Storytelling in Vegas

It's Sunday again, the first Sunday in the month which means it's Storytelling Sunday (hosted over at High in the Sky) - not a story like last year's post for April 1st - but this one is equally amazing.

I'm just back from a brilliant girly holiday in Las Vegas and I'm now wading through the 500+ photos I took, deciding what to scrap and what to print and scrap!  All six of us had cameras and we often took turns to take photos of the group with each other's cameras so I know that I'll have an even bigger choice of photos once we share them.  One day four of us we were enjoying a lunch-time rest and a refreshing (alcoholic) slushy cocktail, taking a few different combination shots of ourselves, when a kind passer-by offered to take a photo of the whole group.  What's more she was happy to take group shots with each of the four available cameras!  I noticed that her convention badge had the word "scraporchard" printed on it and asked what she was doing in Vegas: it turned out that she was a digi-scrapper attending "Digiscrapapalooza"!!!  No wonder she'd understood the need to take photos and offered to help!  We just had to grab another passer-by and get a shot of all five of us (on each of our cameras of course)!

Me, Jacqui, Balinda (our newest scrapping buddy), Nic & Jeanette

If you want to read more stories, or have a story of your own to share, please pop over to Siân's place and follow the links.

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

Ippity Stamp

My second attempt used a different blue which was too bright ... so I added more triangles and created a modernist card:

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!

A different arrangement of triangles gives thinner zig-zags
and machine sewing adds texture
Inkadinkado stamp

Flower Power

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!

My 21st card uses the Happy Brights colour theme

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!

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).

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.

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.

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:

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!

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.

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!

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!

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.

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 ...

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.