Buttons

At the last retreat, I assisted Ifa with her lovely class which incorporated clear buttons. Some were idly sat on my desk space, when a bit of paper shuffling resulted in one becoming stuck on a torn scrap of washi tape, which inspired me to use it to deliberately create custom patterened buttons for my pages this month.

I'll make no apologies for bringing you pages made with snowy photos that I took back in January, in April - as I'm sat here with the rain lashing at the window and the wind howling around the walls, I could easily be forgiven for thinking we were in the deep depths of Winter anyway!

My papers this month are from the Amy Tan "Yes, Please" range.

Here's my first page:

You can just see a couple of my washi-covered buttons in the bottom right hand corner.  Here's how I easily created them in moments:

1. Pop a strip of washi tape, sticky side up, on to your work area, and pop a button on top. Easy! As you can see on the right, you don't have to stick to just one design of tape on your button. Mix it up! Go wild! Dig in to that washi!

For larger buttons where your chosen tape isn't wide enough to cover it in one go, pop one small piece of tape over half of the button, then simply tear another small strip and marry up the pattern on the other half, as below (you can just see the button in the picture underneath the tape; I joined the tapes along the button holes):

2. Burnish the tape on to the button firmly with your thumb and finger, and then trim away the excess tape from around the edge. Using a pokey tool or a pin, push through the button holes and remove the tiny scraps of washi tape from inside. I preferred to push through from the back as it ensured that the rest of the tape wasn't accidentally lifted from the button in the process.

3. And ta'daaaa! You have your own custom buttons using the pretty washi tape that we all love and hoard!!

The semi-transparent nature of washi lends itself very well to the buttons and create a lovely effect when popped over layers of paper or photos as you can see a portion through the design; I popped some onto a photo here to illustrate this:

The particular tapes I have used here are the gorgeous ones from MME's My Girl, Notable and Unforgettable triple packs.

Here's a close up of them on my page:

For their mat I used a slice from the chevron arrow sheet in the Dear Lizzy die cut sheet pack, and utilised the bits I popped out else where on my page - you can see some below the title (above) and some at the top of the page:

The "Phrases" veneer from Studio Calico's Sundrifter range are lovely for adding that extra bit of detail to your pages - I love the wood-burnished look of the fonts on them and the pack contains a huge array of phrases and symbols.

Here's the second frosty page that I used my washi buttons on:

This time I used some of the Phrases veneer to make a little weather-forcast style snow symbol:

 I used some of the gorgeous little Amy Tan puffy stickers as sub-headings for my journalling and others such as the hearts, flowers and arrows to add interest around both of my pages:

I didn't opt for a title per se on this layout, but instead grouped a strip of one of the Amy Tan papers that had a definition printed across it along with some pretty die cuts from the Dear Lizzy Lucky Charm die cut pack to convey the message:

So that's me for April - I am sat with my fingers crossed that we will have defrosted and I will be able bring you some warm, sun-shine filled pages for May! .......Well, a girl can dream ;)

Adding some Zing! to Dear Lizzy...

The new 'Neopolitan' Dear Lizzy line by American Crafts is very 'me' and was really pleased to get my hands on some when it arrived in the shop.  I love the summery feel to the papers and the interesting graphics used in their designs: the polaroid pictures and jam jars are particular favourites of mine.

I find that when I really like the products that I'm  using, the layouts come easily.  This happened last year with My Mind's Eye 'Stella and Rose' line: I couldn't stop creating with the papers and am still hoarding tiny scraps of them.

I love paper designs with bits that I can cut out to make my own embellishments and the sheets that I chose from the new Neopolitan line were mainly ones that could be used in this way.

The jar stamp set also caught my imagination and I knew that I wanted to include the images in my layouts somehow.

My pages:
(click on the pictures to view larger versions of the images.  Then right click and select 'view image' which should then allow you to zoom in)

'You'

To create the background here, I made some splatters with a few different coloured mists to match one of the parts of the papers that I had used to mat the photo.  I then stamped the star and heart using versamark and then covering with some co-ordinating embossing powders to add some gloss and texture:

I also machined-stitched some zigzags to match the chevron paper and to draw the eye around the page.

'At the Beach'

The background effect on the cardstock here was created by spraying a mix of mists to create a sand/beach type look.  I stamped the stars and embossed again in matching colours:

I cut out some of the polaroid images from one of the papers, choosing ones with colours and designs to match the beach theme of the page.  One was embellished with a sticker whilst the other two acted as a base for the typed journaling strips:

'I Love You Three...'

I absolutely love the jar stamp and have lots of ideas for how to use it.  For this layout, I stamped and embossed in cream.  I then filled the space in the jar with mod podge before dropping on some punched hearts.  I repeated this to add another layer and some more depth:

 

The sticker sheet has a great selection of word stickers, perfect for adding to titles.  I cut out the word 'three' twice using a couple of the different papers.  I arranged them so to give a shadow effect before painting the top pink word with mod podge and sprinkling with a light layer of pink and white glitter:

So from only four sheets of the Dear Lizzy papers and a couple of sticker sheets, I've created 3 pages and still have plenty left to make lots more.  I also wanted to demonstrate that whilst these papers are particularly girly they can still be used on boy pages too.

We'd love to see what you create with the range, and indeed any of the items that you purchase from the shop.  If you're on Facebook, feel free to share your creations on our page.  They may even be chosen to feature on the blog here too.

Click on the links below to go straight to the products in the shop.  

NB. Restocks of the Dear Lizzy products are due in to the shop very soon.