Star Mini-Album

Having seen a couple of star mini-albums recently, I decided to attempt to make my own, and it worked although next time I'll make it larger.


I used two different papers from Echo Park's Life is Good collection and two sheets of coordinating Bazzill cardstock. Start to finish this took me just under two hours to complete, and it's now ready for populating with photos. This album is great as it can be opened out and left on a shelf as an ornament, or closed up and popped in a bag. I think I'll be making some more of these!

Decopatch

Oh so easy, quick and effective! I bought this word as a pack of plain white letters for about £3 in Aldi, and within a couple of hours I'd transformed it using decopatch into this which I'm really pleased with! Not the best photo though - this is sitting on a shelf in a unit directly above our Sky TV box!

Rainbow rainbow

Thanks to my visit to Ally Pally the other week, I have discovered a new craft, decopatch! So I decided that I'd buy myself some papers in a rainbow of colours and use them to cover a chipboard mini album I bought at Ally Pally, and I'll fill the album with pictures from our forthcoming holiday in Cornwall (I'm thinking of using black & white photos). It's not quite finished yet,I was playing with buttons and ribbons earlier to see what combination to use, and even though I am the first to admit that I have a bit of a button problem, I don't have quite enough of the ones I want to use (I'm one yellow button short!)! I shall have to raid Judy's stash to see if she has the one I need! I also need some thin orange ribbon. Decopatch has been easy to do - I have done some in the odd 30mins here and there during the daytime, yes even while the kids have been around, and in the evenings too while watching TV. As well as the mini album I'm also working on some chipboard bunting which I've done decopatch on one side, and I'm planning use decopatch to decorate a chipboard christmas tree as my "off the page" project for the Scrap Cafe retreat crop in 3 weeks time.


Playing with the button layout ...

... and ribbons too ...

... and all the pages



Now I mentioned above the Scrap Cafe retreat in 3 weeks time. I'm not actually staying over, the hotel it's at is just 2 minutes drive away (3 if the traffic lights are on red!), but it's a Friday evening to Sunday evening of scrapbooking and crafting, so I'll be using our house as a hotel that weekend and listerally just sleeping here. We've been given a list of hints for the challenges over the weekend, and as well as the "off the page" challenge, another challenge is to make our name badge as there will be lots of people there (and I only know 2 or 3!). As we are away from next weekend I decided to make my badge today while I have a bit of time. I've stuck with the rainbow theme, and enjoyed playing with the Sew Easy tool I bought yesterday in Hobbycraft. The letters are plain white letters which I coloured in with pens of the appropriate rainbow colours. I'm pleased with how this has turned out :)

Sarah's Cards Ltd - September Challenge

I find using sketches are a great way to kick-start a scrapbook page and get the creative juices flowing, and enetering competitions on blogs and websites are fun. Anyway, this month the Sarah's Cards Ltd blog have a competition to create a scrapbook page layout based on a sketch so I had a go, and here is my entry. The papers are all from the Echo Park Splash collection.

There is a story behind this layout. Five years ago today our son Kieran (then aged 15 months) was discharged from hospital having survived pneuomoccal meningitis (you can read his story here). So this year to celebrate I have set myself a challenge to raise money for Meningitis Research Foundation – swimming the distance of the London Marathon (26 miles 385yards or 42.195 kilometres) in my local swimming pool in the 16 weeks between Kieran’s sixth birthday (25th May) and the anniversary of his admission to hospital (13th September). (OK, so we got the dates a bit mixed up, 13th September isn't the anniversary of his admission to hospital, but the discharge! Admission date was 8th September ... but I must double check with the medical records next time we're seeing the doctors!). The idea for this challenge came about from having swum a similar challenge (channel distance over 12 weeks) at the time I found I was pregnant with Kieran. And a challenge it has been, fitting swimming round our busy family life and the busy pool timetable! But I’ve done it (the "photo" on this layout is actually my spreadsheet showing my progress through the challenge), and it gives us two reasons to celebrate this September! My Just Giving page is still open for donations :)

So what's changed?

It's been a while ... and how things have changed!

Abigail arrived on 4 Oct 2008, she's going to turn 3 in just 3 weeks time! She's just started pre-school and will move to the school nursery in January. She's a feisty little girl who knows her own mind, and I love her and Kieran to bits even when they are little horrors!

I now mainly do scrapbooking rather than card making, which is what this blog will probably concentrate on. I find scrapbooking is a great way to be creative while preserving our memories and photographs for the kids to enjoy when they are older, wheras card making just wasn't doing it for me as at the end of the day someone else got to keep (or throw out) my creations.

Anyway, enough for now, there will be more coming soon, very soon I promise!

Tea Bags & Irises

Here's my current favourite card that I have made using Iris Folding - it wasn't as fiddly as it looks and I really enjoyed making it. I plan to make at least one more using this Three Kings pattern as I have bought some navy glitter card with stars on - ideal for a night sky background for this card.



Tea bag folding is going OK. I'm finding it more fiddly than Iris Folding but its fun. There are loads and loads of different folds available and the tiles that some of the people on the CoC forum are able to create are just stunning! I've got a folder of different folds and I've saved lots of different tiles onto my harddrive - goodness knows when I'll get round to using / trying them all, and the colour cartridge on the printer is certainly getting a good run at the moment!

This card is a Christening card and I made it using a tile created by a fellow crafter that is based on a picture of candy, and the pattern is from the CoC website. This was a nice card to create and very simple. The corner flashes just add a bit of additional interest or it would be a bit boring.








This card is a medallion made for the October Challenge on CoC TBF forum - this month we had to use this specific fold which looked quite easy but actually it took a lot of fiddling to get this to sit right. This medallion isn't perfect but I've given it a good go and made it up as a Christmas card by mounting it on a silver card blank that has stars embossed into it.








This is a christmas card made using a split tile (tile thats has two different patterns on it, one on one side of the diagional, and another on the other side. It was an easy fold but I didn't put it together quite right - it still looks OK though.







Finally for today, here is my October Challenge card for the Iris Folding section on CoC - this month we all had to use this Christmas Pudding pattern but everyone has made it their own by mounting it in their own way and using their own choice of papers. This is my interpretation - the custard on top is pale yellow glitter card which I spotted in a craft shop - perfect for this job! Needless to say I don't put custard on Christmas pudding normally, and this won't be the only Christmas pudding I make this year as I plan to make one as part of our Christmas dinner!

More craft stuff

After a 2 month gap between posts, now there are 2 posts in 2 days! I've been doing more crafty bits today, a new baby card made by Iris Folding and a birthday card made by Tea Bag Folding. This was my first attempt at tea bag folding and I'm reasonably pleased with it. I think it needs a little something for the middle of the medallion, but I'm not sure what. This evening I've saved a few tiles created by other members of the CoC crafting forum and hope to get some printed off and have a play in the coming days to create more medallions. It's pretty intricate folding such small pieces of paper so accurately but it was fun to do.



A couple of days ago I bought some quilling tools on ebay, and this evening I've bought some quilling papers on ebay. I had hoped to get the papers at Hobbycraft when I was there earlier today but they have to move their slower selling lines so they can get Christmas stock in ... and quilling paper is one of them. Watch out for me having a go at quilling in the coming weeks!