Rockin' with Elvis

Hi there.

I'm back again today with my third layout for Scrappy Chat Design's Cheeky Smiles Kit. I have now made three layouts but I could easily make another three. There are so many papers in this kit!

Here's my layout:

This is very much a light-hearted, fun layout. I love making these. I just go with what feels right.

The background is from the gorgeous Simple Stories DIY Boutique range that is in this month's kit. I framed the photo with the Boutique Newspaper paper then I punched circles and cut strips and chevrons from other papers in the kit to back it all.

Underneath the papers, I just gave a good spray with a white mist then added a small spray of the Tumble Dye from the kit. At the end, I covered the photo and flicked the Tumble Dye across the page. I added the enamel dots from the kit too.

Did you notice what I put under the photo? Yep, they're Bandz, or Loom Bands or whatever brand you want to call them . These were in the kit too! I love how there are sometimes unusual items like this that make me think outside the square!

I thought I'd try a different approach to making my title. To see what I did, head over to the Scrappy Chat Designs blog here.

I've really enjoyed using this month's kit and am looking forward to still playing with the rest!

Happy Scrappin'!

Heather

My Handsome Son

Hi there,

I will tell you about my layout shortly but first you'll have to put up with me being a proud mum! My son looked so handsome in a suit when he got dressed up for the school formal. He had never worn a suit before. We borrowed it from a friend and it was a perfect fit. I know we girls sometimes like to look nice but it's good that the guys can too. My little boy really is growing up!

Ok, so now that I've got that off my chest I'll tell you about the layout! Here it is:

This is my second layout this month using Scrappy Chat Design's Cheeky Smiles Kit. I love this kit! If you are interested in seeing more techniques using this kit and others, have a think about becoming a Scrappy Chat Designs member. For inquiries email orders.scrappychatdesigns.gmail.com or take a look at the new website here.

I had to be fairly brave to tackle this design! I chose to use this paper as a background even though it's very busy. To mask the busyness, I just swiped black paint over parts of the page. I then cut heaps of frames from one of the other Simple Stories papers and used these on top of the black paint. Yes, I framed my photo with frames!

I sprayed some of the frames with the teal Tumble Dye. I love how these turned out.

The first part of my title is cut from the background paper. The chipboard words are made from the Kaisercraft letters in the kit. I painted them then coated them with Metallic Melts. On the word "school" I made a layer of the red then topped it with white to get a red outline. I kept changing my mind what colour I wanted on the word "formal". There are four different layers under there! I love the way I can just cover a colour with paint and the melts.

Happy Scrappin'!

Heather

Thinking of Mykonos

Hi there,

I have a very bright and cheery layout to share with you today. In fact, it's so bright you might want to get your sunglasses out! This is my first layout using the new Cheeky Smiles kit for Scrappy Chat Designs. This is a fabulous collection with gorgeous papers. All the Simple Stories papers have great patterns on their brand strips and I used a few of these in this design.

Here's my layout:

 I warned you it was bright! I really wanted this bright-colour-on-white effect cos that's what the buildings in Mykonos are like.

In the kit this month was a bottle of s.e.i. Tumble Dye. I've had fun playing with this! First I used a stencil from a previous kit and just sprayed through it. I then flipped the stencil over and stamped with it. I cut out chevrons from one of the Echo Park papers and layered these under the photos cos I wanted the sprayed background to peep between the chevrons.

I coated the Kaisercraft chipboard letters that were in the kit with two shades of ink and coated them with the Metallic Melts from last month's kit. I love how they turned out.

I punched hearts from the papers but also from the Tumble Dye packaging as I loved the colours on it!

My flower arranging was incredibly non-technical. The flowers came in a bunch and I just left them as they were!

I wanted to hide the wire stems though so I found a piece of lace and dyed it with the Tumble Dye. I wore latex gloves and did it in the laundry sink in case the dye was a problem. All went well though. I just sprayed it and scrunched it around in my gloved hands until the lace was coated. I then dried it with paper towels.

Do you want to know how I got that old, scrunched up lace to look so nice? Well I'm very excited to show you how because, drum roll please......., Heather has made her first video! Ok, so technically my son and I made my first video! Well I did the demo and he did everything else - lol!

Anyway, it's only a minute or so long and it's over on my post at Scrappy Chat Designs. Hope you can pop over and let me know what you think.

Happy Scrappin'!

Heather

A Claytons Christmas Layout

Hi there!

I confess, you probably have to be over 40 and Australian to understand the title of this blog post. To those who aren't both of those, Claytons was (and is it still?) a non- alcoholic drink that advertised itself as being 'the drink you have when you're not having a drink'. Well this is the layout you make with Christmas papers when you're not making a Christmas layout!

This is my third layout for this month's kit for Scrappy Chat Designs. The kit is a Christmas themed one, but my challenge was to make a non-Christmas layout with it. After all, don't we all end up with all those Christmas papers that we don't know what to do with for the rest of the year?

So here's my non-Christmas layout using the Christmas range of Simple Stories papers:

For those of you who are regular followers of my blog, yes that is my daughter on the left. She has dyed her hair black!

When you're using a themed paper range for a different purpose, look for the more general papers or even sections of papers that you can utilise. I cut out sections of papers about 3 x 4 inches that didn't include specific Christmas items. I then decorated each piece, rounded the corners and inked and stitched the edges. Here's a closie of one piece:

I used scraps to make the banner and to decorate the individual sections. On some I added punched borders or flowers and cut shapes such as hearts and arrows. The Liquid Pearls from the kit made great flower centres and added a bright touch as well.

The chipboard flourish was lots of fun to play with. I first applied VersaMark ink to the flourish part only then covered this lightly with Metallic Melts. I heated this to create that gorgeous beaten copper effect. Metallic Melts aren't quite available commercially yet but you can inquire here in the meantime. I then painted the title section and, when it was dry, added a light layer of VersaMark again and sprinkled a very light layer of Metallic Melts on this section. I heated this so I just got that sprinkled effect. I then stuck my title on top.

My letter stickers really didn't like sticking to the uneven surface that I created so I had to glue them down with Helmar 450 glue. They took a bit of convincing but they stuck in the end!

Here's a closie of the effect the Metallic Melts created when I used them in the method described above.

That's all from me today. See you soon.

Heather

Let it Snow

Hi there,

I hope your week has been a good one and you're on top of the demands of the crazy season.

I've had fun scrapping with the November kit from Scrappy Chat Designs. I had these great photos of my family discovering the snow machine last Christmas Eve when we were out looking at the Christmas lights. My son and I knew the machine was there so we planted my unsuspecting parents underneath it. The machine started up and covered mum, dad and Connor in 'snow'. It was really funny. I had so many photos that I decided to go for a double page layout. I added two sheets of white cardstock for the double page background but, apart from that, everything is from the kit.

And here are the two pages individually cos it's a bit hard to see details on a double page:

OK - so here's how I made the "Let it snow" background.

Firstly, I cut the words 'Let it snow' from an old piece of thick paper using my Cricut machine. It doesn't matter what you use to cut the letters - all you need is the negative shape of your chosen letters. These can even be the shapes left over from letter stickers (just add some talcum powder to the back to stop the letters sticking). I then used clear VersaMark ink through the stencil before I applied the grey Pan Pastel from the kit on top of that using a make-up sponge. The VersaMark helps anchor the Pan Pastel to the page.

I applied the Pan Pastel unevenly to create a bit of depth and interest to my words.  I placed the words where I wanted them, keeping in mind that a lot of the background would be covered with photos and embellies. The words can be placed as randomly or as evenly as you like. On a double page, ensure at least one word crosses the two pages to help link them together. When I had finished, I sprayed the background lightly with hair spray to seal the Pan Pastels. It also made my page smell lovely!

I then built my layout on top of the background, letting enough words peek out so the saying was instantly recognisable. I also added the same words using the letters stickers for the title. The saying/song title is so appropriate to this page that I really wanted to accentuate it.

I fussy-cut quite a few items from the papers to create my embellies and stapled the string across the two pages. I glued the string in place where I had to cut it at the join. One of the postcards made a perfect journaling block. My mum's name is Joy so I couldn't resist adding the 'Peace, Love, Joy' words under my pics. I punched some snowflakes from the paper as well.

If you're one of the lucky people with this kit I really hope you have lots of fun with it.

Cheers for now,

Heather

Be Merry This Christmas

Hi there scrappers.

We've had a week of really weird weather here. I hope it's been better where you are.

The new Christmas kit from Scrappy Chat Designs is out and I got to have a play with it. I've had a blast! The kit includes some gorgeous Simple Stories papers, a Pan Pastel and some Liquid Pearls among other things.

For my first layout, I took the title 'Be Merry' quite literally. Here's my layout:

I seem to keep scrapping layouts lately where I have to explain about my very silly family! Aunty Rita is such a joker and always comes armed with a supply of gizmos to make people laugh. As you can see, she has no shortage of people willing to help share the silliness! Those fake teeth were just gorgeous - not!

The chalkboard look is hot right now and this background paper is a fabulous one. It allows colours to stand out so well. I mostly used the 3 x 4 Journaling Cards Elements paper on the remainder of this layout. I fussy-cut some items from the cards to use as features, then layered the leftovers and other whole cards behind the photo as a mat. I inked all the edges to help define the papers.

Included in the kit is a bottle of key lime Liquid Pearls. This is a bright lime green. Normally I wouldn't associate a strong colour like this with Liquid Pearls but I'm so glad I gave it a go. I've fallen in love with it! To make the strands of 'Christmas Lights' behind the photo mat I first randomly glued down handfuls of cotton thread. They're only glued under the photo mat. I then carefully placed dots of Liquid Pearls over the top of the cotton. I had to hold the cotton down at first, but once the Liquid Pearls dries, it acts like a glue and holds the cotton in place itself. I think the result is really effective and this technique would look great on a layout about Christmas lights.

The 'Christmas Lights' forming the border were made quite differently. There was no way I could get cotton to sit like that while I put Liquid Pearls on it to glue it into place so I just drew the white lines on with a gel pen. This is a lot easier way to create the lights and looks almost (but not quite!) as good as the cotton method.

I hope you get to scrap some fab Christmas layouts this year.

Happy scrappin'

Heather

24/7

Hi all,

Well it's back to winter here with rain, hail and a maximum of 7 degrees today. And that was without the wind chill factor! Never mind - it's great scrapping weather.

Here's another layout for Scrap Everything! I've used more of the Simple Stories range. There are a lot of fans of this product out there!

For something different, I opted for an A4 layout. I love using A4 pages in a rounded-corner, retro kind of way. Here's the layout:

I had a bit of fun with the photo. Using Photoshop Elements, I put a bit of a red tint onto it then ran a mosaic filter over it to give it that crackled look. Here's a closer look at the photo.

There are so many options for titles when using calendar pages on your layout. I went with 24/7 but there are so many more I could have used like All Year Round, Day In Day Out, Every Minute/Hour/Day etc, Until the End of Time and so on.

Here's a close up:

Hope you have a wonderful weekend.

Heather

Simple Stories

Well, my lurgy has finally gone and I'm feeling 100% again. Yay!

My kit from Scrap Everything! this month included these luscious Simple Stories papers. Simple Stories products are designed to make scrapbooking faster and easier for people with limited scrapping time. We all know what that's like! You can check out the range here.

I really liked the 12 x 12 page that looks like a calendar page, however I didn't want the whole layout to be the calendar. I therefore opted for a double page layout.

I had a lot of fun with this. I first went back through my pics until I found a month that had a good range of photos. I then went to my diary and looked up other things we did that I didn't take photos of. It would also work really well if you planned the month in advance and took photos accordingly as you went. You could even make these pages the basis for your whole year's scrapping and could just scrap special events on their own page if time is an issue.

Here's my layout:

 I printed all the photos in passport size then just trimmed them to squares. You could put a photo in each square but this would leave little room for journalling and I think it's important to get those details on paper. I also left a few squares blank so the page wasn't too busy. There's more than enough business on the this layout as it is!

Here's a close up:

The raw wooden KaiserCraft balloons suited the layout beautifully. You can get them here. Even though the background paper I used here is very busy, the words were all so appropriate that I had to use it! I did tone down the other side of the layout where the title is though or there would have been too much to look at!

I also added some banners. I'm a bit banner mad lately. I raised some flags higher than others to help give the appearance of movement. I also used a loop in the banner string to form the letter "o" in the title. With the exception of a small amount of AC cardstock, all the papers are from the Simple Stories range.

I realise that double page layouts are a bit hard to see online so here are the pages one at a time:

There are 10 photos on this layout and I could easily have put more on. I think this is a great way to get those day to day details documented.

I hope this inspires you to round up those unscrapped pics that are sitting on your computer and get them into an album. Most of our lives are taken up with non-monumentous occasions. It's great to scrap the birthdays, weddings and other milestones but don't forget what you did in between these events!

Ciao for now.

 Heather