Thursday, 29 March 2012

A Little Shapely Counterfeiting

Have you got any scraps left from your March Counterfeit Kit?  Want a fun way to use them up?  Then you've come to the right place!  I couldn't join in with a full blown kit this month as I was busy with ... well I was busy!  But I loved the colours of the kit-to-copy by Birds of a Feather and one sheet of paper in particular:  Authentique's Friendship paper from their Genuine collection.

Authentique's Genuine Friendship patterned paper

Look closely and you will see that the chevrons are entirely made from triangles ... which got my counterfeiting brain into overdrive!  So when the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog asked the Master Forgers to put together a card kit from the counterfeit kit I was quick to volunteer!

Just gather your paper and card scraps, a couple of card blanks, some ink and sentiment stamps and create along with me:

Scrapbook paper scraps - Jimjams
Grab your scraps and get cutting!
Cut your paper scraps into 1" (2.5cm) squares and then cut along each diagonal to make two right-angled triangles.  Ink the edges of each triangle to hide white cores and "tie" them together.

Scraps transformed into right-angled triangles - Jimjams
I used 10-15 squares (20-30 triangles) to make each card
Cut a piece of card to 3.5" x 5" (8.5cm x 12.5cm) and draw a faint pencil line down the centre parallel with the long edges.
Arrange the triangles along the centre line of your card to form a zig-zag line.
Add triangles along the long edges of the card to create a zig-zag effect from the cardstock.

Arranging the trangles to make chevrons - Jimjams
5 individual triangles fit along the long edge of the card
Adhere the panel to your card blank and mount a stamped sentiment on foam pads to complete your card.

Vertical chevrons greeting card - Jimjams
Ippity Stamp
My second attempt used a different blue which was too bright ... so I added more triangles and created a modernist card:

Chevrons transformed greeting card - Jimjams
Too busy for an added sentiment!
I had a lot of fun playing around with the combinations of triangles on a page ... and decided this was a simple way to make subtle chevrons from any paper as well as a great way to use up tiny scraps or even hard to use patterns like my cassette paper from Crate Paper!

Horizontal chevrons greeting card - Jimjams
A different arrangement of triangles gives thinner zig-zags
and machine sewing adds texture
Inkadinkado stamp

Friday, 23 March 2012

Flower Power

200th blog post with Tagxedo flowers - Jimjams

A while back I shared Ten Cards on the Tenth and some of my readers admired the flower-powered 21st birthday card (see below) which I'd made with Tagxedo.
In honour of my 200th blog post here are some pointers to help you get started:

First of all the flowers are from Saru's Flower Ding Font available free from dafont here.
You will need to download it to your computer then add it to Tagxedo from the Font menu.
Then you need to choose the flowers you like - by their letter equivalents - and load those letters into Tagxedo.  Don't worry if nothing shows up yet there are a few settings that need tweaking.

I loaded the following letters corresponding to flower shapes I liked:
A B C D G H I L M O V W X o p x y
I repeated them a few times each and added a heart character as well:
♥:50:@0
A A A B B B B B B B B B B C C C C D D D D D
G G G G G G G G H H H H H H H H H I I I I I I I I L L L L L L L L
M M M M M O O O O O O O O O O V V V V V V V V V V V V V W W W W W W
X X X X X X X X o o o o o o o p p p p p x x x x x x x x x y y y y y y
The 50 forces the ♥ to be the most frequent character and the @0 forces it to be horizontal.

I chose a number as my Tagxedo shape in the ChunkFive font (a nice thick shape to fill with flowers).  There's a new option on Tagxedo to invert the shapes now so I inverted one of the zeros for a different look.

All settings are the defaults apart from:
Respins:
Theme = Limeade On Ice / Tibetan Monk / Shades Of Red
Font = Saru's Flower Ding (must be added to the available fonts before you can select it)
Orientation = Any
Options:
Shape = 2 / 0 inverted / 0
Word:
          Punctuations = Yes (this allows the to show)
          Remove Common Words = No
          Combine Related Words = No
          Combine Identical Words = No
Layout:
          Max Word Count = 150 (stops the flowers getting too small - for printing out reduce it further)
          Normalize Frequency = Yes (smooths out the variation in word frequencies between 3 & 50)
          Hard Boundary = Yes (makes the shape seem more defined)
Hopefully these settings will help you get started - you can keep altering options until you see something you like and the History Option is worth looking at if you preferred an earlier version - just click on it to reload it.
Of course, my colour themes have a black background for a snazzy blog post - for printing on card you need to choose one with a white background to save on ink!

21st Birthday Card with Tagxedo flowers - Jimjams
My 21st card uses the Happy Brights colour theme

Sunday, 18 March 2012

Sketching with A Trip Down Memory Lane

I recently joined in with the Sketch Challenge over at A Trip Down Memory Lane's blog ... Created by ATDML and used up a couple of old, old photos from 2007: Child No.3 and her cousin who plays for Manchester City Girls.  My goodness it's not much fun watching hours of footie in the pouring rain!! The players had fun though and the ice-creams were great!

Manchester City Blues Layout for ATDML - Jimjams

ATDML supplied me with some lovely doubled sided papers and alpha stickers from Echo Park's A Boy's Life (Adventurer - the circle, Scholarly - the central strip, and Rambunctious - the strips and rosettes) and I added a few alphas cut & embossed with Pink Lemonade Sizzlits dies.
Fancy joining in with the sketch challenge?  Take a look here for the original sketch, some other ideas on how to interpret it and link your own page or card up too :o}

P.S. ATDML have another fun challenge on their blog at the moment ... with a £10 prize up for grabs ... take a look here ... you have until 8:30pm on March 31st to submit an entry (may only be UK residents though ... not 100% sure).

Tuesday, 13 March 2012

Getting Cold Feet?

I don't know about you, but one of the things I've hankered after with my scrapping is to be asked to work on a Design Team.  It's one way of being acknowledged for your scrapping ... my family love my pages, my scrapping friends like them and everyone else ... thinks I'm a bit mad to spend so much time and effort turning one or two 6x4 photos into a 12x12 page in an album!  So the extra validation of "working" at the hobby I love has always been attractive.

Squishy Brakes Layout detail for ATDML - Jimjams
I've done the odd guest post here and there and been on the creative team at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog for a year now - all great ways of using up my supplies, but the thought of getting free modern stash to work with (I'm a bargain hunter when I shop and rarely get current products) plus somewhere special to show off is still a draw.  I was delighted, therefore, to be successful when on-line shop A Trip Down Memory Lane put out a guest designer call on their blog last year ... I waited patiently for my turn and then all of a sudden they sent me some Echo Park papers and stickers to work with.  Of course no sooner had the pizza box of goodies arrived, than I ran out of ink for the printer and couldn't print any photos!!!   At moments like that you begin to question the need for public recognition ... I was having second third thoughts about over-committing and under-preparing myself by the time the ink cartridges arrived a week later!

ATDML's March gallery has just gone "live"  here and 4 of the 5 pages I made are in there along with lots of other great Echo Park projects from the regular designers for ATDML.  I loved working with the double-sided papers - if one side was no good for a particular photo, you could make the reverse work instead.

Squishy Brakes Layout for ATDML - Jimjams

This is my final page of the five, using up all the scraps from the kit with a sheet of black card and a few chipboard alphas that I added. And here's a sneak of the double page spread I made for the gallery too:

Park Mad Layout detail for ATDML - Jimjams

My thanks to Mel and Jill for a chance to try out Echo Park papers, I think I'll be keeping an eye out for them in the future!

Saturday, 10 March 2012

Ten on the Tenth: Things To Do In Las Vegas

If you came here looking for recommendations based on personal experience - my apologies!
You see I haven't actually been to Las Vegas - YET!
I'm about to go and have been reading my guide books and planning with my friends how we can fill our 7 nights (and 6 days) there.  So here are 10 things I am planning to see and do in Vegas:

First and foremost there is Michael's!
Yes, the hobby store was actually the reason given for flying 5000 miles around the world when we first started talking about the trip - 4 scrapbookers in search of a 40% off coupon!  I think it might have been cheaper to pay full price and delivery charges from 2Peas, but possibly not as much fun.

Secondly there will be the illuminations; I'm currently struggling to imagine daylight in Las Vegas - most of the TV and film images that I recall are of  the strip at night!  I'm particularly looking forward to seeing the Bellagio Fountains.

Mystere Poster - Cirque du Soleil - Las Vegas
Source
Thirdly there will be a trip to see Cirque du Soleil - my third show, having already hugely enjoyed Alegría in Antwerp (1998) and Quidam in Manchester (2001) ... I am really looking forward to watching Mystère at the Treasure Island Hotel.

Then there is the hotel we'll be staying in - New York New York - the one with the built in roller coaster!

New York New York Hotel at night - Las Vegas
Source
In fact no.s 5, 6, 7 and 8 are also hotels - I can't wait to see the Luxor, Paris, Venetian and Caesar's Palace - around the world in 3 miles?!

I'm also going to look out for a Dairy Queen as I want to try a Choco-Cherry Love Blizzard as recommended by Susanne!

Choco Cherry Love Blizzard - Dairy Queen
Source
And finally, even though I don't really gamble at home (the only time I bet on a horse in the Grand National it was cancelled) I will be chancing the odd $10 here and there - but as I don't know how to play poker, blackjack or craps, and slot machines are a mystery to me, I'm not sure where I'll be losing my money!

Have you got any tips or recommendations (or warnings) about Vegas for me?  Do please share before going off to Shimelle's place for more Tens on the Tenth.

Sunday, 4 March 2012

Spot The Difference

Today, the first Sunday in March, is a time for tales ... told in words or pictures or both.  I was browsing my photos to prompt a story and found these two ...

Baby boy Baby girl

One baby is a girl, the other a boy; they were both photographed in a foreign country where Dutch was/is spoken.  Both were pudgy babies who grew into stick thin children.  One is still skinny and trying to gain weight, the other ...

I had never noticed before how very similar they were as babies ... no wonder they clash occasionally now that they are both adults!
{ And no wonder No.2 Son reckons No.1 Son is turning into his Mother Mark II }

Pop over to Siân's place for more Sunday stories.

Wednesday, 29 February 2012

29 Days Later

During January I went public with my goals for 2012 and it's only fair that I come clean with how well (or badly) I am doing:

Click here to read more
Februaries (!) in numbers
I've managed more pages for my BOM, all of which are in the album (although not organised in chronological order - that's something for 2013 perhaps?)!  I've de-cluttered our under stairs pantry after tipping over a bottle of wine, which smashed on the tiled floor, emptying its 70cl all over the floor and under quite a lot of "stuff" that shouldn't have been there.  The bedroom, started last month is, unfortunately, still ongoing!  I've forgotten three birthdays and remembered two (with home-made cards).  I've been busy with some Guest DT work and plenty of other scrapping, including my page for my January in numbers and, without further ado here are February's numbers:

12 = marbled cup cakes made on the 2nd attempt - it would seem that I have been remiss in teaching Child No.3 (and her friend) how to cream butter, sugar and eggs together without curdling the mixture!

50 = key words in the programming language that Hubby studied during much of his 5 days off - he tries to share with me when he finds something interesting or annoying, but that's all I have remembered!

2 = the number of decades celebrated by No.2 Son with a trip to visit No.1 Son for a Skrillex concert.  Hours he spent in cars, coaches and trains to get there and back: 12


4 = books read this month - "Ours are the Streets" by Sunjeev Sahoter - a very interesting tale of life for a Sheffield Muslim lad as he before and after he becomes radicalised, counting down the days until his suicide mission.  Not an easy read at times, but thought provoking to the end.  "The Passage" by Justin Cronin was bought for Hubby as an emergency birthday present last year, but he loved it and insisted I read it too.  Set in the (not too distant) future it tells an apocalyptic tale of the human struggle against vampire-like zombies!  Lots of excitement and adventure with believable and all to frail and frightened characters, it's the first in a trilogy and I'd like to read more.  My friend from Book Club recommended "The Prison of Perspective" by Rudolf Bader but I can't say I enjoyed this one. It describes the lives of each main character entirely from their own perspective and perhaps because of this, I found them equally selfish and self-centred and ultimately unsympathetic.  Thankfully this month's official choice was great: "The Long Song" by Andrea Levy which was a witty, rollicking tale of the trials and tribulations of slaves (and their white owners) in Jamaica during and after the abolition.

1 = an exercise bike exchanged, 2 months after the on-board computer broke, just 3 months after No.3 child chose it instead of a rabbit!

1 = also how many new recipes I tried - roast duck - and it worked pretty well: juicy, tender, perhaps not quite crispy skinned nor pink enough; there's room for improvement when I try again soon!

10 = days turn-around for 2 new passports which was a relief as there are now just 19 and 27 days to go before they will be needed.

73,392 = worldwide target for geocaches to be logged on February 29th - I did my bit and found 1 :o}