Stitching With Patterns

Are you joining in with the UKS Cybercrop?  It's free, with lots of interesting classes, challenges and games ... plus PRIZES!  Also, a certain someone did a class on Saturday afternoon ... more string art stitching with a template and instructions available to download.  Several people have already adapted the design page for their spider-webby Halloweeny photos.

Meanwhile, I have been attempting other people's classes and am now able to share a final page from my October Counterfeit Kit:

I was inspired by the patchwork quilt class by my friend Suzysnail and adapted it for a page featuring one of the African pillars in Disney's Animal Kingdom.  LOTS of machine zig-zag stitching later I had a finished page and a floor covered in sewing thread offcuts!

There's still time to join in on UKS - the deadlines are pretty relaxed (Friday evening for the classes, Saturday evening for the challenges).  Plenty of time too for you to check out the Master Forgers call over at the CKCB.

Spot The Difference!

The third challenge this month at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog is to make two cards with the same design: one masculine version and one feminine.

This got me thinking about what makes a card suitable for one sex or the other.  Looking in the shops, the girly cards have flowers, shoes, handbags ... and the manly ones feature boats, footballs or power tools!  Hmmm, not every woman spends a fortune on handbags (or wants to), nor does every man like to fish!

Anyway, my cards rarely feature objects these days - they're just made with scraps from my kits, so I guess that just left me colour ... pink for a girl and blue for a boy perhaps?

I decided to start with a card sketch and see how small a difference I could get away with using scraps from my October Counterfeit Kit.  The Sampler Kit Club has a great card sketch challenge this month which I stuck very closely to:

Identical in design, I just used slightly different coloured dots from the Echo Park Lazy Days paper and then picked out one of the dot colours with my kit's tiny alphas and buttons. {I'm very irritated by the Cosmo Cricket Tiny Type teal stickers ... WHY is that "A" so ridiculously small?  The "R" and "T" are also shorter than the rest of the letters ... is it a coincidence that they spell "art" or do I smell a "rat"?}

While the card on the right is definitely more feminine (thanks to the pink), I can't really say that the other one is only suitable for a man.  My Mum reckoned I should have included more brown ...

What do you think?

Lean Mean MAXI-book

Over on UKScrappers it's Cybercrop time.  Things have been building up during the last month ... with pre-cop activities and challenges ... but today was the start of the CC proper.  There's lots of free inspiration over there - and prizes too!

So far I've only managed to join in with one pre-crop activity: the Mystery Kit Challenge, where you buy a kit of unknown content and make something or some things with it - BUT you aren't allowed to add anything to the kit except a few limited extras e.g.black/white paint, black/white thread, black/white ink, adhesive ...

I forgot to take a photo before I got cutting - but the kit was based around a Stamping Up Tickets & Tags Kit similar to this digi download on the SU site.  I decided to see if I could expand upon my Lean Mean Mini-Book and make a larger album from the good quality double-sided patterned papers.

After much experimentation with 12x12 page protector inserts, I worked out what I could do with 2½ sheets of double-side paper and 3 sheets of cardstock ... and made an eleven page book with 5" square pages and enough tags and pockets to hold 21 3"x4" photos!

The photos are from our 2004 trip to Florida and feature No.2 Son, aged 12, "meeting" the various cast members. At 14 No.1 Son felt he was too old to do this and Child No.3 was only interested in the classic princesses and cute furry creatures.

Not all the photos had colours that "went" with the papers e.g. The Grinch was much too green, so they were relegated to the pockets.

I had originally intended to scrap the majority of these photos on a double page in with the rest of our Florida trip ... but this way No.2 Son has his own little mini- MAXI-book.

P.S. If anyone knows the identity of the characters in this photo - please let me know - they offered to pose with our son in the Magic Kingdom's Adventureland near the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House and we felt rude asking who they were :o)  I'm hoping that they were cast members and not just a couple of weirdos in fancy dress!!!

ETA: They're not the Wild Thornberrys as they are Nickelodeon not Disney - nice try though Missus W :o)

ETA: My instructionsfor the Lean Mean MAXI-book are now available here and here - enjoy!

Photo Focus

Back in May, just 3 days after my surgery, I donned bubble wrap around my elbow (!) & braved the drizzle and the crowds to watch the end of the torch relay in Crewe.  I'd picked out a good spot which gradually got worse and worse as the marshals failed to stop the crowd standing in the road rather than on the pavement.  Just before the torch bearer arrived I gave up and moved up the road, away from the crush ... ending up with a prime spot to view the flame safely being transferred to the lantern.

Perfect for an unobstructed photo or two!

Here they are on another page made with October's Counterfeit Kit at my recent weekend retreat: quite a different vibe from my holiday pages as I've used two of the "B" sides.  There's also more hand-stitching using a circle template printed onto acetate.

This month's second challenge at the CKCB was to get creative with photographing a project.  I toyed with patriotically breaking out the Union Jacks, but decided that some wooden eggs would complement the colours and textures of my page rather better.  It certainly makes a change from laying my pages on the floor and standing over them to photograph them without distortion. How do you photograph your pages for your blog?

P.S. If you love the CKCB as much as I do why not think about joining the Master Forgers

I Scream Treat!!!

It's October and Halloween is fast approaching ... I'm seeing lots of orange creeping into pages and kits ... and there's plenty of orange in my October Counterfeit Kit, but that post title isn't quite what it seems ...

I have at last made a start on scrapping the photos from our 2004 Florida holiday and one of the highlights was a pre-booked treat for everyone at the Garden Grill in Epcot ... the "Ice-cream Social" ... where you could meet various Disney characters as well as indulge in yummy ice-cream in the rotating restaurant.  I've already shared a page made with some of the scraps from this one, but this one came first:

I've based it on Sketch #216 from Nuts About Sketches, which was chosen for the UKScrappers October monthly challenge.  I'm always happy to find a new and interesting sketch site and have several more of theirs bookmarked for future pages.

Those paper covered chipboard letters were a labour of love ... it would have been so much quicker to paint them!

Calendar Catch-up #2

I promised myself that I would get a move on with transferring my Month In Numbers posts (read all about MiN here) onto paper while I was away at The Second Green Buttons' Retreat (the Remix) earlier this month.  Armed with print-outs from my blog and some extra notes from the calendar and my diary, I am proud to report that I completed seven missing months' journalling!!!  The pages themselves were ready, it was just a question of adding the words and numbers.  I won't bore you with them all, but I do have a previously unseen pair of pages made with my September Counterfeit Kit, featuring the stitched lettering that I have been using recently along with some counterfeit tags and fake felt flowers too.

My contribution to the retreat was sharing some hand-stitching ideas including a template for the stitched letters.  I have sized the letters to match my diminishing supply of Scenic Route chipboard alphas.  Printed out onto a transparency, they can be positioned exactly where you want them to be before you prick through to create your stitching holes.  And because the transparency is reasonably durable you can use it again and again.

Do you fancy having a go with my template?  I've uploaded it to share here (for some reason it looks like a blank sheet on Google Drive's preview, but it does download properly). Do please leave me a comment and let me know what you make of it.

A Sampler Quilt

Just over a week ago I was happily scrapping with 14 lovely ladies at The Second Green Buttons' Retreat (the Remix).  We had a weekend of crafting and chatting and chocolate :o)   I gave a quick class on stitching with templates and happily listened while others shared their expertise.  Ruth showed us three brilliant ways to use up our scraps and I knew straight away that this was a technique I could use for the first challenge of the month over at the Counterfeit Kit Challenge Blog: to take inspiration from a quilt. 

What's more I have finally made a start with the photos from our 2004 Florida holiday!  We all look so young (and thin) in the pictures ... my diet has restarted with a vengeance!  Not that I'm in this particular photo - there were only four wigs to try on so I stayed safely behind the camera!

The scraps are from my October Counterfeit Kit (OK I know I haven't shared any pages made with the kit yet, but this was a scraps class) with the addition of some Polka Dot Bazzill, Sizzlits Trixie die-cut title, Studio G stamps and a few brads.  I used this lovely sketch from The Sampler Kit Club's September Challenge too:

If you are inspired by a quilt pattern then please do link up over at the CKCB - check back soon for the pages I made which created these scraps!!