Melbourne Paperific Expo

Woot - I'm excited! It's almost time for the Melbourne Paperific Expo. It starts on Friday and runs til Sunday at the Melbourne showgrounds. It's a lovely expo, very friendly and easy to get around.

I'll be on the Scrappy Chat Designs stand demonstrating Metallic Melts - those little tubs of sparkling sunshine! I'll also be helping out with the kits - one of which is below and was designed by me! Everything is in the kit to make a whopping 60 projects, including cards, decorated envelopes and tags.

I'd love it if you dropped in and said hi!

Happy scrappin'!

Heather

Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens!

Hi everyone.

I hope you had a great weekend. I've been busy putting together a layout for this month's Scrap Around The World challenge. You can find the challenge here.

Here is the mood board for this month:

My take on this may not be a conventional one but I swear the subject matter was the first thing I thought of when I saw the mood board!

My layout:

Yep - that's a very brightly coloured rooster! My main source of inspiration from the mood board was the shoes. I was thinking that they look like bird cages and then I knew straight away which pictures to scrap! I then used the colours of the cotton reels as colour inspiration and added a feather on the arrow as a nod to the feathery hat the lady in white is wearing (plus it matches the rooster).

My journalling runs around the edge of the page and says how much the men in Bali love their roosters. We were in one village where a few people coloured their roosters with dye. This one was the best but he was inside his cage so it was quite hard to photograph him.

My background has a Prima diamond stamp (like the diamonds on the cage) pressed into texture paste then I've sprayed three colours of Dylsuions over the top. I stamped again over the top with white ink and highlighted some of the diamond shapes with pen.

I painted a wooden skewer and turned it into an arrow with a feather, ribbon and paper.

I tucked some Dusty Attic chipboard behind the photos to enforce the cage concept and added a few fun embellies.

I love this cute little guy!

I hope you got a smile from my not so serious page and that you are as amazed at this rooster as I was!

Happy scrappin'!

Heather

An Underwater Adventure

Hi again scrappers!

I've been busy with my Dusty Attic chippies again! I took some amazing underwater photos in Bali and knew I had to use the Dusty Attic Seagrass chippies with them. How perfect are these?

My daughter and I were snorkeling and came across this stone shrine in the water. This is definitely not what we were expecting! Courtney was fascinated by it. We played around there for ages. Courtney loved posing in meditative positions or just diving down to it. My husband reckons it looks like this photo is photoshopped. It definitely isn't! She's not sitting on that coral behind her either (we would never do that!) - it's quite a way behind her.

I love the jagged edges of this chippie title. I just painted the first word and used Tinby Metallic Melts on the second word.

I used four different coloured paints on the surface of the Seagrass Chippies to create that mottled, underwater look. To help the shapes stand out from the background I used a bit of white and denim paints on some of the edges. I went berserk with crazy stitching on this layout!

Unfortunately, the photo of the main layout here doesn't show the shafts of sunlight that are penetrating through the water. To accentuate them I painted shafts of light above the pic. I created a trail of bubbles with the small dots chippies to follow on from the bubbles in the photo.

Dusty Attic products used:

Chippies:

• Seagrass large and small
• Just Me word
• Small dots

Paints:

• Capri, Mountain Meadow, Oceania, Faded Denim, Denim and Alabaster.

Happy Scrappin'!

Heather

On my Soapbox

Well I have something different to talk about today scrappy friends! I often find myself in discussions with people about our wonderful Aussie scrapping magazines. I've been amazed at the number of times lately that people have made comments like, "Oh is that edition out already?" (it came out three weeks ago) or "my local newsagent didn't have any copies left" or "I keep forgetting to buy it".

I'd just like to say one word to all those people - subscriptions!

Subscribing to our mags has soooo many advantages:

• It is usually significantly cheaper - prices can be 30 or 40% of the retail price. Postage is free.
• You can choose to pay more (but still less than you would pay in a shop) and receive amazing freebies. Just keep your eyes open for deals.
• The mag arrives in your letterbox as soon as it's released. Sometimes this is even before the newsagents have it on sale.
• You don't have to remember to drop into the shop for it.
• You will never miss out again!

We are so fortunate in this country to have three wonderful magazines dedicated to our craft. The three are all different to each other but all provide inspiration, info on new products, news in the industry and are full of fabulous ideas.

Here are the links:

Scrapbooking Memories

Click here for online subscriptions or phone 1800-801 647 or email subs@magstore.com.au

Australian Scrapbook Ideas

Click here for online subscriptions or phone 07-3160 9940 

Scrapbook Creations

Click here for online subscriptions or phone 1300-303 414 or email mailorder@universalmagazines.com.au

And to those scrappers in other countries, all of our wonderful mags post overseas. Just contact them to find out if yours is one of the countries they post to.

OK - I'll get off my soapbox now!

Hapy Scrappin'!

Heather

It's Moments Like These .......

Hi there,

I'm here with my Dusty Attic sketch layout for August. I love this sketch! Here it is:

I followed the sketch pretty closely. I love this photo of my daughter pondering life at a beautiful water-lily covered lake in Bali and was busting to scrap it.

Most of the products on this page are from Dusty Attic. All the paints, flowers and chipboard are. The only other products are Tinby Designs Metallic Melts and some Heidi Swapp ephemera that I've coloured with Dusty Attic Paints.

I used two colours of paints and Metallic Melts on the title.

 I coloured some of the flowers with Sunshine paint mixed with water and sprayed it on.

Here's a step by step of how I made that background. It's very simple!

 Step 1: Pour a little paint onto a craft mat or palette.

Step 2: Mix with a little water.

Step 3: Pick up the paint mix with a baby wipe.

Step 4: Dab onto the page in random sections. Use a few different colours.

Step 5: My background now looks like this.

Step 6: Add some stamping and you're done! I also flicked some paint over it at the end. Oh and I kind of spilt some paint on there right at the end too so I got a bit more than I bargained for!

Dusty Attic products used:

Flowers:

• Dusty in Bloom Bridal Veil, Evening Blush, Cornsilk and Grassy Knoll
• Dusty Roses in various colours

Dusty in Colour Paints:

• Alabaster, Dusty Pink, Sugar Plum, Cashmere, Sunshine and Jungle Green

Chipboard:

• Word Pack #4

Happy Scrappin'!

Heather

Reading on an October - I mean July - Afternoon.

Hi there. I hope your week has been going well.

I'm back with my last layout using the "Explore" kit from Scrappy Chat Designs. And for the first time, I've used the October Afternoon papers in the theme that they were made for!

The papers are called "Public Library". Here's my layout:

My daughter is like my husband and I - we all love to read. She was on holidays from uni when I took this photo. She spent a lot of time on the couch reading!

To make this layout I simply cut up sections of book spines from the 'Library Card' paper and sat them so they look they are stacked up behind the photo. I made a teeny tiny book from the papers too!

I did a bit of stenciling in the background using the gorgeous Crafter's Workshop stencil from the kit. I cut a quote from the 'Biography' paper and used that under my smaller photo.

Well I hope you've enjoyed my Scrappy Chat Designs layouts this month. If you're interested in getting the kits plus instructions and videos each month jsut drop a line to orders.scrappychatdesigns.gmail.com

Happy Scrappin'!

Heather

Once Upon A Sketch

Hi again,

I've had a bit of extra time this month which I love cos I get the chance to catch up with some of my fave online challenges. I decided to enter the Once Upon A Sketch challenge this month. I adore this sketch. It's so me!

The theme is "The Men in our Lives". I chose a relevant photo of my husband so I could scrap about his passion for bike riding.

There are hexagons in the sketch and I used these extensively in this layout. I fussy-cut the hexagon paper into this shape, cutting some of the internal hexagons out for a peek-through effect. On the background are hexagons stamped with ink and others that have been stamped then topped with Tinby Designs Metallic Melts. I've also splotched Dylusions ink sprays onto the background.

I used an Amy Tangerine stamp to create that bike wheel look. I love my new Thickers!

I put my journalling on a tag behind the photo so it didn't clutter the page.

I just picked up these Heidi Swapp word stamps yesterday. I love that they seem to add something special to the page.

I hope you can join in the competition this month.

Happy scrappin'!

Heather

The Colours of Bali

Hi and welcome to my second post for this month's Scrappy Chat Designs kit. This kit features some gorgeous October Afternoon papers. To show how versatile these papers are I thought I'd make a page that is about as far from the usual October Afternoon feel as you can get. My page is about Bali!

It's always hard to show a double page online so here are plenty of close ups:

Aren't those Tinby Metallic Melts divine? If you're a member you'll get full instructions on how I made this.

I had so much fun playing with the stencil, Distress Stain and Metallic Melts from the kit on this one.

If you're a Scrappy Chat Designs member then you will be emailed instructions on how I made this. As a member you get heaps of info every month showing techniques, tips and hints as well as a minimum of three videos showing how to make the key three layouts from each kit. Contact orders.scrappychatdesigns.gmail.com.for more info.

Happy Scrappin'!

Heather

Arty Backgrounds

Hi,

Today I'd like to share some layouts that I had published in Issue 27 of Australian Scrapbook Ideas magazine.

I wrote an article about creating arty backgrounds and this layout is full of backgrounds techniques! I have a step by step guide on how I made it in the magazine.

Here are some close ups:

The second layout in the article made the front page of the magazine! Woot!

I used some interesting layering techniques on this background. Again, full instructions are in the magazine. I hope you got to have a look!

I also have an article in the current edition of the magazine using the amazing Tinby Designs Metallic Melts. There are heaps of other interesting articles in there too. All projects have full instructions. You can't ask for more than that!

Happy Scrappin'!

Heather