Extreme Scrapbooking

Ever tried scrapping beyond the page?
I've made cards, a canvas or two, some mini-books and the odd bit of wall art.
Child No.3 has recently excelled herself with my scrap supplies ... completely off the wall page ... in the name of Halloween fancy dress!

Normally she looks like this ...

... well actually that isn't completely normal as she generally uses a little bit of mascara and wears her hair loose. However, after borrowing some Rhonna Farrer swirl stamps, some black ink, green face paint and a sprinkling of glitter, she looked like this ...

A few punched leaves attached with glue dots to a hair-band and the application of some red false eyelashes and an even brighter wig and she was transformed into ...

... her version of Batman's enemy and eco-terrorist, Poison Ivy! 

Fifty poses in front of her camera later and she had a new Facebook photo :D

Of course I had to make a scrapbook page about it, just in time for Halloween!

I've used a Pagemaps sketch (twisted onto its side) with some more of my October Counterfeit Kit and also scored some points over on UKS for the Weekly Challenge to use some printed journalling, 10 embellishments and something free (the font, Satellite, and those eyelets ... yes, I know that they're probably maple leaves, but I am so glad to get rid of them as they've been hanging around in my original hand-me-down stash from 2006).
Oh and while we're challenge combining, this page fits in with H for Holidays over at ATDML's Thirsty Thursdays.

What's your craziest use of scrapbooking supplies?  Are you dressing up for Halloween ... or Facebook?

Sticker Magic

Welcome to the October Counterfeit Kit Blog Hop for the Master Forgers - if you found me via Helen's blog then you are on track, if not then you may want to pop back here to start at the beginning so as not to miss out.

"Miss out on what?"  you ask.  Well, this month over at the CKCB the prize sponsor is Momenta Stickers and this month's blog hopping theme is to work some magic with stickers - I can't wait to see what sticky creations the rest of the Master Forgers have come up with!

I have two projects to share with you plus an apology.  The apology is because neither of my projects uses my October Counterfeit Kit - it's half term holiday at the moment and we've taken the opportunity to visit friends and family so my creative time has been severely curtailed!

I have made use of my August Counterfeit Kit though - on a page based on a sketch by my good friend Mary that I started last month at the Green Buttons' Retreat.  My kit had a large sheet of multi-coloured Polar Bear Press stickers that toned beautifully with the papers but I needed the title to stand out more from the page.  My first attempt was to colour over them with some (borrowed) Promarkers.  I left them on the sticker sheet while I coloured them so that I it wouldn't matter if I went over the edges.  The finish wasn't brilliant because a) I've never used Promarkers before and b) the sticker surface was pretty glossy.  On top of that the exclamation mark wasn't plain like the letter and its pattern showed through a little.

So I decided to detract from my rubbish colouring by over-stamping with Saddle Brown Stazon.  I placed the stickers on some cellophane packaging and used a striped circle stamp by Artemio.  The pattern on the exclamation mark is now practically invisible!

This page will go into my Egyptian Holiday album: my friend and I ate lunch on our balcony each day, but we discovered that 2 seconds wasn't quite enough time for me to get back to my chair after pressing the camera button

My second sticker project is from quite an old page, one of my favourites, created for a challenge from Indigo Mill.(I miss that shop).  Here, I took a really nasty, cheap, glossy paper and transformed it using un-loved peel-off stickers and a couple of shades of chalk ink.  I removed some adhesive from the peel-offs by applying them to my skin a few times and then placed them randomly onto my paper.  The ink was dabbed over the stickers onto the paper.  The stickers were carefully removed and I repeated the process until I was happy.

I reckon both of these ways of altering stickers would also work well with part used alphabets - you could mix and match alphabets by colouring and stamping them to match each other or you could use up all those unloved consonants to make a subtle background.  Let me know if you give either of these a go.

In the meantime why not hop over to Jen who has more sticker magic for you and don't forget to drop by Momenta Stickers to see what they have to offer.

P.S.You know I like a good combination challenge ... so my first page ties in with October's Die-cut Challenge over at Scrapbookers Anonymous - thanks to the Tim Holtz rosettes!

Keeping Calm

I was catching up on my blog reading after a few days away (visiting lovely friends) when I saw Siân's post about keeping calm and ... *insert phrase here*.  She wanted to know what phrases her readers liked to add.  I was Googling to see what was out there and came across a fabulous website, Keepcalm-o-matic, where you can fill in your own words, add your own images and produce your own poster.  So here is mine:

As I said to Siân, there aren't many problems that a cup of tea cannot help with!  Further reading on the Keepcalm-o-matic site led me to discover that the phrase KC&CO may be under threat ... take a look here!

Magic Tulips

As you may know tulips are pretty important in Holland and were once more prized than gold.  Not surprising then, that they feature in the Dutch theme park, the Efteling, one of the oldest theme parks in the world.

I lived in Holland as a child and enjoyed many visits; pretty much everything I remember is still there (plus lots more) and we have visited several times in my adult years (before and after starting a family when I worked in Holland) and we returned in 2006 to reintroduce the boys to their childhood memories.

When I was a child, one of the most magical animatronic sets was where a sorcerer flies on a magic carpet between two towers, serenading yellow tulips into life from the window of one tower, before returning to revitalise the red tulips around the other tower.  Our visit in 2006 coincided with some of the worst August weather and we rarely had to queue for more than 5 minutes for the various rides, but I was amazed to come to the "Fliegende Fakir" and find that we were entirely alone.  Nobody else there at all!  Can you see the puddles and the wet jeans?

"This attraction hasn't changed at all since I first saw it over 40 years ago;
what was different today was that we were, briefly, the only people watching
the tulips rise and fall to the sorcerer's magic flute."

My October Counterfeit Kit was great for this page as it brightened up the soggy photos and reflects the magical feeling the Efteling evokes in me.  I also took up the third CKCB challenge this month: to pile the layers on a page.  I have cut up a strip of Kaisercraft Allsorts Passionfruit, punched loads of circles from a sheet of Allsorts Blue Heaven, layered my photos and added a few squares from my Life Happens paper to match the bottom of my ancient (rather creased) Creamotion yellow paper - so glad that that is covered used up!!!

P.S. The use of punched circles and Creamotion paper also ties in rather nicely with Scrapbookers Anonymous' C Challenge :D

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?

Sweet Scrapping

The first challenge over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog this month is to take inspiration from sweets ... or candy as they say across the pond!  I have scrapped about sweets before (chocolate to be specific) but I wondered what edible delight could provide a nugget of creativity for a project with my October Counterfeit Kit.  In the end I chose to use some seaside rock as a starting point.

No! Not this kind of seaside rock ...

... nor this, although they make a tasty seaside souvenir ...

... yes, it's this sort of sweet, minty goodness ...
with letters around the outside, but all the way through the inside too!

I decided to echo the cross-sectional view of the rock for my title. Using MS WordArt's "Button (Pour)" shape (with a blank middle line) and Budmo Jiggler I printed directly onto the plainer side of some Kaisercraft Allsorts Passionfruit paper.  The photo is from our holiday in Holland in 2006 - I actually thought that the album was complete, but I found a few photos in the "reject" stack and decided to make some room for them!  Here, Child No.3 is looking a lot more than 5 years younger than she is today (or is it that she now looks more than 5 years older than she was then?).  Her legs could barely support her after a long and tiring day out; I think she really wanted to be carried!

The black bobble trim from my home-made kit was stuck to tape on the back of the striped circle to mimic the way that the seaside rock has a skin of colour.  I also took inspiration from the paper rosette post on the CKCB and "altered" the rosette I made with my new Sizzlit die by punching holes on each fold before construction.

P.S. Are you playing along with A Trip Down Memory Lane's Thirsty Thursdays challenges?  I am.  And I was lucky enough to win a yummy prize last month.  Why not pop over there to take part in the challenges from E onwards and you could be in with a chance of a prize.  This page fits in with F for Family as well as taking inspiration from a Favourite Food!!!

Ten on the Tenth: Grow Your Own

Our most unusual Silver Wedding present was a vegetable patch - a gift that goes on giving - or will eventually!!  That was back at the end of May, but it took me so long to prepare the soil and our "summer" was so inhospitable that nothing much got planted until late August.  We have had some edible treats and there is plenty to eat in the pipeline, but the truth is that it's now a race against time for several of the crops.  October started wonderfully and gave everything a big boost, but has now reverted to windy, cold, rainy normality.  So I'd better document the (potential) harvest before the remaining plants curl up and die!!!

So here, in alphabetical order are the 10 crops (and I use that word in its loosest sense) from our vegetable patch:

I can't really take credit for these as the tree came with 10 tiny apples on it.  Four fell off between the garden centre and the tree's second planting (I moved it after a day in the wrong place) but we harvested the remaining fruit, removed the spiders webs, cut off the odd lumpy bits, and really, really enjoyed the crisp sweet apples.

The carrots are, as yet, an unknown quantity as I really have no idea how you know when they are ready to eat.  Someone told me they start pushing up the soil when ready, but I suspect that was a joke!  The lettuces are thriving, but are actually meant to be Little Gems and look nothing like what I buy from Tesco!

The Lollo Rosso lettuces are doing well and I have tried a couple of leaves which were tasty.  So far (touch wood, fingers crossed etc etc) the crushed eggshells have deterred the slugs - or perhaps the slugs haven't yet made their way across from my flower beds?  The peas, however, have a long way to go before they can be harvested - the packet reckons I can sow in late October for an early crop so I'll plant some more soon.

The single red pepper was green when it gave up its weak hold on the mother plant and fell to Earth.  Now it's red but extremely wrinkled.  I shall not be opening a market stall any time soon!  The salad onions are growing reasonably well, but again, I have NO idea when they'll be ready to harvest!  Why oh why is soil so opaquely black?!?!

We love raspberries and grew these very succesfully before we built over the previous veggie plot with our extension.  We now have canes growing inside potato sacks in an effort to contain the runners.  The crop is going to be massive - providing the frosts stay away!!  Tick tock, tick tock!!

Much less successful are the strawberries.  Not one has ripened to something close to a recognisable fruit.  I'm beginning to think that these are just too much trouble for the taste.

And finally there are the tomatoes:  the smaller ones are meant to be that small (from a cherry tomato plant) and are super sweet and delicious but have quite chewy skins; the larger ones are from a survivor from last year's efforts - I salute that plant's dedication to life as it has had no help at all from me and yet it has triumphed over frosts, droughts, draughts and floods!

There you have it - my ten on the tenth - for more of the same (though probably entirely different) please head over to Shimelle's blog here.