Inspirational Scrapbooking

Well the final outcome of the UKScrapper's Scrap Factor Competition will soon be known as the final voting finishes tomorrow at 8pm BST.  The two remaining contestants - Nic & Katherine - have submitted three final pages for UKS members to choose between here - so there are another six gorgeous, inspirational layouts to enjoy - plus a challenge over on UKS to scraplift one of them!  Now that ties in beautifully with Challenge #3 over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog - to browse an inspirational gallery and create a page using our July kits - details of mine are here.

Dave & Emma were really keen to show us Barcelona's market as it had been a highlight of their visit in 2009. The cool dark interior was packed with people & produce. A giant tuna head caught our eye; the brain-seller didn't allow photos; we couldn't identify the odd green custard apples; the range of sweets was eye-wateringly colourful.

If you are a member of UKS you can look at the page I chose for inspiration - the second one from Nic's final 3 pages, all about the social side of scrapbooking (I'll update this with a link to her blog if she posts her page there after the competition closes).  I loved how it included lots of journalling and photos in an interesting page design. I've used photos from Barcelona's indoor market which we visited in April on our Silver Wedding celebratory holiday!  The title frame was made in MS Word using two separate Word Arts in Legrand font and an ellipse shape for the frame. The fancy borders are cut with Sizzlits Architectural Accents #3 & #4 and their Decorative Accents die.

Five on Friday #2 (Favourite Pages)

It's been a while since I did my first "Five on a Friday" and so far I haven't blogged any of the pages I made specifically for the various rounds of the UKS Scrap Factor Competition.  So I thought I'd share five of my favourite pages.  As it makes for a photo heavy post, you'll have to go to my UKS Gallery if you want more details about the pages and supplies used (you have to be a registered member, but it's quick & easy & free to join).

Week 3: "This week your layout shall be lyrical. Take inspiration from a favourite song and scrap away with the lyrics, title, or wherever your creativity takes you!"

At that time my favourite on-line tool was Tagxedo and I used it twice to create the background and titling for a BOM page celebrating the first album cassettes I owned - given to me by one of my (step-)brothers.  Still love the music now too.

 

Week 5: "Create a layout with just ONE photograph. How will you give that image the special treatment?"

Having recently found our wedding album and several envelopes of photographs languishing in our attic I have a gold-mine of old, old photos ready for scanning and scrapping.  I'd used one wedding photo for the auditions and thought I'd do a page about the adventures that lead to our engagement on the steps of the Sacre Couer in Paris.  The whole sorry tale was part of a Sunday Storytelling here.

Week 6: "This week choose any theme and style you like, but you must include multiple photos! We challenge you to find unique ways to showcase additional pictures."

I decided to use a collage method taught to me by Tracie to make the paper for a page showing how No.1 Son has evolved changed over the years.  It was a steep hybrid-learning curve making the overlay that week too.

Week 8: "This week your layout should be inspired by film or television. How you interpret that is up to you: in visual design, quotation, a literal theme or something else entirely!"

An opportunity to scrap some photos from 2006 when my three were still building things with Duplo despite having boxes and boxes of Lego available: Child No.3 had built a roller-coaster from the first episode of a crazy Aardman claymation series called Rex The Runt - the title is one of Vince's catchphrases that often gets shouted here as an argument closer!  I had fun with an on-line bar-code generator for this page.

Week 10: "This week, patterned papers are OFF-LIMITS. Use plain cardstock or solid colours to create a layout that is still true to your style."

I love bright colourful pages and so a rainbow of textured tissue papers seemed like a way to meet the challenge of having no patterns.  I  used a different technique for each line of colour and word paths to trace my journalling about our day in Chester around the various photos.

Phew - a long post with a lot of photos - thanks for sticking with me this far :D

If you do pop over to UKS you can see the final pages of the Scrap Factor Competition from the two remaining contestants Katherine & Nic - voting is still open until Sunday if you haven't yet made a decision. 

Ten on the Tenth: An Update!

Back on the 10th I listed my 10 reasons for No.1 Son to take more water with it, but I wasn't quite ready to share the project that would list the reasons.  I've now managed to complete it and photograph it - hooray!  He didn't understand the title reference (perhaps a generational thing?) - so I had to explain that it was a way of saying he should dilute (or reduce) the amount of alcohol he drinks in future!  As he's on so many pain-killers he won't be able to put that advice into practice for a while, but hopefully the mini-book will remind him later on!

It's a 5¼" square mini-book made from my July Counterfeit Kit (with the addition of some extra rub-ons and a brad) and would have been my project if I had still been in contention for the  UKS Scrap Factor Semi-Final theme: "Go beyond a traditional scrapbook page to create something original that tells an important story."

That blank flap now contains a private dedication to No.1 Son.  The top left corner pulls back to reveal reasons 3 & 4:

The bulldog clip is just holding the pages flat for me to photograph them in the absence of a 3rd hand!

The bottom left corner pulls up to reveal reasons 7 & 8:

And the final two reasons are found under the bottom right hand corner:

I decided to hinge the back cover using hand stitching to help with the folding back & forth - that was what was holding me up last Sunday!!!

The cover is made from 1 sheet of card and the inner pages are based on a 10 sided card made with just 2 pieces of double sided paper that fold back and forth to reveal each photo & reason.

Finally ... A Scrap Factor Victory!!!

Woo hoo - I won on Scrap Factor :D

No, not the overall competition LOL - I was knocked-out from Round 11 with this knock-out page - but my Week 12 page did win in the Playalong category!  The theme was 1,2,3 i.e. 1 sheet of black cardstock, 2 photos and 3 patterned papers.  Just my sort of thing :D

I was really busy with No.1 Son's affairs following his fall, including making space for him to sleep downstairs for a while, so I was a bit lazy with the hybrid element of my page, just adding overlay frames.  The rest of the page came together pretty quickly: black stitching to add texture, strips of paper (BG Discover, Prima Azure Beyond,Scrapworks Citrus Flourish) plus mesh, tiny alpha stickers, 2 little tags, a few buttons and Sticker Studio brick red Sassy alphas.  Unfortunately their outline showed up a LOT on the black card, especially over stitching - so I had to add a bit more of the Citrus Flourish paper and try again with new stickers (luckily there are loads on the sheet).

The photos are of two sculptures built for the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.  The journalling is simply white gel pen, coloured afterwards with red and/or orange Sharpies and reads:
"An afternoon spent walking back from the floating mall at Port Vell where we'd left the kids (window) shopping: Mike & I were blown away by the Ray Lichtenstein ceramic head & smiled back at the cheeky lobster by Javier Mariscal."






The Scrap Factor competition has now moved on to the final 3 contestants ... the Semi Final with a theme of "Beyond the Page" ... their creations are here if you fancy looking/voting.   It'll be a hard choice as they are all very creative!

So near ...

Just a short while to go now until the new Counterfeit Kit to copy is announced over at the CKCB ... despite being forewarned I was a bit pre-occupied last week and couldn't get my kit ready for tomorrow's big reveal, but I'm planning to have a root through my stash this afternoon (which is in the room being used by No.1 Son rather than be alone upstairs in his bedroom all day).  In the meantime I can now share something made from last month's kit.

Bingo Card made by me in MS Word - true counterfeiting!

A page using photos from Italy in March - we loved chilling with a good book/glass of wine/cup of coffee by the lakeside in the afternoon, enjoying warm sunshine and the wildlife!

The journalling tag (free from Melissa at Pretty Little Studio) was originally red, but I re-coloured it in PSE5 to go with the rest of the page and that's also home-made bakers twine!  I'll do a tutorial on home-made Bingo Cards sometime if anyone is interested.

Sadly, this page also marked the end of my time in the UKS Scrap Factor Competition - but nevertheless I'm really happy that I made it into the top five finalists ... so near, but still so far from the big prize money!!  Never mind, I don't need new stash when I still have so much counterfeiting to do :D

P.S. Apologies to anyone who has now gone off yoghurt after Sunday's tale about Hubby's colleague "Phil" - I'm sure that "Phil" must have retired some time ago so you're probably safe - I certainly haven't let it put me off eating yoghurt by the bucket-load!!!!

ETA P.P.S.  Just realised I have rudely not thanked anyone who actually voted for any of my pages in the Scrap Factor - erm - Thank You, you have great taste ... and if you didn't vote for me that's fine too, you probably have even better taste LOL!

June Counterfeit Kit

Burlap & Buttercups June Kit

It's that time of the month again - when the latest kit-to-copy is announced over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog.  I didn't play along last month as I was due to be away on holiday early in the month, and made an effort to use up left-overs from previous months' kits instead.

So I'm very happy to be back in the mix today and shopping my stash to make up a kit based on this lovely one from Burlap & Buttercups.  Now, for me at least, there was a little too much pink in this kit - especially after my struggles to use up the pink in my April kit ... so I did what I'd done in February: looked at the essence ofthe original kit, and chose colours that suited me based on that!

I started with the floral paper and replaced it with a couple of florals from K&Co and then chose a few other papers and card to match.  The original  kit had a lot of ledger-type papers (some on the reverse sides of those shown) so I chose some papers from BG's Recess collection and threw them into the mix.  Finally I needed a shaped piece and found one which toned well with some of the reds in the other papers - I may use it as a template first!!!

Cardstock:
2 blue, cream, watermelon, 1 mustard & 2 brown

Papers:
1 Recess Detention by Basic Grey
1 Bo Bunny Flutter Butter Burst (brown burst circles on reverse)
1 Scibble Scrabble Prime Times Floral
1 Recess Standardized, 1 Boxer Wing Tip (both Basic Grey)
1 Wild Saffron Wild Garden (K & Co)
1 Recess Erroneous, Scarlet’s Letter Repose (both Basic Grey)
1 Wild Saffron Wild Flowers, Petite Stripe, Hannah Blue & Ivory Pattern (all K & Co)
1 Holly-Christmas Vanilla by daisy d’s
1 Scallop Circle by Making Mmories

Embellishments:
Various flower punches for making my own layered flowers
Bo Bunny Chunky Charms Brackets in cream
Chipboard butterflies & butterfly punch
4 packs of EK Success stickers & rub-ons that I won at a crop in 2006! <<< oldest stash!!!
Sei Oasis alphabet stickers in brown/cream
Cosmo Cricket Tiny Type alphabet stickers
Home made baker’s twine in red/brown plus more ready to colour as required
Making Memories Harvest medium brads
Giant cream ric-rac
2 hat-pins

Not shown:
My Little Shoebox Mini alphabet stickers in butter
Various toning buttons

During the last two months I have been learning a LOT about printing out my own journalling cards, date stamps etc thanks to being a Hybrid Finalist in UKS's Scrap Factor Competition (still hanging in there, just!).  I will certainly be adding a few hybrid elements in during my month's counterfeiting as I have become rather addicted to home made tickets, personalised bingo cards etc :D

I am really happy with my kit and have already started creating with it ... hope you have fun with yours!

How sweet it is ...

It's here!  Today!!  Yup, we made it!!!

There have been times along the way when I thought it was too, too hard.  Not worth the effort.  Time to cut losses and move on.  But somehow that didn't happen.  The alternative was too frightening.  Priorities shifted.  People changed.  Not every moment has been from a fairy tale, but I believe that helps you appreciate the times that sparkle even more and I'm looking ahead to the next quarter century with a spring in my step, a glint in my eye and a special hand in mine.

I did this page back in April and submitted it for the UKS Scrap Factor competition auditions (the Play-along Competition is still running - with plenty of prizes on offer here).  This is only the second page I've done from our wedding mostly because I couldn't find the wedding album!  It finally surfaced in the attic this spring where it had languished since we moved back to the UK.  Initially I was really upset to discover that the double sided tape used by the photographer had crumbled to dust after 18 hot summers and cold winters of neglect.  Every page we turned came apart in our hands.  However the up-side was that I could scan each photo before applying new DST and making the album as good as new.

James Taylor's lyrics around the circle express my feelings perfectly - we didn't have a special song played at our wedding, but if ever we get around to renewing our vows I think I'd choose this one.

Scrapping Feelings and Scrapping Freely

One of my audition pages using an online Warholiser

Some of you may remember this post when I revealed that I'd made it through to the final 15 of the UKS Scrap Factor competition, by agreeing to switch from Paper to Hybrid scrapping.  Well, it's Week 4 of voting and Week 5 of creating and I'm still just about hanging in there.
It's rather an odd competition because it's not yet about winning, it's about not losing at the moment.  Each week the two scrappers with the least votes go head-to-head with a new page (not the page from that week's theme) and one of these is eliminated.  We don't get to see the votes, nor are comments allowed while the voting is in progress ... it's an odd feeling to have no idea how well you are doing, or indeed how many close shaves or near misses you've had!
I guess it's all good experience though :D

I've had a steep learning curve trying to incorporate hybrid elements into all my entries but have come across a remarkable number of free supplies and haven't (yet) had to spend any money at all on the competition - my fellow forgers on the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog would be so proud of me! 

Here are a few links I have found useful so far:

Oscraps - lots of free kits including this fab date stamp set - so versatile!
Designer Digitals - some freebies and helpful (video) tutorials too
Louise Fortune has designed some universally useful free printables.
UKScrappers is also having a weekly digi/hybrid give-away this year, featuring several digi/hybrid designers - details available in the UKS library here, and the downloads are available here.

Don't forget that everyone can play along with the competition - and be in with a chance of a small weekly prize in one of the three categories (Paper, Hybrid or Digi) - the deadline for Week 5 (Scrap with ONE photo) is 8pm BST Sunday May 15th.

Cheers Cheers and more Cheers

A quick post from me today to do three things:

• Firstly to wish you all a Happy St George's Day.  Despite St George being the patron saint of England, any celebrations are pretty low key, mores the pity.  Apparently St George's Day used to be a major feast day and national holiday between the 13th and 18th centuries ... not any more.  In fact some say that it has actually been postponed until May 2nd because of Easter?!?!

• And also to show you my latest page using my April Counterfeit Kit for the CKCB's 3rd challenge about favourite food (or drink).  Now beer isn't actually my favourite tipple, but a cold, cold bottle of it can't be beat on a hot, hot day!  This particular bottle was helping me cool down in Egypt at the end of last year.  The stamp edge border was made by punching out regular half circles with the largest punch of my Silent Setter.

• And finally to share the news that I managed to get through the first round of the UKS Scrap Factor competition.  Phew!!  My Round Two page, based on this week's Advert Challenge is already with the judges but there is still plenty of time for anyone else to have a go and upload their own advert inspired pages to the special galleries here.  I'm still not quite sure when the deadline is for playing along for prizes ... I think that the deadline for Round One's Colour Challenge is tomorrow evening!  Round Three's theme will be announced on Monday if you fancy joining in with that too.

Paper or Hybrid?

Yesterday morning there was an announcement on UKScrappers that the Scrap Factor judges were shaking things up: a few entrants in the "Paper" category were being asked if they'd consider switching to "Hybrid" and that one or more of those asked might, just might, make it into the final 15 contestants! 

I entered the "Paper" category - I consider myself to be a paper scrapper.  But then what exactly is "Hybrid" scrapping?  According to Wikipedia we're talking about a digital page, with some ribbons, brads and tags stuck on after printing it out.  That's not me at all.  However the judges over at UKS have decreed it to be any combination of digital and paper elements resulting in a page you can hold and as long as there is at least ONE item (other than journalling or a plain photo) that started life on the computer it will count as "Hybrid".  I can live with that.  I sometimes print out a journalling spot to use, or type (white) text onto a photo before printing it out, or use a dingbat font to add flowers to a page ...  So maybe I can be a "Hybrid" scrapper too.

Some of the words to my favourite song by James Taylor "You've Got A Friend"
Page layout inspired by Tagxedo.com

This is one of my  paper audition pages - the "No Photo" page - it could just have easily been hybrid - in fact it would have been a darn sight easier to do as a hybrid!  Anyway, enough embarrassed, typically British, beating around the bush ... I was asked if I'd consider switching categories, I said "Yes" and I am so HAPPY to share that I made the final cut!  Now comes the scary bit - scrapping, speedily to order!!!!  Oh and the voting ... arghhhh!

Although the finalists for the Scrap Factor have now been announced, anyone and everyone is welcome to play along with the weekly challenges.  There are extra prizes on offer too!  Just check out the challenge, choose a category to scrap in ("Digi", "Paper" or "Hybrid") and upload to the special galleries to be in with a chance of being picked by one of the judges!

The challenge for Week 1 of the Scrap Factor is here - do come and keep me company!