The Cat's Whiskers

I love sewing on my pages as I think it gives an extra textural dimension to them.  In fact the sewing machine is permanently loaded with a bobbin of clear thread so that I can quickly load up a top spool in the colour of my choice and get stitching.  I tried doodling stitches once as the machine was temporarily tidied away and vowed never again!  It took an age to achieve the effect I wanted and was a pain to try and keep the "stitch" lengths even!

As regular (are there any?) readers of this blog will know I recently attended the 5th Pink Booby Charity Crop in aid of Breast Cancer Research and I did a lovely class on distressing by Cathy Windsor from Sarah's Cards DT.  I bought the kit and produced a page that I love with photos from 2007.

There were loads of scraps left from the 3 sheets of double sided October Afternoon Thrift Shop papers so I thought I would see what else I could do with them rather than let them get buried in my scraps bags (yes that is plural!).

There were some large scraps for strips and lots of little bits which would do for a collaged paper element too ...

I was also inspired by a post about paper appliqué over on Siân's blog and thought I would try a bit of hand sewing on a page element!  Alas! I have yet again come to the conclusion that I prefer my machine for sewing.  Of course it didn't help that I was sewing through layers of card collaged with scraps of thick quality paper scraps.  Nor did it help that I'd decided to add zig-zag and blanket stitch rather than just sewing a simple straight line!
My fingers were aching by the end and I know it will be a while before I attempt anything by hand again!

My page started life as a Pencil Lines Sketch (#146)

It was much easier to machine sew the larger scraps of paper to my page and lots of fun to try out a few of the different stitch styles.  Using red stitches throughout helps unify the diverse shapes and colours on the page.  I used the free font Type-Ra for my journalling to tie in with the words from the One-of-a-Kind wordy paper.  I like this font better than Adler and other typewriter fonts because it includes more punctuation marks, including, for us Brits, the £ sign!
And I still have enough scraps from the kit to make something else.

The weekly challenges over on UKS are fun ways to motivate me, so there is a misted masked background (again using a home-made spritz from dilute ink), a symbol representing something from the photograph (my UKS team name is "The Scrappy Cats"), numbers on the page (not that difficult to do, but I included it in my title to show willing), and ribbon - the cat's whiskers :o)

Sleep deprived!

I am back from a FABULOUS crop with the 54 other ladies attending the 5th Pink Booby Crop in aid of Breast Cancer Research.  Five other very talented class designers helped provide plenty for everyone to do, though I doubt very much if anyone did every class - there was just so much going on, including Irish Bingo, stash shopping with 4 different and well stocked shops, a Chair Raffle, chatting with friends, old and new, yummy meals laid on, a visit from the Soroptimists collecting unwanted bras (!),  naughty cakes and, most deliciously, I managed to get a little slice of heaven, a.k.a. Malteser Cheesecake.
A big THANK YOU to all the organisers on the committee (the Pink Marigolds) for all their hard work - I hope you've raised LOTS of dosh for charity, and here's to the next one LOL!

I think I'm seriously too old for the loop crossing at Go Ape!

I taught a technique class called "Ways With Chipboard" about various ways to make grey chipboard more interesting.  One technique was to cover alphas in patterned paper whilst maintaining the pattern.  Today I took it a step further for the demo and matched the title to the rest of the page as well.

The elements for this page have been ready and waiting for the class for ages - apart from the alpha sanding it's super quick to make - can you tell which of the "O"s started life as a "Q"?

I also gave a demonstration of various Ultra Thick Embossing Enamel (UTEE) techniques and supervised the ladies experimenting afterwards - we managed with only one finger in the super-hot UTEE, poor Roxy!  I bought my class supplies from Imagination Crafts, who kindly knocked £10 off the bill in aid of the fundraising.  I have to say that I was really, really impressed with the qualities of their own brand "Magi Boss Chunky" UTEE - a lovely range of colours, and very reasonable priced, especially considering that it seems to cover in fewer layers and has a built in flexibility compared to another well know brand, so no cracking once it cools!

Canvas for M - don't you just love the mini CD!

Despite all the inspiration on tap I took time out to finish a canvas inspired by Sarah Carrington's class on the Green Buttons House Mini-CC over on UKS.  Funnily enough it's covered in all sorts of decorated chipboard, including the "M" which was used in a demo for my class.

The colour photos had been stripped from the instructions for my class instructions in the interests of printing economies, so for those that fancy a peek I have uploaded them here.  Have fun Pink Boobies!

Some, more sensible?, people went home for a sleep, and some, completely mad? ladies stayed up ALL night.  I was somewhere in between and managed to grab a couple of hours sleep (on the floor of the separate bedroom) during the 24 (well 26 by the time I left) hours.  I'm now feeling definitely sleep-deprived and my comfy bed will be very welcome tonight!

Bunting for the Boobies

For the next 24 hours I will be in Golborne, attending the 5th Pink Booby Crop in aid of Breast Cancer Research.  There are 55 ladies attending the event and I am really looking forward to taking some free classes with some very talented scrapbookers and joining in with the fun and games that the very hard working committee have put together for us all.  For my sins, I am also teaching a class on decorating chipboard, but not until I have been thoroughly sleep-deprived on Sunday morning!  Here's a peek and one of my demonstration pieces ...some Bunting for the Boobies!

Learn Something New Every Day

My UKS team-mate, Mary "Buttons" was lucky enough to win two places on Shimelle's Learn Something New Every Day course ... and offered the spare place to the first team-mate who wanted it ... ME! Thank you again Mary :o)

Anyway, I've managed the cover and the first page for my Learn Something New Every Day album from Shimelle's class.  I decided I would use up a 6x6 paper pad that was in a goody box from Indigo Mill's retreat last year - beautiful papers, but I don't really do 6x6 ... so I've combined this with some A5-ish white card and we'll see what happens.  The front cover has another example of decorated chipboard to show the ladies at the Pink Booby Crop next month as well as trimmings from the first few sheets of the Black Market Society papers - waste not want not remember!  I changed the title from "Learn Something New Every Day"  to "30 days hath September" because I still haven't quite got my head around the learning something new part ... so my book will just be a collection of thoughts that I've "thunked" each day during September.

The first page for September shows the supplies that I have collected together from Mount Stashion ... all based around the three rather bright colours of the papers .... lime, pink and yellow ... should be an eye-watering eye-catching book by the end!

Eventually I will borrow my friend's Bind It All to fix the pages together.  I have learnt my lesson with projects like this and find it far more sensible to bind them at the end, after I have rectified things like putting the photos in upside down, spilling wine/tea/blood (yes, those craft knives are sharp!) on my pages or touching the Diamond Glaze before it has dried!

"Quote Unquote"

I was inspired by a brilliant little project from Audrey Yeager on the recent Studio cybercrop to make a "little" tag book of my own.  I say "little" but I got rather carried away ~ as usual my brain had bigger plans than is quite sensible in terms of available scrap time.

First off, I decided rather than do a 10 page booklet with just 10 aspects of something ... I'd do an A-Z of interesting quotes: several hours of surfing later I had a range of quotes that included words for each of the letters of the alphabet.

Then, rather than do a nice small format (the example project was just 4"x3") I decided to make each page 6"x4" ... and sew the quotes in strips on each page and ink and stamp and .... you get the idea!  Take a molehill and make a mountain every time, that's me.

The chipboard shape on the front cover was twice as big - I cut it in half before stamping and embossing and the back cover is graced with the other half as well as the word "Unquote".

The pages are made from double sided Scraperdashery Shakespeare quote papers (although I haven't actually included any Shakespeare quotes in my A-Z), with small cardstock squares to contain the quotes. I had fun with the machine, sewing the quotes on securely and then I went a bit mad with various blooms and buttons, all stuck on with Diamond Glaze in the hope that they'll stand up to some handling.

The next little project on my blogging adventures is to try and make a slideshow to show each individual page ... but not tonight!

Scrapping with scraps!

It is a good job that you cannot see the back of my LOs because I am terrible for gutting my CS and PP in order to make everything go further.  I'm not quite sure why I do this as I have enough stash to keep me scrapping for a decade without resorting to such measures ... I guess it's just part of being me!
I reached a whole new level of parsimonious behaviour last night as I had a design in my head and the PPs weren't complete sheets but I felt sure that I could manage anyway!  In the end the red "Learn" PP is 3 separate pieces from one 12x8 piece and the "Inspire" PP is two pieces from a 12x9 sheet.  Can you see the joins????

Here's what it looks like on the back:

The photos are ancient snaps from 1997; I was practising with face-paints in anticipation of a Mother & Toddler fund-raiser while we were staying with my father in Woking.  I had to ask No.1 Son what the green face and the red mask represented because I couldn't remember ~ apparently he was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, which also explains the stance: that's not a salute, it's a martial arts pose!

The LO also has another example of chipboard decorating ready for the Pink Booby Charity Crop - I'm nearly ready with the necessary photos for my instructions.

And multi-tasking (as ever) the LO earns me some points on UKS as it fits in with last week's challenge and the framing was inspired by Lisa Saunder's recent CC class over on The Studio.

More Cybercrop Inspiration!

As if I needed another excuse to avoid housework, The Studio are having a CC this weekend.  The pre-crop challenge from last night was to frame your title.  I'm still playing with chipboard in anticipation of my class at the 5th Pink Booby Crop so I took the opportunity to photograph a few step-by-step images too.  As I love to multi-task with my scrapping, the LO is also meeting the criteria for the August Week 3 challenge over on UKS (3 photos, celebration, blue and bunting - a bit cheeky with that last one I know).  I made a little dent in my BG Archaic collection pack and a big mess on my scrap desk.

No.2 Son's 18th birthday celebration at home - fairly low-key in advance of the big day as he was about to go skiing with his 6th form mates!

Third Time Lucky

While I'm on a roll, here's another layout I did in anticipation of the Pink Booby Charity Crop - for a challenge over at The Studio to use old and new stash on the same page: some Colour Me Silly papers (my first collection from Basic Grey) from  2006 along with some Buzz & Bloom Shelby chipboard letters from 2010.

This time I used black UTEE and a sprinkling of holographic embossing powder.

Keeping keen!

OK while I am reasonably enthusiastic and have some spare time I'll have a go at uploading a layout.  This was for last week's challenge on UKS to scrap in a different format (my first circle), use scraps (ancient Doodlebug stripy paper), ribbon and visible journalling:   

"All set to go to your first music festival with Mum's rucksack, brother's tent, brand new T-shirt, ready mixed drinks, peanut butter and high expectations!!"

There's extra journalling on the blue tag describing what actually happened at Wakestock!

I have also covered some Lollipop chipboard letters in some of the Kaisercraft Offshore Swell paper, maintaining the pattern - a technique I'm planning to include in my class at the Pink Booby Charity crop in October.