!

The second page I'd like to share with you was based on my favourite snap of myself and my other half on Christmas Day morning before the chaos and madness descended.....

As the page was based on our "Christmas Portrait", I wanted to use lots of frames to emphasise this idea. Using the frame in the Amy Tangerine stamps, I stamped it onto kraft cardstock in three colours, before cutting them out and sticking them under my photo. I removed the centres from two of them using a craft knife and decorated the resulting "holes" with heart rhinestones, stamped stars and buttons. I left the centre stamped image in tact, but stamped the word "favourite" using a versamark stamp to give a subtle impression. It gives a lovely, tone-on-tone watermark effect.

I created the swags by trapping bakers twine underneath punched bows with some 3d foam pads. To make sure the twiddly twine then stayed flat in the billowing swag shapes rather than twisting up, I put a generous amount of ultra tacky glue on to a clean finger and rubbed it over the twine. It dried quickly and ensured my twine has stayed in shape where I wanted it:

As well as the frames, my photos were matted with patterned papers, mix tape and journalling stickers.

At the bottom of my page, I swiped a stripe of acrylic dabber paint thickly across the page, and whilst still wet dropped lots of ultra fine glitter into it, to create a thick sparkly strip - reminiscent of fresh snow or icing on top of a gingerbread house :)

Using an Ek Success border punch, I added a chain of hearts across this once it was dry, punched from the candy-cane striped rear of the pinwheel paper. This served as the base for my title/journalling chipboard shape, which I decorated with a chipboard button and some decorative pins.

So there's my 2011 Christmas Scrapping achieved without a themed piece of paper of embellishment in sight! We would really love to see your Christmas creations so please feel free to share your links in the comments section :)

Here's to 2012 - I wonder what it has in store for us all!
Thanks, as always, for stopping by :)

My Supplies included:

InLinkz.com