Fountain Filmstrip

Today I want to share a page I made for the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog's 2nd challenge of the month - to scrap with small photos.  I took hundreds of photos during my recent trip to Las Vegas and yet this page actually uses several of my friend Jacqui's pics (she took a more complete record of the myriad shapes made by the magical fountains outside the Bellagio Hotel than I did).  I used a Sizzlit film-strip die to include several shots of them: the frames are 2cm x 3cm so I used a my printer software to re-size the photos to fit behind them.

The film-strip frames die was also used to add texture to some of my patterned paper; to stop the cut-outs from falling out I added double-sided tape to the back after die-cutting and used this to stick the patterned film-strips to the page.  Everything is from my April Counterfeit Kit apart from the Echo Park blue title alphas which needed a little extra ink to make them tone better with the cardstock.

Have you been playing along with Shimelle's weekend crop?  The deadline is almost upon us which is why I've linked this page there too - it ties in nicely with her 15th challenge - to scrap with less than perfect photos - by printing the blurrier ones really small you can appreciate the shapes made by the fountains without noticing the imperfections!

Hieperdepiep Hoera

Another page for Shimelle's scrapping week(end) - this one based on an old sketch here (challenge #9), uses a neglected stamp set (challenge #8) AND is divided into quadrants (challenge #14)

The photo is No.1 Son around his 2nd birthday next to the Lego set we gave him, wearing the fantastic paper crown made for him at the creche he attended on the days when I worked.  We are still friends with his nursery assistant from that time and José helped me with the spelling for the title - it's the funner version of the Dutch for "Hip hip hooray!!"

Red distress ink transformed my butter-coloured mini-alphas!

This also does double duty with the UKS Weekly Challenge to scrap a birthday photo, use old paper (my April Counterfeit kit is full of old papers), a "weather" colour (sunshine yellow), and 4 of something!
This must be some kind of record for a multi-challenge page LOL!

Scrapping Weekend

Don't you just love it when you can spend an entire weekend on your hobby?  Especially with like-minded friends!

For me, sometimes it's a virtual gathering of virtual friends and scrappers - like this weekend with Shimelle.
Other times it has been a real gathering of virtual friends and scrappers - like this bloggers' weekend where my virtual friends became real!
And ultimately there's a real gathering of real friends and scrappers:

My UKSrappers "team" hooked up with other UKS scrappers last September for the first annual Green Buttons' Retreat - we're already making plans for the rematch!!

Shimelle's 2nd challenge of the weekend is to mix it up with papers from at least three collections - well my April Counterfeit Kit certainly meets that criteria and the page has Daisy D, Kelly Panacci and My Mind's Eye's Ooh La La papers on there along with cardstock from Bazzill.  It's based on a sketch at UKS for the monthly challenge there, but as ever, the resemblance has been diluted by my creativity inability to stick to a sketch!

& Now For Something Completely Blood Splattered!

Did that get your attention? LOL
No, I haven't been careless with my craft knife, just attempting to get with the program and splat some ink/paint onto a page in a random artful way.  Like having banners everywhere, I just don't "get" it.  Or at least not on every page!  However, over at UKScrappers and on her blog, Shimelle is doing a monthly challenge to get us to try out lots of "different" techniques; this month they included splatting, small square photos, paint under titles, writing in more than one place, adding stitches & glitter ... all on one page!  Too much for me in one go, and not all all-that-different to what I already do, so I picked the "scariest" one (the splatting) and a couple of the others that I am comfortable with (small square photos, writing in more than place) and produced this:

I'm pretty happy with the page, but part of me does think that my brown paint splats do look like dried blood!  Maybe I should have chosen grey paint to splat with?

 It's another page for our Barcelona 2011 holiday album: we topped off our wonderful cycling tour day with a cookery "course" in the evening.  As the journalling says, it didn't quite live up to the hype, but it was a lot of fun (aided by the liberal quantities of strong sangria that we made during the evening).  Three of us had never eaten paella before and despite not being a great seafood-eater I thought it was delicious.

That's my January Counterfeit Kit almost used up ... I'm now down to scraps.  Take a look at the back of this page to see how I was struggling to get a 12x12 out of it!

Welcome to the World

One of the things that amazes me about blogging is how many people stumble over here to my little corner of the world wide web ... and even more interesting to me is where they come from.

When I started blogging I thought a few UK(S) friends would come over to say "Hello".  My circle of regular visitors has expanded around the world thanks to joining in with the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog and a couple of Shimelle's classes (including Blogging For Scrapbookers).  It's lovely to establish links and friendships across the web through creative blogging.  However, just as I read blogs without making my presence known, hop, hop, hopping from pillar to (blog) post, I know that I have unknown visitors ... and I'm curious ... who, where, why?

Well, the "why" is probably from hop, hop, hopping like me, as my blog is not readily searchable.  The "who" will never be known unless they say "Bonjour", "Goede dag", "Labdien", "Aloha" or even "Saluton"!  But the "where" ... that I have solved to a degree!

Early on (get me, this blog isn't quite 15 months old yet!), I came across a fun free gadget - Flag Counter - which I installed at the bottom of my blog to keep track of all my visitors in a visual way.  Currently the flags in my collection range from the United Kingdom to the United Arab Emirates.

On April 1st I had an extra special flag for the day - a Pirate who last visited on October 12, 1492!

And now I have had another special visitor - my 50th flag - from Estonia.  Tere tulemast!

Are you curious about your unknown blog readers?  What's your favourite blog gadget?

An experiment in journalling

I love journalling on my pages - to me that's the point of scrapbooking - it's important to add the story behind a photo as well as adding the who, what, where & when.  Last year we had a lovely family break in Northumberland and visited Alnwick Gardens (the castle is famous for being Harry Potter's Hogwarts) which were spectacular!

We visited the Poison Garden - layout is in the pipeline - and loved the spectacular fountains and water sculptures everywhere, especially in the Serpent Garden.

I was experimenting with having several "stories" running across a page: labelling the photos, telling the general story of where we were, and adding some extra info about one particular photo - namely No.1 Son showing us how skinny he is by being able to fit into a gap I could barely slide sideways through! 
What do you think - do the three types of journalling work, or are they confusing?

I've used my August Counterfeit Kit, but no orange papers this time!  This page also fits in with Shimelle's recent challenge to incorporate 3 things on your page (journalling spots & large stamped butterflies, types of journalling) and also Scrapbookers Anonymous's challenges (discovered through Julie's blog) to use journalling spots and/or stash beginning with A - August's Counterfeit Kit ... or possibly American Craft cardstock as a base!

Feitercounting!

August's first challenge over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog is (naturally enough) using a sketch from this month's sponsor Sketch Support, but it comes with a devious twist: either use a page sketch to make a card or use a card sketch to make a page!!!

As you can see I chose a one page sketch (#10 from June) and took inspiration from it to make a card with my August Kit  ... another one to simply say "Hello" to a friend.  The flowers are based on a tutorial by Dapfnie (the third placed winner of the UKS Scrap Factor competition) which is available here.  I liked the sketch a lot and have also made a page where it is much more recognisable - but you'll have to wait until later in the month for that - sorry!

Shimelle has been inspiring people this weekend with 3 days of challenges (still open for prize participation until Sunday 21st) including one to use only half your page ... and I thought I'd combine this with the other half of the CKCB challenge i.e. to take a card sketch and make a page from it!  I chose Sketch Support's #8 card sketch from June as I thought it would lend itself nicely to a page with plenty of "white" space.

My photo is from last year's holiday in Egypt, showing us bare foot and happy on the last night at the shisha bar.  The photo is not the best quality, taken in poor light by a passer by, but it's the only one I have of the whole group - we were rarely all together as the divers & snorkellers had very different holiday schedules!

I did actually try the shisha pipe (very brave for an ardent NON-smoker), but failed miserably to get a tune ;o)