Blogging for scrapbookers

I'm taking this new course at Shimelle.com. It's odd how I found out about it, I noticed on Facebook that several of my friends from different scrapping forums were becoming friends with each other. So I decided to join in too, as I do tend to find it hard to bother updating here, then get overwhelmed thinking about how much I'll need to add.

It's cool already catching up with friends from so many different forums. I'm hoping it'll get me more comfortable with updating my blog.

My intention is to keep up with the prompts every day. However, I also know that I am very easily distracted. Because I primarily do digiscrapping now, it's easy to drift between PSE and the internet - especially that blasted Facebook, which just sucks up time lol.

Today our prompt was to state our intentions for the course. We could also take a photo of our scrapping space if we wanted, and even do a page, but I was working on a page for something else so ran out of time.

I have found another fun place to hang out recently, logyourmemory.com. It's run by my friend Kristin, and is a new forum. It's based around her memory logbook, which is a place to note memories and info until you get a chance to scrap them. The grand opening fun weekend was just there, and had a lot of cool chats and freebies. Pop over if you get a chance.

As for my recent scrapping, I've done a LO for the last two weeks of the Designer Digitals challenge, as well as a general one.

The third week of the challenge asked us to create a heritage page. I've not tried one before, but my mum gave me a bundle of photos of me as a baby/ toddler after Amy was born, so I used a couple of my favourites from those. I had a lot of fun putting the page together.

The last week challenged us to show off our brushwork. I love using brushes, and love this photo of Amy and her friend, so that was my starting point.

Amy and I spent a morning recently at our local woods collecting a bag of fallen leaves to use for craft projects. Amy loved picking them up, and was very pleased to spot Scrat (from Ice Age). Though I guess it could have been a squirrel.

Phew, longer post than usual, hope someone makes it to the end! Hiya to any fellow classmates:).

Loving the Designer Digital challenges

This month they've got 4 challenges, one per week. The challenge the first week was to use products from at least 3 DD designers. That was easy, I tend to use a mix anyway, and the styles work well together. This was my page, I couldn't sleep one night, and got back up to play on PSE, and loved the result. I used supplies by Katie Pertiet, Anna Aspnes, Pattie Knox and Mindy Terasawa.

This week's challenge is to use 3 photos. This was harder, I knew what photos I wanted to use, but it took many incarnations before I, again, had an idea at night. I just had to get back up and turn it into a LO. Here I used supplies by Mindy Terasawa and Katie Pertiet.

Apart from that I've been enjoying the template challenges, here's my LOs for the past 2 challenges.

I'm still loving the digi scrapping, so much easier to get on with when I have 5 minutes peace:).

Though I see there's a cybercrop coming up soon on UKScrappers, so that might jolt my paper scrapping mojo again:).

Beautiful Evidence and first day of nursery

It's been a busy time, Amy has just started nursery and is loving it! She goes 3 times a week, which is plenty for now.

I used all Designer Digitals supplies for this LO.

I'm also doing another course on Jessica Sprague's site. It's called Beautiful Evidence, and at the end of the course we'll have an album all about ourselves, and our life right now. I'm loving it, especially as we get a template each day, so as long as we have the photos ready the page come together easily! We also got a fabulous kit to use.

I'm starting to fall behind, now that we've got to the family pages, just because I'm too indecisive, and there are so many photos to choose from, but I'll get it finished - honest!

Yay, my jigsaw came home

Yay, I got my jigsaw! Last post I showed all the pieces I'd done for everyone's jigsaw. Here's mine, the theme was butterflies, and each person in my group did a piece. I'm so pleased with it, especially how much dimension there is to it!

Maureen, you asked in the comments last time how it started, well we each started with a blank chipboard jigsaw. This swap was on UKScrappers, which has a great selection of swaps. It was run by Frances, who was a fantastic host, keeping us all straight about which piece to decorate with each theme so the jigsaws would work at the end. I don't envy her that task! We're hoping to do a 6x6" swap in a couple of months to complete the set.

8x8 jiggy swap

After the 12x12 jigsaw swap I took part in on UKS earlier this year, I was eager to join in with the 8x8 swap. I've just finished my pieces, and can't wait to receive back my complete jigsaw. I feel that I used more techniques on this jigsaw, and played a lot more with ink/ paint.

The themes were

1. Musicals. I found this really difficult, as I'm not a big musicals fan, but I like how it turned out. I found some show programme images on the web and used them to create a background, then added a couple of painted acetate notes and a flower which I stamped with a text stamp.

2. Christmas. This was the first piece I completed, I painted the piece, then embossed silver snowflakes. I then stamped christmas trees, cut them out and added them, mounted on foam pads. I completed the piece with a metal embellie and a small piece of ribbon.

3. Vintage Love. I enjoyed doing this piece. I used patterned paper for the background, and added a strip of lace across the middle. I stamped the roses, and wrapped some mulberry paper round them, then used that paper also to make a couple of hearts.

4. Butterflies. This was my theme. I created a digi background using supplies from Designer Digitals, then stamped 2 butterflies on acetate. I painted one with Staz-on ink (using a cut n' dry nib) and gold acrylic paint, and added Stickles to the other.

5. Celtic. I loved the sound of this theme, but for some reason I had great trouble creating the piece that was in my head. I'm pleased with the final outcome though. I printed a celtic seal, then added leaf beads to artist wire to create a look of a slightly hidden celtic stone.

6. Fashion through the ages. I stamped on the background of this piece with Paperartsy stamps, then added cut out stamps of shoes. I then added the quote, and created a hanger from artist wire. I stamped a bag, cut it out and made the strap from beads, which I then hung on the hanger.

7. Faeries. It took me a while to decide what to do with this piece as it's not a theme I have any supplies for. I drew on a wing, then coloured it with Stickles, paint, ink and liquid pearls. I had a lot of fun mixing those all together to see the effects. I then added a stamped fairyland ticket.

8. News Headlines. I decided to go with the moon landing for this one as I am an astronomer at heart. I painted the jigsaw piece with a mix of black and blue acrylic paint, stirred together with silver stickles. I then added a chipboard moon, painted with liquid pearls, and a teeny American flag on it. I found a picture of the moon lander, and the front page of a newspaper from that date. I printed this image out, added some distress ink to yellow it, and folded it with some blank paper so it would look more like a full newspaper.

9. Mythical creatures. I chose the phoenix as the creature for this piece. I printed out an image, and blinged it up with sparkly pens and stickles. I added some stickles dots on the background too to look like stars. I then printed out the phrase, and burned the edges with a match.

Quiet time for scrapping

This last month I've barely scrapped, just don't seem to have had the time. I'm sure I read an article in one of the mags last year which said our creativity goes in cycles, so I'm clearly in a gathering phase just now. Hope the creating side comes back soon:). I am just back from my holidays, so do have 250 new photos to scrap!

I did manage the first day's challenge in Jessica Sprague's challenge a day at the start of June, to list 5 favourite things about summer. It includes my new favourite technique - extractions, which I learned using a fabby technique from Cassie on Designer Digitals.

I did do a couple of interesting LOs at the start of last month when Anna Aspnes set challenges on Designer Digitals, they are totally different to anything I'd usually do, but I loved being out of my comfort zone.

The first one gave us a template, with the title 'Absolutely Zero Desire', and I had great fun thinking of my top 10 to be included.

The next week she gave us an overlay, including the title 'I have a secret desire 2' which came just at the right time for me to know exactly what to write about.

To counteract that, I did my first paper LO in a while, and as I'm not doing so much of it, I decided to go all out and include lots of product. I love the bright colours in it.

Loving the challenges on Jessica Sprague

This LO was done for the 3kits 3ways challenge on DD. I used J Edwards Bluebells and Daffodils kit; A Aspnes Esther brushes; K Pertiet Photo wraps as the 3 kits, as well as some other bits and bobs from DD.

Jessicasprague.com had a week of challenges this week - 7 LOs in 7 days. I wasn't able to do all of them, but I got 3 done. Even better, there's one for each day in June too!

This first challenge gave us a template by LivE. I used the Pandamonium kit by M Terasawa for the little bee etc.

The second challenge got us to use a blending technique. I used the heart shape from the standard Photoshop shapes, then added a brush and changed the blending mode to overlay. I like this photo, taken as my photo of the day in January. 

This last one is just a fun one. We were to think of a song that means a lot to us. I love Walking on Sunshine by Katrina and the Waves, it's just such a sunny, happy song. I made the little mini-me last year as one of the challenges during a UKS cybercrop, so I used a photo of it on my LO now that I know how to extract things!

If you've never done a digi scrapping class, then I totally recommend Jessica's classes. There's a video tutorial for each one, and tons of supplies. It's the easiest way to learn, I've learnt sooooo much!