A blog for cooking and crafts

Monday 12 March 2012

Steampunk-ish "canvas"






I have had this in mind for aaaaaaaaaaages, and now I am done with the pink and glittery for a while (mops brow) I am feeling quite scrapped out, so decided to make a start on this. It is (more or less) the class taught by Anita M at the Cardinal Colours retreat last September. Anita made a gorgeous canvas, as you can see in the above link, but I wanted it behind glass and dust-free LOL.
The papers are from Bo Bunny's Timepiece collection, as are the clock diecut in the centre, the title strip, the mini frame and the journalling box in which I have put the date. Oh and the two fob watches too. Anita's original had flowers on it...... I substituted rosettes and then raided my steampunk charms box for everything I thought could go on. The watch faces in the centre of two of the rosettes are clip art downloaded from The Graphics Fairy - some great stuff on there!
I added as many crystal swirls as I could reasonably fit on, some robo-cut gears (downloaded file from UK Scrappers forum), attached a key and mini fob watch to a chain and hung it from a brad.
The stamped cogs-and-gears heart is a Technique Tuesday stamp - lovely crisp impression, even with embossing powder, as here - Stampendous Chocolate Brown.
The hardest part was getting DH to scan the photos ............ he would so much rather have been playing with his own toys, er I mean machines ...... I painted the box frame (bought from The Range) in gold acrylic paint and assembled the completed picture.

Some close ups of the details:







I am really really pleased with this and even DH has been heard to say...... Not bad ........ :-)

Friday 9 March 2012

Nearly Four Now



I always ask Little Girl's parents to take a picture of her the day before her birthday, so that the last page in the album can be as up to date as possible.

This is a nice simple page, I used a diecut from stash, matted onto cardstock, then added flowers, punched butterflies and die-cut swirls.  The title is done with American Crafts Thickers.

It's a nice finish to Album Four ........ now we start the nagging for photos all over again for Number Five ,,,,, the Final Album!!!
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Thursday 8 March 2012

A Walk on the Cold Side



I wanted to do a page in 'ice cream' colours - chocolate, strawberry and vanilla - and this photo fitted perfectly.
I cut papers from stash into squares - four 5" ones and one 6" one for the centre - and placed them on a background sheet.  Then I used a punch for the decorative strip and added the photo.
The flowers (Craftwork cards) had been bought the previous week at the Cardinal Colours crop - I knew they would be perfect for this page.  The centres are done with two sizes of punch and a tiny pearl to finish.
I punched out several butterflies, using Martha Stewart punches, in all three colours, then die-cut the woven circles (Memory Box) to layer them up.  The tiny butterflies in brown are scattered in between.
The title is made with some twill stickers I found in stash - they are lovely to use, I'm glad I "re-discovered" them LOL.
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Wednesday 7 March 2012

Swimming with Dolphins



DH grabbed his camera whilst Little Girl was paying with the dolphin and managed to get a shot just as she looked to see what he was doing!

Apart from the background paper, this page is done using just 6" sheets - cut up and layered so the joins are hidden. All the papers are from the Bo Bunny Timepiece collection (yes, I still love it!). The title is made with some stickers from stash - I was running out of time at this point and didn't want to faff around with the craft robo LOL.

Looking at it now, I think I would have liked to put some more detailed embellishment over the striped paper, but the album has been handed over now, so too late! But still, it's not too bad, I think I will use the same format for one of my own album pages at some point - I have an awful lot of 6" paper pads :-)
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Tuesday 6 March 2012

Little MIss Mischief



A nice simple page :-) I probably wouldn't have normally scrapped these pictures, since there is no obvious theme or story to tie them to, but DH took the photos knowing how desperately I had been asking Little Girl's parents to send me some, so I used them. Then I got a last minute deluge of photos sent over, but that's another story.......

I pulled out three blue papers from stash, cut out the panels and inked the edges, then stamped swirls in two different blue inks in the corners. After assembling the panels and the photos, I decided the page needed a frame, so I used a border strip punch (EK Success). I wanted the title to look like a Mr Men/Little Miss book, so hunted through my font collection to find one that matched and robo-cut it (font: Elementary).
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Friday 2 March 2012

Superstars



Little Girl's Nativity play :-) I actually got some snippets of information from her Mum, so there is - wow - journalling on there! The pictures were taken on a phone and are not the best one could hope for, but I managed to crop all the audience heads out and they don't look too bad LOL.

The music paper (Hot off the Press?) is one of the oldest papers in my stash - I loved it so much in 2004 that I bought 8 sheets at Jo-Ann's in Long Island ...... still have some to use up ...... The title is done with stickers from stash, I think possibly either from the same shopping trip or our 2007 visit to Texas!!

I punched out the stars in metallic black and copper cardstock, the corner ones with a Creative Memories punch and the smaller ones with a woodware one. The journalling block is stamped and embossed with a few pearls on it.
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Thursday 1 March 2012

Castles in the sand



Little Girl and Big Sister at the beach :-) The photos were quite neutral so I decided to go for brighter papers (Kaisercraft?) including purple to pick up Big Sister's jacket. I liked the 'waves' on this paper!

I put the main paper onto some purple backing card at an angle and stamped all around the edge in a metallic purple ink, it doesn't show up much in the photo unfortunately. I also doodled around the edge of the central square. Then I added two strips cut from co-ordinating papers. Having laid the photos over the top I felt it still needed something so I made a windmill.

The flourish is die-cut and the title robo-cut (font: Monster Paparazzi).
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