Ghost stamping

Those of you who know me will know that one of my favourite blogs to visit is Ronda Palazzari's 'Help [ME] Ronda' blog.  Not being a mixed media expert, this is a source of expertise and inspiration for me, and when I saw this tutorial, I just had to watch it.

I am the proud owner of 5 distress inks - none of them very bright, so I wasn't ever going to to achieve the vibrant look that the tutorial reaches, but nevertheless, blue, green and browny grey are colours I use a lot.

So what is ghost stamping.  It is removing colour from a background paper coloured with (in this case, blended) Distress inks by spraying a stamp with water and using it to pick up the ink on it's surface area, leaving behind a ghostly imprint.  Highly effective.

I finally put to good use a foam stamp by Teresa Collins for Junkitz (that should give you an idea of its age), which I have had forever as a decoration hanging off my tote, but never actually use.  This will not be the case in the future as I love the effect it gave me.

I stamped the image twice on a smallish sheet of card.  Being too impatient to find my blending sponges, I used some little ones instead which didn't give nearly such a subtle effect - spot the too bright green lol!

I highlighted one half, just to have a little play and see what it might come out like, and ended up with this - inspired by another of Ronda's projects - her Doha notebook which is doodled with wonderful leaves.

A journalling pen and a couple of stamps were all it took to make a quick card.   Below are the two together, but I really love the subtle blended colours, reminds me of cloudy skies and I am definitely going to be brave enough to try this on a layout background now.  Thank you Ronda - great tutorial.

A Card for a change...

I make lots of cards but I very rarely remember to photograph or blog them.  Today was a rare exception.  Maybe because I had more time than usual, and it was less last minute.

My previous post featured some patterned paper by Bo Bunny - I liked the particular sheet but didn't buy anything else in the range and at first didn't think the two sides went well together.  But as I left it lying around for a few days - you can tell how tidy my craft desk must be!! - I started wondering whether they would make a good card.  I had someone in mind, and initially thought to use the blue side as the main area, but having cut it and two border strips I decided to go with the floral as the main pattern.

I persuaded a very temperamental punch to go through the cardstock - it wasn't happy, neither was I! and used it on the borders and amazingly through Bazzill for the central panel.  It is very pretty but not very good with thicker media.  Having assembled the base, I then handcut out some extra flowers to add some dimension and soften the square Bazzill a bit.

The 'Happy Birthday' stamp is by Waltzingmouse and the stickers are Fancy Pants, which I used for my god-daughter's birth card and left me with no 'Es'.  When will letter sets have enough vowels?  So I improvised with a spare comma, then outlined the letters with a gel pen to give more pop. Some K&Co butterflies and a few gems and I was done.  I hope she likes it!

A Sad Farewell

.... to Twisted Sketches.  For the past months I have been happy and proud to be a Twisted Sister, taking part every fortnight in creating a layout based on a sketch with a Twist.  It has been so fun.  However, Anam is moving on to pastures new and Twisted Sketches has come to an end.

This is my final layout....

The Twist was 'Thanks' ...

Do head over to Twisted Sketches to see the final round of amazing cards and layouts which my fellow sisters have lovingly crafted for the final farewell.    And the good news is that the website will remain as a source of inspiration for anyone who cares to visit and discover many mojo finding ideas for their crafting.

For this layout I used up some long hoarded stash, along with some new bits from a Jubilee Kit.  Mostly though I finally found a use for the gorgeous Fancy Pants rubons that I have stroked endlessly but never found a reason to use. They just make this layout for me.  The chipboard borders are also ancient (I think they might by Lil Davies?  PP by Lily Bee, Bo Bunny and unknown (the strawberry one), Alphas by Kaisercraft and Lily Bee, and some tape I snagged in a box of stash from Claire.  I have to say I'm dead pleased with it and hope it is a fitting sign off for Anam's great project - good luck in the future Anam.

Scrapping Old Holiday Photos

As a latecomer to scrapbooking, I have a lifetime of pre-digital photos which I would like to scrap in some way, but which are too overwhelming to contemplate in their entirety.  I am therefore making use of the divided page protectors readily available now to file the majority of photos - with a few journalling insertions a la Project Life.  However, I did want to scrap a few of the photos I love best and so I indulged in nostalgia at our last crop and made two out of the four I want to do.  One is a title page, inspired by a layout by Kinsey Wilson for Studio Calico:

Materials used:  Patterned paper by lilybee, MME  Lime Twist and assorted from my scrap box, Alphas by  MME Lush, AC Thickers, Basic Grey and Making Memories. Embellishments by Studio Calico.

The other is a page I have been planning almost since I began scrapping about 7 years ago, when I got my sticky mitts on a length of watermelon ribbon.  Of course, I couldn't find the photo at that stage, and when I did, it wasn't quite the photo I had imagined. Time has passed when I could locate one, but not the other, further complicated in the past couple of years by the introduction of LYB Sweet Summer stash - featuring watermelon chipboard and stickers, and Jillibean Soup, featuring a sheet of watermelon paper.  Finally, I managed to get them all together, only to find they didn't exactly match.  Well, that was not going to stop me at this late stage!  So this is the result.

Materials used:  Bazzill Kraft.  Patterned paper by Cosmo Cricket, Jillibean Soup, MME Lost & Found 2.
Alphabet cut with Cricut, Alpha stickers by Making Memories, Stickers & Chipboard - LYB Sweet Summer, Brads by Basic Grey Out of Print and Kesi'Art.  Buttons and Ribbons from Stash.

And I am really pleased with it.  Thanks for looking.

CKC Sketch Inspiration

The sketch inspiration for June really caught my interest, knowing that I had several multiple photo events to scrap this month.

The sketch comes from  Scrapbook .com and is a double layout using 6x4 photos.  As I prefer to get my photos printed at a lab, I find this easier than fiddling around with different sizes, but I knew that I needed to use more photos than the sketch.  Enter Picasa Collages - in which I converted several 6x4 photos into doubles, which allowed me to include a lot more photos than the original.

So here are my Jubilee photos, showing the main events of that memorable weekend.

Materials Used: White Bazzill cardstock, Patterned paper by Studio Calico, 7 Gypsies and Cosmo Cricket. Border Stripby Scenic Route. Rubons by Fancy Pants and Glitz Designes, Frames by Making Memories, Buttons by Papermania (?), Gems Papermania, Tab Punch by Fiskars.

Included are banners made from the paper chains we decorated the windows with, and some delightful Union Jack buttons donated by the ever generous Claire - thank you!  I also included the flag from my delicious Union Jack iced cupcake, courtesy of Wendy M - a master confectioner indeed.

I'm still dithering whether to add a title, but it will have to be small if I do!

Twisted Sketch #155 - Three

Celebrating the third anniversary of Twisted Sketches, here is my sketch interpretation of this week's twist which is 'three'.  I decided to go a bit crazy and use spray inks, although my first efforts were hampered by the nozzles not working.  I finally found two that did, then dripped a third.  I used a stencil as well as a mask - it was fun!

The layout is my DS1 at playgroup showing off his considerable artistic skills (lol) - given that he's now doing set design, I shouldn't laugh!

I used a sheet of Bazzill - quite a rare thing these days as I've used a lot of pp as background recently.  In my aim to use up old stash I uncovered some Bazzill ChipStickers I've had forever, some JB stickers from an ancient SC kit and some BG white rubons.  The patterned paper is from the divine MME Miss Caroline range and the numbers are MM metal, SC chipboard and AC Thickers.  Add another rubon and a luggage tag and that is my layout.

Do hop over to Twisted Sketches and see what the rest of the team have been up to :)

Twisted Sketch #154

Well, better late than never - oops!  I completely missed the deadline for this one - the Jubilee caught me out well and truly - well that, and the fact I'd written the deadline wrong on my calendar.

Anyway - here it is - only nearly a week late.  Do head over to Twisted Sketches to see what's been going on and see the lovely sketches from the team.

The twist was 'Fabric' which was a challenge in itself.  I used my lovely new Crate Paper Pretty Party papers - that's a tongue twister if ever I heard one!  They are scrummy and I'm heading back to Gottacraft for some more!  I found a scrap of pink fabric and ran it through the Big Shot to cut a flower, then used some strips to back my journalling strips.  The navy flowers echo the colour of my dress and came from a mug box which I just had to recycle.

The story charts the weekend before our wedding when we attending a friend's wedding at the same church, and ended up terrified because it was such a posh wedding and it suddenly all hit us that next week it was us!  In fact, it had a great effect as we used up all our nerves on that day and our wedding was much less nerve wracked!

Ten on the Tenth - June 2012

In this season of Jubilee, here are my ten favourite things about Britain.

1) History and heritage - so many museums, the National Trust etc.
2) Tea in bone china cups
3) Afternoon tea with scones
4) Understatement
5) Old phone boxes and red pillar boxes
6) Castles

7) Royal Occasions like the Trooping of the Colour and the Changing of the Guard

8) the British Seaside - especially piers and beach huts
9) Queuing without talking to anyone!
10) the Proms

It appeals to a scrapper!

I went to Liverpool this week, as something to do on a wet holiday in Wales! It was brilliant and more of it another day, but I found this piece of art as part of an exhibition of old doors in the Museum of Liverpool and, as someone who has endless part used alphas, it appealed to me no end!!

I've used mixed alpha titles before but this takes it to a whole new level - watch this space - it's on my inspiration list.