Sunday, July 25, 2010

Generations of Birthdays

I am not usually a card maker but with three special birthdays celebrated in different parts of the country this weekend I set to to create some. First was Great Uncle Bill who turned 80 then my auntie, Elaine, turning 60 and my Great niece who is ONE today. I hope you all had enjoyable celebrations. I thoroughly enjoyed making these cards.
Made with some BG papers I have had for a while, Tattered Angels clock alphas painted with shimmer paints and 'Fix' felt birds. Fix design craft supplies were at SENZ with some lovely Bazzill and felt lazer cuts.

Created with Websters Pages paper and putting to use the technique learned at SENZ by using Opals and stamping on the chipboard shape. The little shoe embellishment is a transparency and sewing machine a button. The crochet doily was cut off a bigge doily. I made the flower from Prima paper and added dimension with tulle. And the inside with Websters Pages and Kaiser rubons.
And the little One year old Card made with a ballerina which were manufactured to decorate bedroom walls from a wallpaper shop. Created using pp with Kaiser Rubons and accessorising with a little tulle and lace motif. The little flowers are Prima dismantled from a little basket.

On the inside I saved the little hearts from the punch and arranged them down the page.

While on a roll the creativity continued over the weekend with three layouts for challenges completed. Will share some other time as I am not happy with the photos taken of them today.

...And there was some exciting news on Friday when a text told me to look at Scrappin Patch Blog and guess what? Ingvild Bolme picked me third in the competition for "Stars in their Eyes" with the layout in my previous post. I was thrilled as there were so many Ingvild Style layouts in the gallery.

...And another text this morning to look at the Prima Blog and there was my layout in the line up of mentions for the results of the June BAP contest.

That is all for now. Thanks for dropping by. Have a great week.

Dianne

Thursday, July 22, 2010

Ingvild Bolme Style

The Week 2 Challenge at Scrapping Patch was to scrap lift the style of Invild Bolme. Take a look at the gallery (you may have to register though) to see all the entries. This is what I came up with.
Using Prima Papers, flowers and bling. Invild uses lots of distressing on her layouts and often includes a lamp or an owl and some stitching. Also included on the lo is some very old lace and embossed satin ribbon. The subject is my grandmother from age about 4 until 49. I loved the Invild challenge as she is a favourite. This week's challenge is going to be Elizabeth Kartchner (whom I hadn't actually heard of before) so that will present a challenge as she tends to have a lot of 'white space'.

In the meantime I have been creating a couple of cards which I will share after the events they are for.

That's all for now. Thanks for visiting.
Dianne

Sunday, July 18, 2010

SENZ

A trip to SENZ 2010 in Christchurch finished the school holidays off nicely. It was nice to catch up with Sonya Pickles, albeit very briefly, and lots of other Timaru and Oamaru people as well as meeting some lovely people in the classes.

I decided to try something I hadn't done before and attended Gwen Nicholson's BeeFree Creations Paverpol Wall hanging class and was not disappointed. This class was both arty (which I am not) and creative. I always get in such a mess when it is anything to do with paint brushes, paint and glue. Paverpol is both a paint and glue really and one has to work fairly fast before it sets so the class was challenging in that respect but lots of fun and with the same materials everyone in the class came up with something different but all equally stunning. The secret is to have lots of dimension to highlight with the tinted varnish once dried. It was a very popular class with one Wallhanging class originally, turning into three. Thank you Gwen for sharing your skills. I look forward to having another go with the product purchased however this is the result of the class.
Another class attended was the Opals class (only 6 in the class) where we learned some embossing techniques with this medium. I won't be publishing my attempts as once again this is quite arty and I need lots more practice however I think it will be fun to play and experiment with to create embellishments on pages.

Well it will be back to a regular routine again tomorrow. Will miss the extra scrapping time the holidays provided.
Thanks for visiting and have a great week everybody.
Dianne

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Stars in their Eyes

Another week of the holidays is flying by. On Monday I discovered that Scrapping Patch were having a "Stars in their Eyes" Competition so decided to join in in the nick of time for Week One - Scrap lifting the style of Steph Devlin, one of my favourite scrap bookers. The gallery went up this morning and there are some fantastic Steph Devlin Styles. Here is my take - perhaps the layout is a little too full but I am not so good at 'white space'. Steph calls the mix of old and new elements "Boutique Scrapbooking" and uses lots of cut out flowers, dimensional flowers, different fabrics and textures, chipboard etc.
Steph often used transparencies on her layouts and here I framed the larger 5 x 7 photo with a 6 x 4 transparency to frame the important part of the photo. She also often includes birds and punched pp together with lots of flowers.
I used recycled greeting cards to cut out the flower and bird shapes and an old 1963 magazine to cut out the little girls. A bling brooch found a couple of years ago at a market in Winton, Southland finally finds a home as does the lovely little flower motif my mother crocheted and had attached to my birthday present last year. The vintage lace is also from Mum's collection. To extend the mulberry paper flower I edged it with tulle which also adds dimension and softness.

The challenge for Week Two is Ingvild Bolme from Norway. I have admired her scrapping for a long time. I hope I get time to give it a go before next Tuesday as I am off to SENZ in Christchurch this Friday and Saturday.

Last weekend I had a go at Scrapbook Outlet's Friday Sketch Challenge as follows:

It was another opportunity to put the new Cuttlebug heart shapes to use and also bring out some large acetate letters from early scrapping days to use as a template for the title. ... and also the Martha Stewart around the page 'loop' punch which I hadn't used before.

Enjoy the rest of the week / holidays.
Thanks for looking.
Dianne

Friday, July 9, 2010

Dusty Attic

Have you visited the Dusty Attic Site? I am loving it - its gallery, blog and competitions and the cool Dusty Attic chip board items available at Embellish It.

This week I had a go at the July Sketch challenge (Sketch by Trina McClune)
and this is what I came up with.
Created using Websters Pages and Kaiser Papers, Prima Flowers and of course the required Dusty Attic items. The layout is of my grandparents wedding day and the 60th Anniversary celebration with their original wedding party in the same order as the wedding photo. A pretty amazing milestone! Grandma passed away at age 88 in 1998 and Grandad at 92 on what would have been their 69th wedding anniversary 11.10.2002. They were very devoted to each other so I felt this was another amazing co-incidence.

Today we had my niece and three of my great nieces aged 10, 3, 2 and 1 over for the afternoon. They were lots of fun. The time flew as we played with the big bin of our girls old Barbies, visited at the park at the end of our drive, had a picnic afternoon tea on the lounge floor and read stories. They were all so good and cute. My niece is coming to stay tomorrow night so we may do a bit of scrapping together.

Have a great weekend.
Thanks for looking.
Dianne

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

Tuesday Already

As I work in a school (Admin) I always look forward to the holidays to recharge and catch up. It is Tuesday already and it has been full on so far as my 3 girls were all here for 3 days to make the invitations for a family wedding later in the year. We had lots of fun and they enjoyed being creative once all the measuring and punching was completed - in fact they got to do all the designing while I kept them supplied in die cuts from the cuttlebug and tying lots of little bows. While the same basic materials were used we made a variety of designs all in the same three colours and it was cool how many different looks were created. Well done girls.

Last Saturday I enjoyed a trip to the Embellish It Oamaru Crop. It was a great day meeting up with the ladies from Oamaru and Sharon from Balclutha. I managed to get a double layout done. Photos from my daughter's last high school ball 11 months ago. I had been saving the lovely Francheville chandelier paper for the occasion and was pleased they way it come together in the end. I used her wrist corsage as the flower embellishment in the bottom left corner by taking off the spent orchards and replacing with paper flowers and adding a few little roses - the ribbons and silver baubles were as they were on the night. The ticket was their ticket to the event which doubles as the journalling with where, when and what.

And to top off a great weekend I was the lucky one to be drawn as the winner of the Scrapbook Outlet Sketch Challenge for 25 June.

Thanks for looking.

Take Care

Dianne

Friday, July 2, 2010

Happy Birthday Andrea

Today is a special birthday for my sister-in-law, walking companion and friend. HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANDREA and thank you for always being there and being my motivation for my daily exercise.
This week I was inspired to have a go at the Scrapbook Outlet Friday Sketch Challenge by Vicki Morris and this is what I came up with. The challenge was to follow the sketch and make a card from the left overs (as above).
As I wanted to include the two cute photos I included some hidden journaling which read

"Little girls bring such delight with hearts so warm and smiles so bright"

The other good thing was that I used paper I had in my stash coming up 4 years. I am having a concentrated effort to try and use some of the stashed papers but what I liked then is not necessarily what I like now.

A busy weekend is ahead as tomorrow I am off to an Embellish It Crop in Oamaru and am really looking forward to that so I better go and get packed ready for an early start. I will then return home in time to host a "Vinyl Night" where friends are bringing their favourite LP's along with their favourite food dish of the 70s for a pot luck tea. Should be fun!

Enjoy your weekend. Thanks for visiting.
Dianne